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Human resources director presents 2024 annual report; city highlights wellness, training and retro workers’ comp savings
Summary
Human Resources Director Emma House presented the department’s annual report, highlighting employee wellness recognition, an increase in electronic self‑service and training use, and membership in the workers’ compensation retro program that returns savings to the city.
Emma House, Oak Harbor’s human resources director, presented the department’s 2024 annual report Monday and highlighted recruitment, benefits administration, training and safety work the city said reduced costs and improved services.
House described HR’s program areas — talent acquisition; employee health, benefits and wellness; training and performance management; and risk management — and listed staffing in the HR office. She said the city has pursued employee self‑service capabilities, implemented an ethics and compliance hotline, and rolled out a classification and compensation plan for non‑represented employees.
House told council the city’s wellness program has earned a WellCity designation for roughly 18 consecutive years and that employees completed more than 6,700 training courses since the learning management system was implemented in 2019. She provided staffing metrics for 2024: 58 hires and 45 separations and a total employee seniority tally of 167 employees equaling about 1,481 years of service (an average of roughly 8.9 years per employee at the snapshot in the packet).
On risk management, House said the city participates in the Association of Washington Cities retro program for workers’ compensation and receives reimbursement checks when claims and costs remain low. She and councilors discussed the financial benefit of retro returns and the value of timely reporting, light‑duty programs and return‑to‑work efforts to secure reimbursements.
House also described technology changes: NeoGov for recruitment and personnel workflows and the city’s payroll/ERP (Eden/Tyler Tech) rollout in coming years to centralize payroll and financial staff access. She said HR is tracking leave balances (the packet showed roughly 64,000 hours of available leave across staff at year‑end) and is preparing a supervisor manual and a citywide training schedule for 2025.
Ending: Councilors asked for follow‑up trend data (average tenure over time); House agreed to provide additional historical trend reports and to continue work on employee training, safety and the ERP transition.
