Bannock County HR seeks recruiting line item, plans training room and digitization push

Matthew Phillips (identified in the transcript as Matthew Phillips, HR nurse management director) briefed the commissioners on the human-resources budget and several staffing and technology initiatives the department plans for the coming year.

Phillips said the department’s top priorities are recruiting and better use of technology. He told commissioners the county is evaluating a new flexible spending plan provider and is testing additional ApplicantPro/iSolved ATS configuration and onboarding features that would let new hires complete paperwork electronically before orientation. “We got over 2,700 applications through that Software last year, which is averaging around 23 applications per posting,” Phillips said; he added the department expects the average applicant pool to climb toward 24–25 per posting.

Phillips requested a new recruiting line item and said county staff offered to transfer $1,500 to seed the account. He described the spring hiring fair as productive and said the county hopes to attend roughly four or five recruiting events annually rather than dozens. He also described plans to convert a county room into a combined training room and records area, using reusable scanners and interns to digitize HR records.

On training, Phillips said leadership and safety training are priorities, and the department will reserve part of its training budget for leadership development while using partners such as Healthy City for low-cost wellness programming. He proposed reducing the wellness line because free partner resources have been sufficient.

Phillips reviewed risk-management changes that affect HR budgeting. He said the county’s deductible structure was altered by the carrier: property deductible increased to $10,000 and auto deductible moved to $1,500 from prior levels; he said this shift has favored the county because most high-cost incidents historically involve automobiles. He also described an estimated 2.5% increase in the ICRMP premium, from roughly 7.90 to 8.15 in the accounting unit used for budgeting. Phillips said better tracking of health-trust admin fees produced a new $900+ line item this year and allowed staff to identify about $5,000 in duplicative fees with the county’s Blue Cross account.

He described modest capital needs for a training room—camera and podium equipment—and said the county may reuse existing equipment where possible.

Commissioners thanked Phillips for the work on training and had no further questions recorded in the excerpt. No formal votes are recorded in the provided transcript excerpt.