Town of Concord staff reported Dec. 10 that the town’s new Munis financial/payroll implementation has been delayed and provided a timeline for a new merit-pay and evaluation process for employees.

Assistant Town Manager (and interim HR director) Jess told the Personnel Board the HR hires/terms report has shown discrepancies because current data are pulled from ADP, which does not track vacancies, and because reporting is compiled from multiple systems. "That rollout date, by the way, has now been pushed to April 1," Jess said of the Munis implementation, adding that Munis will provide position control and better tracking once implemented. Staff said the delay is not expected to create a significant additional cost to the town.

Kimberly Crum, who led recent employee focus groups and supervisory training, described the new evaluation and merit-pay process and the changes informed by staff input. She said training sessions were well attended (two supervisor sessions with 27 and 18 participants) and that the evaluation form was adjusted so scoring reads intuitively (the recommendation was to reverse the numeric scale). Crum outlined the timeline: goals would run Jan. 1 through June 30; annual evaluations for step-increase eligibility must be completed by May 31 and turned into HR; merit-pay assessments will be due by July 31 and the cash incentives would be paid on or before the first payroll in September.

Board members asked about cross-department coordination and aligning select board and town-manager goals with department-level goals; members recommended setting deadlines earlier in the budget process to avoid mid-year goal changes. Mark Howell and others urged that goal-setting be synchronized with the fiscal-year and budget cycle to give managers and staff a full evaluation window.

Staff said the new systems and deadline schedule are intended to ensure consistency, create interim supervisor check-ins between Jan. 1 and June 30, and allow HR to process salary step increases and merit payments on the timelines described. The board requested a future agenda item to revisit whether merit pay should be based on current or proposed salaries.