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Kent County HR reports improved hiring, steady turnover and experiments with AI for efficiency
Summary
HR presented 2025 metrics showing more applicants, falling time-to-fill and about 6% voluntary turnover; staff said they are using generative AI for job-description drafting and AI avatars for training but are not using AI to screen applicants.
Amy Rollston, speaking for Kent County Human Resources, presented the department’s annual report to the Policy and Operations Committee on March 10. Rollston said HR has a 16-person team with three current vacancies and provides services for roughly 2,000 county employees and a comparable number of retirees.
Rollston listed key 2025 figures: HR handled about 10,000 applicants, ran 156 recruitments that resulted in 356 hires, helped 89 employees transition to retirement, offered 61 training classes attended by more than 1,800 employees, administered roughly 396 employee leaves and completed about 2,700 transactions in the HR system.
She said time-to-fill for ordinary county recruitments is trending down, though sheriff recruitments are excluded from that chart because they follow a different batch-hiring process. Voluntary turnover hovered near 6%, below a Bureau of Labor Statistics benchmark (8.2%) for local governments. Rollston emphasized succession planning; many HR leaders are eligible for retirement in the coming years.
Rollston described wellness and administrative initiatives: migration of retirement records into OnBase to modernize benefit administration; a wellness program ('N') that enrolled about 500 participants who have collectively lost approximately 8,000 pounds; and outreach for mental-health access. She also outlined labor-planning timelines: wage reopeners begin in mid-April and close in mid-June, with broader contract negotiations expected in 2027–28.
On AI, Rollston said HR is not using AI to screen resumes or make hiring decisions. She described limited uses of generative AI for drafting job descriptions (she noted staff review and edit outputs) and the use of a platform called Synthesia to create consistent video-based training with AI avatars.
Commissioners praised HR’s customer-service work and asked questions about remote-work flexibility, the ‘six C’s’ employee values (creativity, customer service, competence, collaboration and connect/engagement), involuntary terminations (about 25 last year) and whether HR supports all county departments and elected offices (HR said it is the central service provider for county employees). Rollston said HR is developing a leadership program and continuing onboarding improvements.
The committee did not take a policy vote on HR items; commissioners thanked staff and moved on.
