The town of Signal Mountain, Tennessee, is having trouble attracting and retaining employees, particularly in its fire and police departments. Department heads say they get few or no applicants for open jobs and often lose new recruits after training to area public service agencies with better pay and benefits.
Former Signal Mountain police Chief Boyd Veal said losing employees over pay was an even bigger problem when he first became town manager around 2013.
“We had, especially in fire and police but in other departments, somewhat of a revolving door in that we were hiring people in, getting them trained, getting [them] experience and they were being hired away almost immediately,” Veal said.
He said employee retention improved when the town restructured its pay schedule to enable employees to reach higher pay classifications more quickly, and three years ago pay rates were increased by 5%.
“We’re not that uncompetitive with other local departments, but our beginning pay just hasn’t kept up with what some of the other ones in the area are doing,” Signal Mountain Fire Department Chief Eric Mitchell said. “When people start hiring, they see the higher beginning pay, and we’ve lost some good firefighters.”