South Jacksonville Updating Non-Union Employee Manual, Job Descriptions

By Benjamin Cox on August 23, 2022 at 1:24pm

The Village of South Jacksonville is taking care of a long standing problem with job descriptions and employee policies.

Village President Dick Samples presented the Board of Trustees with a number of suggested amendments, suggestions, and additions to the village’s employee policy manual during Committee of the Whole session on August 18th.

Samples said the changes will help the Village Administration to provide better, more detailed job performance evaluations of non-union employees and also give village employees a better sense of what their job actually is: “It’s really just us setting down and evaluate this once these people are supposed to be doing according to them and to us, what to expect out of them…It’s like having a license. All of a sudden you are now evaluating somebody based on their performance. If they want to go speed, you can go give them a ticket. If the employees don’t do part of the job they are supposed to be doing, you can somehow get them to start, correct them, or you find somebody else who is going to do the job. We have nobody in mind at this present time, but we are trying to move forward to make this a better place to live and to work for the village.”

Samples says so far this has not been a liability for the village, and it’s not part of any current litigation before the village board.

The policy manual updates and the employee policies for performance evaluations cover strictly non-union employees. Samples says that the Fire and Police Departments as well as other union village employees are not subject to the proposed changes or evaluations because the unions have their own set of performance standards and evaluation processes written into their contracts with the village. Police specifically have performance evaluations, policies, and steps of correction written into state statutes.

The policy manual and performance evaluations for non-union employees are expected to be an action item for the village board’s September business meeting.