Sherburne County said good-bye last week to one of its favorite people-persons last Friday when Human Resources Director Roxanne Chmielewski retired after 20 years with the county.
She had been in charge of the county’s personnel department since 1995. In fact, she was the first and only Personnel Director/ Human Resources Director the county ever had.
“Dave Locke was county coordinator here and I knew him fairly well,” says Chmielewski. “He got the board to approve a new position to do personnel. He hired me as the first personnel director and I’ve been here ever since.”
Chmielewski has a long history of working with people, with over 44 years of employment in the public sector in Minnesota.
She has worked in social services in Ramsey County, and was a police officer in Grand Marais.
“I decided I didn’t want to do that the rest of my life,” she says. “There are stories there that I won’t go into.”
At the time, Cook County was looking for an assistant to the county coordinator.
“I wanted to change careers. I thought, I could do that. So I applied and they hired me,” says Chmielewski. “Then they decided they didn’t need a county coordinator anymore, but they needed someone to do personnel.”
That’s how she happened to “fall into human resources.”
After Cook County, she worked in human resources in Benton County before she was hired in Sherburne County. She started shortly after the current Government Center opened.
Back then, the county had about 400 employees, and it’s been growing ever since. But it was de-centralized, with each department handling its personnel issues.
That changed once Chmielewski was hired.
“We added the federal jail, which was huge,” she says. “The county population was growing, so we had to add staff to serve those people.”
Now the county has about 630 employees, and there have been lots of changes over the last 20 years.
“There are lots of legal requirements that weren’t an issue 20 or 30 years ago. There was no Pay Equity Act. We didn’t have veterans preferences, scoring systems or concerns about discrimination,” says Chmielewski. “Frankly, years ago you hired people you knew who could do a good job. But that left out people who could do a good job but didn’t know somebody.”
Now, Human Resources involves much more than just hiring people who can do a good job.
“We have to do affirmative action reports, equal opportunity reports, pay equity reports, and with the Affordable Care Act, there’s even more now,” says Chmielewski. “And when you have 10 different union contracts plus a non-union policy, it gets pretty complicated.”
“I spend a lot of time dealing with contract issues, business agents, people with a grievance of some sort or mediating disputes of some sort. That’s satisfying because you can almost always resolve those issues. People just need to talk to each other.” she says. “I grew up in a family of 10 and I think that honed my mediation skills.”
Every time a department looks to hire a new staff person, Human Resources gets involved.
“We help with the recruitments. We help with the selection to make sure it’s legal and appropriate and we assess the appropriate salary level just to keep everything consistent within the county,” says Chmielewski. “What we want to do is hire and keep the best people. We want to promote professionalism and consistency, and I think we’ve accomplished that.”
Even though the job is more complex than it was years ago, Chmielewski says she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I’ve always liked this job. I feel blessed to have fallen into this career,” she says. “Every day is different. Every day has different challenges, and that’s a wonderful thing.”
She decided to retire to spend time with family.
“I have 14 grandchildren. I see them growing up and I think, “you know, grandma wants to spend time with those kids while I still can,” she says.
But she says it will be strange not going to work after more than 44 years serving people.
“It hasn’t sunk in yet. When I roll over on a Monday morning and go back to sleep, then it’ll sink in.”
