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In recent years, Troup County has been working to improve customer service for county residents, including county employees themselves.  

The county began working to increase its level of customer service both outwardly and inwardly. Customer Service Manager Denise Smith, who also serves as Grants Manager for the county, gave a presentation on the county’s employee engagement program which was renamed to  Employees for Employees last year.   

The goal of the initiative is to increase employee satisfaction, which in turn saves the county money and improves service to residents.

“We want for our employees, Troup County employees in all departments, to feel satisfied with the work that they do, with the workplace that they work in. We want them to feel happy for the most part when they come to work and do the jobs that they do,” Smith said.

Part of that is helping employees know their colleagues, both within their departments and in other departments so they don’t feel siloed and feel they can communicate. Earlier data indicated that employees felt they didn’t know employees in other departments, and that was a barrier to communication, she said.

“They needed to be able to reach out to other departments, and that was an impediment to helping citizens,” Smith said.

Another goal is to reduce turnover.

“We want employee engagement to be boosted, and we want to reduce employee turnover. Employee turnover costs the county. We want to keep people we want to keep people here. We want to keep them engaged. We want to keep them happy,” Smith said.

The initiative seems to be working according to the numbers. To measure the impact of the program they conducted seven online employee surveys, receiving 602 survey responses.

The most recent survey in December indicated that 65% of Troup County employees felt they have an improved quality of life at work as a result of the Employees for Employees initiatives and 62% reported they experience greater engagement in their day-to-day work experience.

Smith said the biggest help was the improved turnover rate. In 2023, the county had a turnover rate of 21%. In 2024 the turnover rate dropped to 17%.

“While there were probably other variables that contributed to the reduced turnover rate, we would like to think that these initiatives are in the reduction in that turnover rate, and the key benefits to the reduced turnover rate are the reduced costs of recruitment, onboarding and training costs, increased productivity, increased collaboration, increased institutional knowledge, higher quality of interactions between teams, between employees and citizens,” Smith said.

The Employees for Employees program has started numerous initiatives and events over the past year, centering around employee appreciation and team building.

From silly things like sock day and selfie day to county-wide cookout, the goal was to make sure everyone was included, even those who work non-traditional hours.

“We had team building and social events. We had the traditional holiday door decorating contests and pumpkin carving contests. These contests allow departments to work together to develop their ideas for their door decorating and their pumpkin carving. And it’s super fun and it’s competitive,” Smith said.

The initiatives also included a wide range of health and wellness classes for employees, from general stretch walking groups to health screenings, she said.