The Best for Golden

You can watch the 6-month check-in recording here.

For time off, we may try several different approaches as we grow and learn through the trial. Currently, if employees take a week off, they will use 40 hours out of their leave bank.  If they take a day off it’s 10 hours for each day. This may change as the trial evolves.

We have 53 certified law enforcement officers when fully staffed. Days and swing shifts have a sergeant plus 5 officers, night shifts have a sergeant plus 4 officers. Again, these numbers are when fully staffed. Our minimum staffing level is a sergeant plus 2 officers.

The Golden Police Department will use different scheduling options throughout the trial to see which works best.  To start, officers will be divided into six teams, covering the week with two day teams, two afternoon teams and two night teams.  The week is split Sunday through Wednesday and Wednesday through Saturday.  Since Wednesday has all officers working, it will be used for training without impacting officers working in the community.  This schedule will include one or two officers from each shift coming in one hour earlier than the other officers.  This ensures coverage at the beginning and ending of each shift.  This schedule will be tried for about three months.  The second schedule that will be tried will have 10 shifts.  This will include the same breakdown as the first shift, but will spread some officers into four power shifts that cover mid-morning through mid-afternoon (10:00 am – 6:00 pm) and mid-afternoon through late evening (6:00 pm – 2:00 am).  We do plan to be flexible with the scheduling and open to trying alternatives if a specific schedule is not working well or we fine one that works better than other options.

1) There is no currently no schedule impact to those employees scheduled to work fewer than 40 hours, although they will benefit from training and other process improvements that are implemented within the trial. Should the trail be successful this would be a topic for us to address for the wider city.  

2) The City of Golden is committed to adherence to the rules established in the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, and to upholding pay equity and transparency as intended by the Act. In accordance, all job postings will continue to reflect pay ranges and benefits as applicable to each position. Upon implementation of a 4-day workweek, these postings will be revised to describe the intended schedule and that wages will be paid for 40 hours per week for full-time positions to accurately reflect the full base compensation. The described benefits available for these positions will also be updated to include the 4-day workweek as a component of total compensation and paid time off. 

We recognize that with our employees operating on varied schedules to ensure continuity of City operations, the timing requirements of notice for promotional opportunities will require extension to ensure that all employees are afforded the opportunity to learn of and apply for promotional opportunities. 

When conducting pay equity analyses of the workforce, all hourly salaries are annualized at 2080 hours per year to ensure fair comparison when evaluating salaries across groupings of similar jobs. 

Record keeping practices will continue to ensure that wage rate histories and hours worked will be maintained for all employees. In the event of a claim resulting in liquidated damages for an hourly employee, the employee’s working hours will be based on 40 hours per week for weeks with less hours worked, and will include any overtime hours accrued within the period evaluated. 

As the current trial is on a limited basis and various specifications of the program may require reconsideration and/or revision, all potential impacts to our compliance with the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act will be reviewed and revised appropriately prior to organization-wide implementation of the program. Therefore, the information cited above may be subject to change as the trial develops and the application of a 4-Day workweek is defined for the City. 

We are still finalizing those specific measures to prepare for the July 10th beginning of the trial. We will update the page with more information as it is finalized. In general we will be tracking:

• Reduction in sick hours

• Reduction in work comp claims (this data will require longer study periods)

• Public interactions and overall police productivity using metrics to evaluate previous data against new data (number of contacts from Police, number of staff available, response times, etc.)

• Time spent in meetings, trainings, other indirect work activities 

• Financial savings from recruitment, retention, and training

• Employee Satisfaction/Engagement pulse surveys

Overtime will continue to accrue if/when an employee exceeds 40 hours of work. Pay will not be reduced for employees as they move to the 32 hour work week. Rather they will continue to be paid for 40 hours - 8 hours will be set aside and drawn from an "admin time" bank. As the trial begins it is likely employees will average closer to 40 hours of work per week. As the trial progresses and systems and work practices change we would expect to see average work hours decreasing, and perhaps reach the 32 hour week goal. However, during any given shift throughout the trial they may be held over and in those cases they will first draw from the the 8 hour "admin time" bank until reaching 40 hours for the week. If they work beyond 40 hours in the week those additional hours will be paid as overtime.

Exempt employee schedules often fluctuate more than non-exempt employees. They are expected to put in the time necessary to accomplish the tasks of their job, this is generally assumed to be an average of 40 or more hours, although it may be considerable higher due to specific projects or circumstances. Work hours will continue to be flexible  with the goal over the trial for exempt employees to also reduce their work hours due to improved processes, meeting management and focused work practices.  We will be asking exempt employees if they are working more or less as a result of this trial. Our overall goal is great work/life integration which is likely to look different in different positions.