Officials with the Bureau of Human Resources in Pierre say South Dakota state employees don’t get compensated at the same level as the private sector. Bureau officials showed the Joint Appropriations Committee comparisons Friday morning. The Bureau plans to increase compensation in upcoming years. Senator Larry Tidemann says the state had a low turnover rate during the recession, but now it’s picked back up. He says there is still some data he’d like to see.
“As the economy comes out of that, then the private sector tends to pick up. Now, the study looked at other state’s public employees, but it didn’t look at the other state’s private employees and the benefits that go with that. I think that’s one step that we may need to also consider because guess what, we’re not only competing on the public sector, we’re competing all of them,” Tidemann says.
The Bureau says when employees quit working for the state, most of their reasons include lack of promotional and developmental opportunities, as well as poor pay. South Dakota does have some programs in place to reward hard working employees such as pay-for-performance incentives.