Counties get creative to recruit and retain public safety workers

Recruiting and keeping good people has become one of the defining challenges of county government, and nowhere is the pressure sharper than in criminal justice and public safety. That was the topic discussed by a panel before the Justice and Public Safety Policy Steering Committee Friday at NACo’s Annual Conference.

Workday Managing Director Rowan Miranda said that public safety is a workforce apart — more distributed, burdened by overtime and burnout, high-risk by nature and now drawing record-low applications, with wages for corrections and 911 roles that consistently lag. Previously, Miranda served as chief financial officer for Allegheny County, Pa. 

In Boone County, Mo., Commissioner Janet Thompson described a public safety campus that houses the sheriff’s office, jail, juvenile center and 911 operations — all roles marked by shift work, high stress and difficult conditions. After struggling to staff the 911 center and detention facility, the county drilled into why. For a workforce heavy with younger employees of childbearing age, the answer often came down to childcare for overnight shifts. 

Boone County’s response was to break ground on a public safety childcare center offering partially subsidized tuition to first-responder families, set to open this fall, alongside a regional law enforcement training center next door and CIT training across its 911, jail and road-deputy staff. 

“Public safety has to be key to what we do,” Thompson said, tying the investment directly to retention.

Tracy Peters, HR director and assistant county administrator in Cass County, N. D., focused on correctional officers, the county’s hardest-to-fill roles. The county stood up a monthly recruitment and retention committee including frontline jail staff, adopted a recruitment platform to widen its reach and rebuilt job postings as marketing tools rather than dry descriptions — running three rotating versions refreshed every 45 to 60 days, including one pitched as a way to “jumpstart your law enforcement career.” 

Paid sponsorships on boards like Indeed and LinkedIn delivered outsized returns; Peters said a single $100-a-day weekend push brought in 25 applicants instead of the usual handful. Exit data, she added, revealed the top reasons people left were not pay but poor communication and weak relationships with supervisors — pointing the county toward investing in frontline leadership.

Kathy Burrows, HR director for Tulsa County, Okla., walked through a modernization built on the county’s Workday system, which sped onboarding so new hires start ready to work. The county leaned into short, TikTok-style how-to videos, a dedicated joinTCSO.org recruiting site, QR codes on patrol vehicles and roughly 65 recruiting events a year. 

Burrows also pushed to change a state statute, so tuition assistance kicks in at 90 days rather than five years and built a pipeline that certifies detention officers in high school and helps fund their path to becoming deputies by 21. Still, she was candid about the juvenile detention center, where the county lost more staff than it kept this year.

The shared message: the workforce challenge is a lasting condition, and meeting it takes fresh thinking on every front.