Whately Personnel Committee Weighs Tiered Evaluations, Free Digital Review Platform

WHATELY -- April 15, 2026, Whately Personnel Committee moves toward streamlined employee evaluations and a free digital platform. The committee met April 15 to review feedback from the town's first round of performance evaluations, which were introduced as a condition of its step-increase pay system. Staff presenter Pete outlined complaints from department heads, most pointedly that the town's part-time fire chief faced 16 individual on-call-staff reviews under the current process, and proposed two changes: making three-party supervisor-employee-town administrator meetings optional except when requested or a deficiency is found, and exempting employees in pay grades 1 through 4 from the self-evaluation requirement. Pete also presented SurveyMARS, a free online evaluation platform, and received committee go-ahead to build a demonstration version using existing questions and dummy accounts for review at the next meeting. The committee noted it cannot schedule that meeting until the Finance Committee appoints a replacement for member Jerry, who recently stepped off the Personnel Committee.