Last year, the province of Drenthe spent almost twice as much money on external hiring as budgeted, South Holland almost 50 percent. Overijssel actually pushed hiring rates down further.
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More complex assignments
Instead of the estimated 1 million euros, the hiring costs in Drenthe ultimately amounted to 1.8 million euros last year, according to the annual accounts for 2023. Like many other authorities, the province has difficulty finding enough suitable permanent employees in the tight labor market. to fill the vacancies. According to the province, what is complicating is that ‘as public organizations – provinces, municipalities, water boards and regional implementation services – we are all fishing in the same narrow pond called the regional labor market’. At the same time, the growth of more and more complex tasks requires new specific expertise that is scarce.
The fact that not all vacancies have yet been filled is evident in the annual accounts from the item equipment costs: direct personnel deployment and deployment of support staff. More than one million less was spent on wage costs.
Lower labor costs
South Holland exceeded the budget for external hiring by 49 percent last year. This is also due to the great difficulty the province has in filling vacancies. The significant overrun of the budget is evident from the annual report for 2023. The budget was to spend 25 million. It ultimately amounted to more than 37 million euros.
“The current tight labor market is leading to delays in hiring staff,” said Zuid-Holland. ‘Because the province really needs these people, especially at this time when it is faced with a number of major challenges, it has been decided to temporarily make more use of external hiring.’
The province spent less money on its own staff partly for this reason: lower wage costs because a number of vacancies were not filled. Total wage costs remained 7.1 million euros under budget.
Overijssel
While costs for external hiring rose sharply in Drenthe and South Holland, Overijssel managed to reduce those costs even further despite the tight labor market. This is fully in line with the agreements regarding ‘flexible to permanent’ and the better balance between permanent and temporary staff. ‘We are committed to promoting ties with the province; In this tight labor market, this is an absolute necessity and also more cost-effective,” the province said in the annual report for 2023. This effort resulted in a decrease in external hiring from 35.1 million (2021) to 25.7 million euros in 2023 The permanent workforce increased by 19 FTE compared to 2022. Overijssel did this by converting various structural program budgets into structural personnel budgets in a budget neutral manner. “This has made it possible to create permanent positions and to phase out some of the existing hiring,” the province said.
Read the full article in this week’s Domestic Government No. 9.
