Berkshire Benchmarks Releases State of the County Update

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PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Berkshire Benchmarks data team recently released a State of the County Update for 2023. 
 
This brief report builds on the Berkshire Benchmarks State of the County Report published in May 2022 and highlights notable changes in regional indicators over the past year. The berkshirebenchmarks.org website has also been updated to reflect the most current available data. 
 
The purpose of the Benchmarks initiative and report is to highlight the region's successes and challenges.
 
The 2022 Berkshire Benchmarks State of the County report provided a comprehensive overview of our region's performance across eight sectors: Economy, Education, Environment, Government, Health, Housing, Social Environment, and Transportation.  
 
In the future, the Berkshire Benchmarks team will continue to monitor these and other indicators to aid with the regional understanding of changes in these sectors and whether the work happening throughout the region is having the intended impact. 
 
Berkshire Benchmarks is a collaborative initiative managed through Berkshire Regional Planning Commission (BRPC). Our sources are publicly available data, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the American Community Survey, various Massachusetts data sets, and periodic surveys of Berkshire County residents. 
 
Berkshire Benchmarks aims to work with the community to understand priorities and help inform the region on how we are doing and if we are improving. Berkshire Benchmarks enhances the region's access to quality data and analysis. 

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Dalton Eyes New Software to Streamline Payroll

By Sabrina DammsiBerkshires Staff
DALTON, Mass. — Since taking on the role of town manager, Eric Anderson has been finding ways to streamline operations to save on labor hours — now he is eyeing improving workforce management. 
 
"By my rough math, we're chewing up some 1,500 hours a year doing payroll, and there's just no reason for that. The way we're doing it now is incredibly inefficient," he told the Select Board last week. 
 
The board approved Anderson's recommendation to undergo contract negotiations with TimeClock Plus, a scheduling software designed to simplify employee time tracking and workforce management.
 
The town has 62 paid employees who currently submit their timesheets on paper, which are then manually reviewed by department heads, who calculate hours, vacation time, and prepare cover sheets before forwarding them to the treasurer or town manager to be approved. 
 
The assistant treasurer then spends several days each week processing the town's payroll, Anderson said. 
 
As part of his efforts to streamline this process, Anderson looked at multiple different services narrowing it down to TimeClock Plus, or TCP, because of its ease of integration with the town's regular financial software and that it's commonly used by municipalities. 
 
"Some of the payroll programs are designed to go directly to payroll companies, but since we do our payroll in house, this cuts all the manual correlation, and it filters directly into our existing [Enterprise Resource Planning] financial software," he said. 
 
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