PBN C-SUITE 2021 AWARDS RISING STAR
Haley Lattinville
Town of North Kingstown personnel manager
Haley Lattinville’s hands-on approach and eagerness to learn new tasks came in handy when she recognized that the town of North Kingstown had a need in the area of human resources.
On her own initiative, the town employee stepped up.
“The last few years, I had put a lot of hard work into the town, [which] doesn’t have a designated HR department, so a lot of the HR duties have been spread out or fell onto the town manager,” Lattinville said.
In the nearly five years since she’s been working for North Kingstown, Lattinville has taken on several responsibilities and worked to streamline the town’s processes and improve employee engagement.
“In doing all of my duties, I had taken all of these tasks because I wanted to learn, and the only way I’m going to learn is by doing them. So, I kind of sat and trained myself on doing all of these,” she said.
Starting in payroll, Lattinville said she asked to take over tasks such as benefit enrollment and employee engagement, finding a love for human resources along the way.
“[In] today’s day and age and all the social differences we have and everything’s changing, HR has become more prevalent, and I decided that I wanted to pursue HR further,” she said.
Among the tasks Lattinville has accomplished is creating an employee service portal. This allows employees to view their paychecks and W-2s, view their time-off accruals, update W-4s and other tasks. She has also set up employee assistance programs and training programs for managers and department heads.
It hasn’t just been about her work for the town; Lattinville has worked to improve herself. She enrolled at Bryant University and completed the Human Resources Management certificate program. Graduating in May 2020, she then took and passed the Society for Human Resources Management certification test, earning more qualifications in human resources.
North Kingstown Director of Finance James Lathrop, himself a past PBN C-Suite Awards winner, nominated Lattinville for the award because of her consistent improvement and work for the town.
“She showed an attitude that she wanted to be better, and she wanted more. Those are things, especially in the government environment, you don’t see often. We’re highly unionized; it’s hard to move up, and it was just kind of refreshing,” Lathrop said. “A lot of people have desires, but to actually put it into action and make it happen, that’s kind of impressive. She looked for some guidance, but she really did stuff on her own, and from any kind of managerial position, you love when your staff takes some initiative, recognizes a problem, lets you know about it and then finds a solution before you even need to get too involved.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when there was a lot of uncertainty as to what policies and procedures should be followed and maintained, Lattinville again stepped up.
“No one expected or knew what to do with COVID, and she was that person that did the research. ‘This is what we can do, this is what we can’t do, this is how we should accomplish it,’ ” Lathrop said. “She just established consistency, and I think that’s what most people wanted.”
Lattinville said she wants to be a part of any actual HR department that North Kingstown forms in the future.
“I plan on continuing to create and update our policies. Some of our policies are outdated, and I’m going one by one rewriting and making sure everything is compliant,” she said. “I plan on continuing to update and create new policies and get everything working.”
Lathrop thinks Lattinville has a lot of potential.
“I always look at that Rising Star situation as not just what they’ve accomplished but what you can see their future projection is,” he said. “I really have high hopes and high expectations for her.”
