Consultant recommends new HR structure to boost recruiting, training and employee relations

A consultant told the City Council that the city should reorganize its human resources function under a Chief Administrative Officer with a Director of HR, department-assigned HR generalists and centralized HR specialists to address persistent staffing and service problems. The consultant identified six functional areas of need: performance management; recruiting, hiring and onboarding; compensation and benefits; training and development; employee relations; and process and coordination.

The recommendation, presented by Ms. Reed, combined department-based HR generalists—who would be embedded with operating departments to build relationships and handle day-to-day support—with centralized HR specialists focused on technical areas such as hiring and staffing, employee relations, classification and compensation, and training and development. Ms. Reed said staff quotes collected during the review included that employees were "confused about what HR is," and described inconsistent processes and difficulty locating the right contact.

The consultant framed the changes as directly tied to council priorities. "In order for these priorities to set in place and to be enabled, you need better recruiting for police and fire. You need to improve support staff for schools," Ms. Reed said, linking the HR changes to public safety, efficiency and economic development goals discussed previously by council members.

Ms. Reed also described the personnel board remaining as an interface and appeals body: under the proposed model the personnel board would continue to hear appeals and work in collaboration with the HR department. The presentation included a diagram placing the Director of HR under the Chief Administrative Officer with HR generalists assigned to departments and HR specialists providing functional expertise to those generalists.

A city staff member told the council after the presentation that the administration planned to implement the proposed structure. The staff member said, "we were moving forward with that structure...that is the game plan we were gonna go with," and clarified the briefing had been shared with the mayor. President Calhoun thanked presenters; there was no formal council motion or vote reported in the transcript.

Discussion versus decision: the session was a briefing and discussion of a recommended organizational change; the only direction recorded in the transcript is a staff statement that the administration intends to move forward with the structure. No ordinance, resolution or staffing action was shown to have been adopted in the provided transcript.

What was not specified in the briefing: exact job counts, budget impacts or implementation timetable. The consultant and staff described roles and responsibilities but did not provide dollar figures, the number of new or reclassified positions, or effective dates for any structural changes. Those details were not provided in the transcript.