Audit: City hiring is decentralized; agencies and HR roll out trackers, promise central Workday dashboard

A city performance audit found Baltimore’s hiring process is decentralized and inconsistent across agencies, hampering the city’s ability to track time-to-hire and identify bottlenecks, the city auditor told the Biennial Audits Oversight Commission. City human-resources officials and affected agency leaders described new trackers, training and a planned enterprise recruiting dashboard intended to improve hiring speed and transparency.

The audit, titled "Department of Human Resources: Efficiency and Effectiveness of the Hiring Process" and issued Dec. 2, 2024, found that fields and stages in Workday were not consistently used and that most agencies lacked formal, citywide policies to monitor the full recruiting and onboarding timeline. "Workday capabilities are not fully utilized to track and monitor the efficiency and effectiveness of the city's hiring process," City Auditor Josh Pash told the commission.

Why this matters: Council members said slow or uneven hiring affects service delivery and contributes to overtime and temporary staffing costs, especially in public-safety agencies. Commission members pressed HR and agencies for concrete timelines and comparable metrics so applicants get consistent communications and the city can measure progress.

Key findings and departmental responses - Audit finding: DHR and agencies were not capturing consistent Workday data or monitoring key dates across the full hiring lifecycle, preventing enterprise-wide identification of bottlenecks. - DHR response: Conrad Samuels, chief of recruitment for the Department of Human Resources, said DHR has implemented an updated job-requisition report for filled vacancies, delivered standardized-definition training (completed March 2025) and established monthly recruitment training sessions. He said, "DHR is also developing the enterprise wide recruiting dashboard, which is expected to launch in October 2025." - Agency responses: Several agencies described steps they have taken: - The Department of Finance reported agency KPIs and said its current time-to-hire is about 107 days and that its candidate acceptance rate is roughly 81% for new hires; Finance reported a 0.8% monthly separation rate and other component metrics (time to interview 35.5 days from receipt of eligible list; time to offer 19.7 days; time to onboard 48 days). - Baltimore Police Department said it hired a full-time recruiter in August 2024, implemented a weekly hiring tracker (an Excel-based tracker launched in April 2025) and created SOPs with KPIs for average recruiting time, interview time, background-check length and onboarding time. - Department of Transportation said it created a standard operating procedure in July 2025 after documenting its prior process and will review SOP performance in mid-October. - Recreation and Parks said it audited its tracker in August 2025 and identified additional fields it must record, such as the time required to approve hires above starting salary. - The Department of General Services (DGS) maintained that it already uses an Excel-based KPI dashboard (created in August 2023) to track hiring steps and identify delays.

Requests, commitments and next steps - Deputy City Administrator Shamaya Kearney told the commission she will convene agencies and DHR and asked for three weeks to report back with proposals for leveraging Workday and identifying time frames for each hiring phase: "what I'd like to commit to is if you can give me 3 weeks to convene with agencies to talk about how we can leverage Workday." - The commission asked the Baltimore Police Department to provide preliminary tracker data (April to present) on average time spent at each hiring step; BPD agreed to provide that data within 14 days. - DHR also committed to continued monthly training for agency recruiters, publishing job aids in SharePoint and enhancing and modifying reports so agency and city leadership can monitor performance consistently.

Discussion vs. action - Discussion: Commissioners and agency leaders debated how far standardization should go and which hiring steps must be centrally defined. Several members pushed for enterprise-wide KPIs so agencies do not use multiple, incompatible measures. - Direction/assignment: DHR and the deputy city administrator were directed to convene agencies and return in three weeks with concrete proposals on how to use Workday fields and dashboards to improve responsiveness to applicants and to identify candidate-bottleneck timeframes. - Formal action: The commission adopted the minutes from its March 5, 2025 meeting by voice vote; other audit-plan item decisions noted in the meeting record had been resolved outside the session and were discussed but not substantively changed during this meeting.

Context and constraints City HR leaders and multiple agency heads said centralization and standardization will take time because agencies handle different position types and volumes; some hiring steps (for example, civil-service posting periods and certification lists) are already standardized, while interview scheduling, background checks and salary-step approvals vary by agency. Several officials noted limited HR capacity in smaller offices and raised Workday familiarity and configuration as barriers that must be addressed.

What to watch for The commission requested the three-week follow-up from the deputy city administrator and DHR, and a 14-day preliminary dataset from BPD; the audit team and council members said they will use these reports to assess whether improved data capture and the planned October 2025 recruiting dashboard reduce time-to-hire and increase applicant communication.