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Clark County HR director outlines staffing, funding and ongoing compensation and benefits reviews
Summary
HR Director Laura Cobalt gave Clark County council a 20-minute overview of the Human Resources Department’s structure, staffing, funding sources and ongoing projects including a benefits study and a job-description RFP funded by one-time council approval.
Laura Cobalt, Clark County HR director, told the county council on the department’s role, staffing and finances and outlined two ongoing projects: a comprehensive benefits review and a contractor-led update of job descriptions.
Cobalt said the HR department has a 16-person core team that works with about 22 county departments and supports a separate two-person HR team in the sheriff’s office. She said the county employs about 1,800 total staff and that HR oversaw more than 350 recruitments in 2024 and had conducted roughly 50 workplace investigations in 2024.
The presentation described HR’s main service areas as employee relations, labor relations, employee engagement and training, benefits and leave administration, staffing and recruitment, compensation and classification, employment legal compliance, HRIS administration and risk and safety management. Cobalt named staff who lead those areas, including Monique Hunter (HR manager), Amy Johnson (benefits and leave administration), Jamie (risk manager), Jeremy Hamrick (HRIS administrator) and an office assistant, Josie.
Cobalt told the council the department is running a comprehensive benefits study that she expects to complete by July 1 and that the county has one-time, council-approved funding to issue an RFP to update job descriptions, with the RFP to go out in April and the project planned to begin Aug. 1. She said the job-description update is a multi‑phase follow-up to a 2022 compensation study by Baker Tilly that realigned pay scales in 2023.
On funding, Cobalt said HR is primarily financed from the county general fund, while risk and safety activities are supported by the general liability fund (fund 5040) and the workers’ compensation fund; the county also operates a health self-insurance fund (fund 5045) for medical and dental claims. She said the county is self‑insured for workers’ compensation and that the HR team works with the auditor’s office on the health fund.
Councilmembers asked for additional specifics. In response to a question about how many county employees there are and what share of the general fund HR represents, Cobalt said the county has about 1,800 employees and that she could not provide the exact share of the general fund for HR; she suggested staff (Emily) would provide that figure. A councilmember noted that more than 70% of the general fund is spent on law-and-justice programs (the sheriff, jail, courts, prosecuting attorney and clerk).
Cobalt described HR’s use of Workday as the county HRIS and noted the department maintains the ClarkNet intranet and external web pages. She also described operational details: HR manages 13 collective-bargaining agreements and grievance processes, oversees leave programs including FMLA and state paid-family/medical leave programs, and processes workers’ compensation claims from notice through closure.
The presentation closed with Cobalt reminding councilmembers that a detailed multi‑page document had been provided earlier in the year and offering to supply follow-up information on specific budget shares and other figures upon request.
