Administration’s HR services briefed on hiring gains, EEO centralization and payroll challenges tied to CoreNV transition

Department of Administration HR officials and the governor’s chief innovation officer told the subcommittee that the state’s Agency Human Resources Services has reduced vacancy rates through hiring events, centralized EEO investigators to improve trust and is working through payroll fragility tied to the transition from an antiquated Advantage 2 system to the CoreNV platform.

Michelle Washington, who presented Agency HR Services, said her team supports full HR services for departments with 300 or fewer employees and described recruitment events that led to more than 200 on-the-spot hires across Carson City and Las Vegas. She said the division centralized EEO officers under a single EEO administrator and certified the officers to perform investigations, which the department says reduced investigation backlog and creates a more neutral environment for employees to report concerns.

Why it matters: Centralizing EEO investigations and improving payroll and HR operations affect large numbers of state employees and the administration’s ability to deliver payroll, bargaining-unit obligations and employee-relations services.

On payroll, Jack Rob, Chief Innovation Officer in the governor’s office, described persistent operational complexity in Nevada’s payroll. He told the committee the state continues to run Advantage 2 for payroll and that Advantage 2 is “fragile.” He said CoreNV Financial has been brought online for financials but that the HR/payroll migration remains time-sensitive: “There’s no way to get Advantage HR up or up sooner than June 30,” and the team is working toward shutting off the legacy HR system on that date. Rob described the payroll process’s complexity — including handling a three-paycheck month and a high volume of manual exceptions — that requires significant human intervention and occasional off-system hand-check processing to ensure employees are paid.

Committee members asked whether the repurposed intermittent positions (from the Smart21 project) were still needed once CoreNV is implemented. Michelle Washington said the agency’s repurposed staff are performing full HR services that CoreNV does not replace and that the department expects to retain those positions. She cited a SHRM benchmark noting typical HR staffing ratios (about one HR staff per 100 employees) and said current coverage with intermittent positions is roughly 1:300, which she said had been necessary but that the repurposed staff are providing valued services.

Other details and next steps: Washington requested permanent funding for certain positions (including a deputy administrator over payroll and a training officer) and sought two additional accounting/technician positions related to payroll and fiscal operations in light of the migration. The Chief Innovation Officer said workload will continue until CoreNV fully replaces the legacy system and stressed a 2-to-6-week stabilization period after rollout as users and real-world conditions surface issues. Officials agreed to provide the committee with additional status reports and project documentation.