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State Personnel Office outlines job‑architecture overhaul and single salary structure
Summary
State Personnel Director Dylan Lang told the panel that New Mexico implemented a standardized job architecture, reducing classifications, creating 20 pay grades and mapping about 18,000 employees to the new structure; the office said $17 million was appropriated to support the transition.
Dylan Lang, director of the State Personnel Office (SPO), presented the committee with New Mexico’s HR modernization results, a multi‑agency effort with the Legislative Finance Council (LFC), Department of Finance and Administration (DFA) and a Deloitte study.
Lang said the modernization introduced a standardized job‑title glossary, 14 job families with subfamilies, career tracks, and a consistent job‑leveling guide. The state consolidated many legacy classifications, deactivated hundreds of obsolete classifications and placed roughly 18,000 classified employees into new, market‑aligned titles mapped to a single 1–20 pay grade structure.
The director said the changes were intended to improve recruitment and retention by clarifying career paths and standardizing pay decisions across agencies. He said SPO used 10 comparator states for market benchmarking, preserved employees’ existing pay levels (no pay decreases permitted under state personnel board rule) and allocated $17 million to cover transition costs and some longevity pay increases.
Lang answered members’ fiscal questions by estimating the cost to bring employees up to new pay‑band minimums at about $2 million (plus benefits) and committed to provide a final accounting. He said 373 employees were moved to the new minimum and about 913 presently exceed the new pay‑band maximum, outcomes the office will monitor and address with agencies.
Committee members asked about union engagement, internal pay equity, telework and how agencies and employees are being informed. Lang said SPO held validating sessions with agency HR and labor unions, provided FAQs and a public job‑title glossary online, and will continue strategic meetings with agencies to support budget and compensation planning.
Lang emphasized that SPO sets the architecture and pay grades, while agencies retain authority to make pay decisions within the bands; he said the average time to fill a posted state position is 64 days and that clearer titles and market alignment should help reduce hiring time. No formal votes were held during the briefing.
