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Vice President Ken Horstman outlines '1 HR' strategy to speed hiring and strengthen development
Summary
Vice President for Human Resources Ken Horstman told the committee the university is building a unified "1 HR" approach to coordinate 34 local HR leads with central offices, expand data and technology, and launch leadership and competency programs; OHR reported a roughly 40% reduction in time-to-hire for recent leadership searches.
Vice President for Human Resources Ken Horstman told the Finance and Operations Committee in May that the University of Minnesota is pursuing a systemwide "1 HR" strategy to align local HR leads and central HR services and improve hiring, development and employee support.
Horstman said the initiative centers on collaboration among 34 designated HR leads across the system and six central "centers of expertise" that provide policy, training and services. "Our goal today is to demonstrate how HR at the University is evolving to attract, engage, and develop world class talent to support and advance the mission of the University," Horstman said.
The office cited concrete changes: a new higher-range placement tool to guide salary ranges and compliance, a standardized PATH performance appraisal now used by many units, and an expanded contact center that uses AI-assisted note-taking. Horstman said those changes and a "peak staffing ops" implementation shortened time-to-hire for OHR staff leadership searches from about 150 days to roughly 90 days — a reduction he described as about 40 percent.
Horstman also outlined professional-development work: an HR-lead onboarding experience, an HR-leads leadership development program, annual HR summits (about 300 participants at each of the first two), and a new HR generalist competency map intended to create clearer career pathways. "We have brought the HR community together for an annual HR summit and HR centered focused professional conference to share best practices," he said.
He described efforts on equity, diversity and inclusion, including an IDI-based consultation that has reached more than 700 employees, and said OHR is building capacity in employee-and-labor relations in response to changing state legislation. Horstman said OHR will lead or co-lead long-term compensation work responding to the university's workforce reinvestment discussions.
Committee members praised the communication improvements and asked for continued focus on cost-benefit analysis for capital or energy-related investments that affect operating budgets. Horstman said energy and related avoided-cost projects often show the clearest payback and that OHR routinely performs cost-benefit and NPV analyses.
The presentation concluded with an acknowledgement of remaining challenges — legacy PeopleSoft systems, a decentralized structure with "one-off" local systems, and resource constraints — and a commitment to continue developing tools and collaboration to address them.
