Acting HR Director Lassan Chris outlines NEOGOV upgrades, career ladders and new exit surveys

Acting HR Director Lassan Chris told the Finance Committee she has focused the department’s limited resources on system and process improvements since taking the role three months ago. "My name is Lassan Chris. I am the acting director of the human resources department," she said on opening her presentation.

Chris described expanding NEOGOV use to handle recruitment, onboarding, benefits and time-and-attendance modules and said 80% of applicants now apply through the system, up from historical rates, with a goal of 100%. She said full implementation of NEOGOV modules this summer will let HR produce more useful dashboards on hiring and diversity metrics.

HR staff also introduced a standardized career-ladder framework and a job-description cover sheet that captures FLSA status, essential-worker designations and other version-control details. Chris said the approach is intended to make promotion decisions transparent, to prevent ad hoc changes to descriptions and to support consistent FLSA classifications across departments.

On employee exits and retention, HR launched an anonymous electronic exit-interview survey to capture departure reasons and planned quarterly reporting of aggregated results to senior leadership. Chris also described an expanding city internship program to place 24 youth across departments and a plan to standardize orientation surveys and onboarding checklists.

Committee members asked about contract-service lines, pre-employment drug-screening costs and the impact of the coming state family-leave premiums; Chris said overall FMLA/family-leave contributions are not yet known and that rates and implementation timing are pending final state guidance.

Committee members commended the NEOGOV uptake and asked HR to return with orientation-survey timelines, a breakdown of contractual services spending and the status of the HR director recruitment.