Human resources unveils job-evaluation plan to reduce perceived favoritism and clarify career paths

Director Jessica Bennett presented a countywide job-evaluation framework she described as "talent architecture"—a point-based system that assigns jobs a grade based on responsibilities, supervisory expectations, decision rights and budgetary authority. She said the process is designed to produce pay parity and transparent career pathways and that the county will post job descriptions and proficiency maps to make paths to promotion clearer.

Bennett said the system is intended to be objective and harder to manipulate than past grading systems; she acknowledged prior inconsistencies and noted plans to prioritize regrades (for example, aligning division 3 intake officers with division 8 where identical work is done). Committee members raised concerns about nepotism, paid maternity leave and how vehicles or other fringe benefits factor into evaluations. Bennett said some questions (payroll coding, vehicle assignment) cross into comptroller or administration responsibility but reiterated HR's goal of transparency; she said comptroller figures for step changes and regrades would be ready for next week's finance meeting.