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Studies on state employee job classifications, performance appraisals aired at hearing

Submitted by kkillian on January 26, 2012 - 2:37pm

The House State Government Finance Committee held a hearing this morning (Thursday) on various state employee related topics. The meeting included updates on studies prompted by the 2011 legislative session. Studies on both state employee job classifications and state employee performance appraisals were reported on.

In her report about on state job classifications, Laurie Hansen, director of Human Resource Management for Minnesota Management and Budget (MMB), said the study had three main goals: 1, To reduce the number of job classifications in state service to less than 50 job families; 2, To allow for flexible management of job classes; 3, To enhance the ability of state employees to transfer to other positions.

The report covers the managerial plan, commissioner’s plan and the following bargaining units: MAPE, AFSCME and Middle Management. MMB is coordinating the project. In total, more than 35,000 employees will be covered in the study.

The report identifies 39 new job families. Those 39 will now be re-evaluated. The project is now underway and will conclude by Dec. 31, 2012. The law also stipulates that in developing the process to streamline the job classifications, the commissioner must meet and confer with each affected bargaining unit.

According to Committee Chair Rep. Morrie Lanning, the state currently has more than 1,400 classifications and 1,800 sub classifications.

“Our intent was to reduce the complexity of this,” Lanning said.

Rep. Keith Downey, who once referred to state employees as “beasts,” insinuated in questioning that the state employee job classification system is unnecessarily complex. He also suggested that the report from MMB did not go far enough to execute the charge laid out in statute.

In response to Rep. Downey’s questions, Rep. Leon Lillie asked rhetorically if the GOP-led House had recently looked at its own legislative staff job classifications?

“I am pretty sure we have about 300 employees we have in our own body. I think we have over 100 classifications ourselves.” Lillie went on to say, “Let’s make sure our own house is in order before we throw stones.”

Also today, the committee heard a report on state employee performance appraisals from Jeanine Kuwik, MMB’s Internal Control and Accountability director. Like the job classification study, the study related to the state performance appraisal system was required by statute passed last year. The purpose of the redesign would be to tie individual performance reviews to organizational and agency strategy goals.

Kuwik said creating an integrated set of performance appraisals will be a long and complicated process.

Once again Rep. Downey spoke up, this time commenting on staffing ratios of managers to rank-and-file employees. Downey asked, “What are these people doing at that management level? He went on to say, “we have management level people all over the place.” Downey also stated that, like the job classification study, he didn’t think this process was movingly quickly or “crisply” enough.

In response, Kuwik stated, “this is going to be an evolution and not a revolution.”