DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES (DHR)

January 2021 – December 2023

TRANSFORMING CITY HIRING PRACTICES
Over the past three (3) years, DHR has undergone the most transformative review, evaluation, and modernization of its duties, functions, responsibilities and operations in decades. This process has been aided by a Bloomberg-Harvard Fellow’s management analysis and Diagnostic Report of the City’s Recruitment Timelines – Baseline Analysis; the Office of the City Auditor’s Audit of Select Management Issues Impacting the City’s Ability to Effectively Hire and Sustain Its Workforce and the DHR management team’s internal, candid self-assessment of long-standing DHR policies, procedures, and practices. While this is an ongoing project, DHR has been able to realize the significant recruitment and hiring improvements over the past three years:
PRIORITIZING THE FILLING OF VACANCIES
Filling vacancies in the post-COVID job market continues to be a daunting challenge faced by all employers. Despite the highly competitive job market, the City’s 653 new civil service hires in FY23 resulted in a net growth of 115 new employees, representing the first net positive increase in the City’s workforce in more than three years. Through various hiring initiatives, the City has realized an average 27% increase in hiring each year during the first three years of the Mayor’s term.
IMPLEMENTING NEW RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION TOOLS
The ongoing effort to fill vacancies is being driven by the implementation of sweeping new recruitment and retention tools to assist departments with filling their vacancies, keeping valued employees and an overarching drive to modernize the City’s recruitment approach. This has included a delegation of authority to department directors to a) hire new employees above the minimum rates when appropriate or to offer recruitment incentives that have already been authorized by statute; b) revise the scope of shortage pay for employees in positions where there are an insufficient number of qualified individuals to meet the demand; c) initiate alternate and hybrid office-telecommute work schedules to offer more flexibility to City workers; and d) allocate more staff to talent acquisition and outreach efforts.
REDUCING RECRUITING AND HIRING TIMES
Faced with a statewide and national labor shortage, DHR reduced its recruitment time to less than 50% of the baseline 2022 timeline by streamlining and re-engineering recruitment and examination processes, as well as expanding capacity, resulting in faster turnaround for departments trying to hire new employees. The DHR recruitment team identified innovative ways to reduce the hiring time, including enabling special features in the City’s online recruitment and application portal to facilitate efficiencies in notifications and scheduling. With respect to the City’s overall hiring efficiency efforts, the total time to hire has been reduced from 180 days in 2022 to 89 days today — with further reductions anticipated due to additional tools being piloted for implementation.
INTRODUCING ONLINE TRAINING CURRICULUM
DHR Training launched the City’s first online curriculum via the new Honolulu U e-learning platform for the professional development of City employees, providing flexibility and convenient access to training. Over the first two fiscal years of Mayor Blangiardi’s term (2021 and 2022), the City increased its reach from 1763 employees to 2647 employees trained – the highest number of employees reached over the past five years – not inclusive of mandatory training for every employee which will now include anti-bias training for every employee beginning in 2024. DHR created and launched innovative programs designed to improve engagement and retention of employees, including a new Blue Collar Leadership Series and Succession Planning for Managers. DHR Training Branch also launched new programs to improve skills and to enhance the career paths for employees including a new Administrative Services Officer (ASO) Academy to support the City’s critical administrative leadership staff.
INTRODUCED DIGITAL MEDIA MARKETING CAMPAIGN
As part of its modernization efforts across the City, DHR Recruitment launched a digital media marketing campaign resulting in 162,921 page views to its career pages and 1,206,703 click-throughs to positions posted in the past year – representing 535,184 more click-throughs to jobs than in prior fiscal years. The effort includes increased visibility on social media sites such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter; keeping content on the DHR job pages fresh and interesting with visual photos or videos; creation of a new Summer Student Aid application website; and launch of a new application portal for temporary contract employees.
ENSURING PUBLIC HEALTH AND SAFETY
A critical function assigned to DHR is the oversight of safety functions across the City to maintain compliance with OSHA and HIOSH, keeping the City employees and the public safe in day-to-day operations and special projects across the island. The Safety Division completed over 145 Safety inspections of county facilities across the City to identify and mitigate safety hazards to keep City employees safe and save potential HIOSH fines and penalties of more than $5 million while also conducting training workshops to ensure that the City’s safety officers are operating at the highest levels possible.
MAINTAINING CORE CITY HUMAN RESOURCE FUNCTIONS
In addition to its focus on new programs, DHR continues to execute core City functions at a very high level to help ensure the work of the City moves forward. For example:
1. Completed six (6) negotiations and three (3) arbitrations of collective bargaining agreements with nine (9) bargaining units representing City employees; and
2. Completed first-ever survey of all City employees to self-identify demographics relevant to gender, race, and ethnicity, with the latter two disaggregated beyond required federal reporting categories.
INTRODUCING NEW TIMEKEEPING SYSTEM
DHR introduced a new pilot Timekeeping system (TimeI) to replace the existing unsupported and aging timekeeping system. The new timekeeping system includes embedded pay policies, eliminating the need for manual calculation of certain types of pay, thereby facilitating proper compensation. TimeI is targeted for implementation at all City departments by 2025.
UPGRADING THE CITY’S HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PLATFORM
Together with DIT, BFS, and technology consultant CGI, implemented a City-wide technology upgrade to the City’s Human Resource Management (HRM Platform) used for employee record keeping. The upgrade of AdvHRM to version 4.4 was part of the City’s overall ERP upgrade that was awarded the 2023 Project of the Year by the Project Management Institute of Hawai‘i. The upgrade is user-friendly and intuitive for users and allows a single interface to access all Advantage systems seamlessly, efficiently integrates various ERP systems, and streamlines data entry by eliminating extraneous fields and adding additional validation points.
LEVERAGED FEDERAL FUNDS FOR EXTERNAL RECRUITERS
DHR leveraged SLFRF funds to set up a talent acquisition and outreach section of external recruiters to enhance the City’s visibility and desirability as an employer of choice by conducting outreach to underrepresented groups and developing relationships with external stakeholders including, but not limited to, the University of Hawai‘i, UH Community Colleges, and professional associations to facilitate hiring relationships with City departments.