2025-03-13 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board March 13, 2025 CHR. CABANAS: So, can you report on the MAB Monthly Divisional Activity Report for March 2025. MS. TOKIHIRO: Okay, we're in the current month, which is good, after we caught up at our last meeting. So, basically, a lot of good things happening in HR. The continuous recruitments remain at around 50, which isagain, a high number, but understanding that when we recruit for positions there are some positions that we are recruiting for at multiple levels. So, it may only be one position —and, ideally, we would be able to fill it at the permanent class. But we do temporary allocations down in the event that we cannot find somebody that meets the qualifications at the permanent class —we can hire at a lower level and then through their job experience and training and working through the County, they can follow the career ladder and then progress to the permanent class eventually. So, there's a number of positions that we handle recruitment for in that way. We've been —our Classification and Pay Division has been very busy looking at minimum qualifications for positions as we work with departments to see if some of the language, the way that we're describing the qualifications, may need to be amended —as we, kind of, look at specific positions and see what the recruitment data shows as far as where people aren't meeting the requirements that helps us to evaluate —again, if a requirement may need to be changed or if it's the way that we describe it. I'm working with the departments —going back to the departments and saying, "Hey, is this accurate?" Or "What is the aptitude, ability, skill that you're trying to identify or get at with this requirement'so that we can work with them to create or to remove artificial barriers that may exist to people being able to meet the qualifications. We also recently removed specific disciplines from bachelor's degree requirements because most of our job postings would say, "A bachelor's degree in business administration..." da, da, da and the end is always "or other related field" —and then that becomes very subjective as far as what is related. So, for —not for positions that require a specific licensure or certification —we cannot remove those degree disciplines, but for positions that don't require those licenses —remove disciplines from the bachelor's degree requirement. And we've informed the departments that if there is something specific that they're looking for, they should be addressing that through their interview questions and assessment exercises as part of the interview and selection process. So, again, just different ways to evaluate our current openings and look at recruitment data to see if there's ways that we can broaden the applicant pool. We are continuing to develop the —our ERP software that's the software that's going to replace FRESH, which is our current software. So, we're in the last month of development and then we'll begin the testing process. The rollout for the human resources component of that software the rollout date is going to be January 1, 2026. Page 17