2025-06-24 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

Home

Merit Appeals Board June 24, 2025 Because when we did the financial training, while CherryRoad was there, we didn’t have our rep. from Finance to be able to answer some of those questions. And so, it became, “Oh, well, we’ll keep a log of your questions and then we’ll provide you the answer”—so we did end up getting the answers to our questions later. But I’d just like to see us more engaged on the front end because this is going to be a huge change for everybody. So, I’d like to see that “training” be a little bit different for the HR part. st CHR. CABANAS: Did you say HR was going to be live—is it January 1 or— MS. TOKIHIRO: Yes. st CHR. CABANAS: January 1. Okay, so people are still on vacation sometimes. MS. TOKIHIRO: Yeah, right. Yeah. CHR. CABANAS: On the holidays. MS. TOKIHIRO: So, yeah. I mean, that’s our date. As far as whether or not we actually—it’s stthst January 1 or January 6—but we’re all targeting January 1. There are different points in this project because of staffing constraints and just time and other things—there’re aspects of the project that have been pushed back. And so, we really don’t want to see this pushed back—so st we’ve just been very committed to that January 1. CHR. CABANAS: So, let me ask you this—when I implemented NeoGov, it was like do we transition and get away from the paper applications or do we go cold turkey and just jump in? st So, what is your plan to transition or go cold turkey—no paper come January 1? MS. TOKIHIRO: I think it would be—as much as I’d like to say we’ll go cold turkey and no paper—I think with 3,000 employees and all of these different processes—I don’t know that we’ll do that January 1, right, especially when it comes to things like timesheets, while people get adjusted to how this works. We do need to maintain records while we’re learning. st So, no Form 13’s as of January 1. But I think some of the more practical day-to-day things for our employees—they’re going to need a little transition time while they get used to how they enter it, where they enter it. So, rather than considering it like a paper form that they’re submitting, we’ll consider it their notes—but that would probably be on a written timesheet for a period of time while they get adjusted. CHR. CABANAS: Mm-hmm. Okay. Any other questions? Niel. MR. THOMAS: What’s the situation with the IT staff? I’m mindful of how many people are “technologically uninformed” to put it kindly. And there’s a lot of people that can get access to the system and break something. Has the IT staff been increased to handle the demand of, “Oh, my God, this doesn’t work”—and everything blew up in our face. Page 19