2017-03 Performance Audit Report: County of Hawai'i's Department of Human Resources Hiring Practices

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laws and County policies and procedures. However, numerous questionable hiring practices resulted from: • Fear of retaliation and a lack of safe reporting mechanism We received numerous testimonies indicating a fear of retaliation from higher authorities over candidate recommendations. Several credible individuals indicated they were afraid and were reluctant to provide information to the auditors; stating they were fearful of higher authorities without specifically identifying individuals. Individuals we interviewed followed hiring directives because they did not want to jeopardize their years of service and were too afraid to provide specific examples. The County's current process for reporting complaints or concerns is through the Internal Complaint Procedures. The initial procedures (informal step) include discussion of the complaint with the complainants division head. If the complainant is not satisfied with the results, the complainant may submit a written statement of the complaint to the appointing authority (step 1). It isn't until the first two steps have been completed, that the Office of the Mayor or the Council Chair (step 2) or the Merit Appeals Board (step 3) may become involved. If the complaint is against the division head or appointing authority, this process may not provide a safe reporting mechanism for the complainant. Best practices recommend a whistleblower hotline for reporting complaints. • Involvement of new hire selection by the Staffing Review Committee (SRC) In March 2013, the Staffing Review Committee was established by the prior Office of the Mayor and DHR to manage the Request to Fill (RTF) process. The SRC determined: o the method of recruitment (i.e., internal recruitment, external recruitment, etc.), o the selection process (SRC to conduct selection or the department can conduct), and o confirms the selection process (indicates person selected, date of hire, and the SRC representative signature). Departments were instructed to not make any employment or appointment offers without first receiving SRC confirmation of the selection process. According to written procedures, the SRC consisted of three members including the appointing authority (department head). During our interviews, we found the remaining two members of the SRC were the DHR Director and a representative from the Mayor's Office. According to Hawai"i County Charter Section 4-5 (b), the administrative heads of each agency have the authority to appoint necessary staff. Furthermore, as mentioned above, the individual hiring department has a better understanding (versus the SRC) of who would be the best qualified candidate for a vacant position. We found one instance at DEM where the hiring department's records were different than those maintained in the NeoGov system (human resources software used Audit Results 15 1 P a g e