Travis County Commssioners Court
June 17, 2003
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Item 15
15. Consider and take appropriate action on request from human resources department to adopt 158 job descriptions for approximately 1000 positions that are affected by the classification and compensation strategic plan, second year job analysis results, as approved by the court on April 1, 2003.
>> good morning, judge, members of the court, I'm linda Moore smith, director of human resources, with me are senior compensation analyst [indiscernible] and carlotta valdez levy. We are awfully pleased to come before you today to bring to you the final task associated with the year two job analysis project that we completed and you approved our classification, changes, of course on April 1 of 2003. This final task really represents a great deal of involvement in terms of hours and hours and hours of work, not only among carlotta and lynn who in this project were your grunts, judge, real grunts in this project, but also among the departments and the various h.r. Representatives within and around the county. We provide for you through the judge's office a couple of copies of this massive document. That was for your review, we have also made available all of the job descriptions our -- our departments are able to access all of the job descriptions through Travis County intranet, so we are really excited that we were able to work with i.t. To get that task completed. We have as a part of your backup the titles as well as -- that we have included within this particular notebook. You also have as a part of your backup the titles that report directly to you, the executive managers of each of your major departments. So I wanted to point that out to you. Now, there's some who will probably say why is it that we have to go through all of these changes to correct the job descriptions? And clearly you have as a part of the information the reasons that we do create job descriptions. Those descriptions, of course, are the -- are primarily used as a recruiting tool for the h.r. Department. But also it has -- it has many, many very critical roles in -- and reasons for having that description in place, which really does allow us to -- to set the baseline duties and responsibilities that are common for people sharing that job description throughout the county. In addition to that, it serves as a foundation piece for performance management, performance appraisals and probably just as important as the other two reasons is the fact that a job description does meet and put in place appropriate compliance with federal employee laws and many people don't look at it that way. But whenever we are faced with eeo or flsa or americans with disabilities act questions, very often those who are monitoring our compliance will look at the job description as the basic tool. What we have done in this particular project is really tried to establish a standard. A standard that we felt in accordance with h.r. Industry standards would be very appropriate for trying to make all of our descriptions consistent knewout the county. That standard model is represented in the job descriptions that are in your backup. Each of the job descriptions included in this notebook has a summary of function, distinguishing characteristics, examples of the work performed, qualifications and requirements, the knowledge skills and abilities and of course the physical and environmental factors associated with each of those job titles. This, as I indicated was a massive project. What we did is we started out with the paq's that were submitted to us by each of the departments and from the paq's, we actually took that and synthesized the data to try to come up with one job description that would fit the information that would -- that was shared by, as an example, if six departments shared a particular title. We add the paq's that came in from each of those 6 departments that of course we had to compare all of the tasks, compare the qualifications, it was a real project of back and forth exchange with all of the departments involved, we are real excited because not only did we synthesize it to the point of getting consensus on the point from the departments on a common job description, it was really one that moved us away from the specific job description to one that was more generic, which was really sort of a paradigm shift for Travis County because we have been more accustomed to dealing with specific job specific job descriptions. The real difference there has to do with having generic title. We are able to not only conform to what h.r. Standards suggest it should be, the generic title, but also affords the departments an opportunity to design their functional job descriptions around the duties that are specific to that particular title within the departments. We have t.n.r. Who has some 300 plus employees that were affected by the job descriptions that were written, that's about 80% of that department's total workforce. We also had at least six departments that shared the title of chemical dependency counselor. And within those six departments as well as with t.n.r., We were able to reach countries across the board in terms of an agreement on the generic job description that you have before you. So we are here today to say to you that we in the deposit are delivering on another component of your compensation philosophy. That of course is as you have stated to keep your classification system up to date, market competitive, which these job descriptions are, and just to ensure that all of your titles not only are they consistent, but appropriate pay grade designations but the job descriptions have been matched to the market and are totally consistent and competitive across the board. So with that, as I indicated earlier, the job descriptions are out on the intranet, departments are able to access those as we speak and again thanks to i.t. For their support in making that happen. So with that staff's recommendati, judge and the court, is that you authorize the implementation of these job descriptions for year two classification changes effective July 1 of 2003.
>> move approval.
>> second.
>> as recommended by staff.
>> second. Linda, let me ask you this question. Does this basically complete or are there still other jobs that need to be approached under a classification scheme of things the way we are doing it here today. Is there anything else left out there?
>> there are two responses to that question.
>> all right. Give me both.
>> under year two, the court approved the 30 year strategic plan.
>> right.
>> this represents the completion of your year two work. We have said to departments there have been reorganizations suns we started the -- since we started the work, so we do expect that beginning August 1 that we will be receiving some little miscellaneous requests from departments to make some cleanup changes to the year two work that we are putting before you now.
>> okay.
>> the third year of your strategic plan, which is the commitment that we have made to bring those results to you in April of 2004, we have received paq's on all of the -- on that particular work and we will move forward to have that project completed before you April 1 of 2004.
>> four, okay. Thank you.
>> and then linda we still want to keep a copy, a hard copy of all of these in the judge's office if anyone is interesting in -- interested in seeing them. That way we don't have to print, you know, more copies of that. I just assumed we just go with the judge's office and look at something if I want to see it.
>> copies are there. Also in h.r. If departments want to access them.
>> okay.
>> you will be able to see the ones in the judge's office for the next 30 days.
>> okay.
>> [inaudible - no mic]
>> we had, as linda stated, about 80% of our department was affected this year. And we've had over 300 employees and more than that -- that we had to review, her and her grunt staff has been excellent in working with us and getting us through that task and we certainly appreciate it.
>> very good.
>> thank you.
>> I think that you have coined a new phrase.
>> looks like it. [laughter]
>> colorful.
>> when we see the recommendations, you have them here on the departments and basically reached agreement on job descriptions?
>> yes.
>> any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> good work.
>> great work.
>> thank you.
>> thank you all.
Last Modified: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 9:52 AM