House Standing Committee on Labor

Good morning. I'm calling to order the House Committee on Labor. It is Friday, August 22, 2025. It is 10:03. We're in conference room 309. This is going to be an informational briefing.

The purpose of this briefing is for the Committee to receive an update from DHERD regarding the various recruitment efforts that they're doing statewide to address the vacancy rates across the various state departments. So to begin, we have Director Hashimoto with a presentation. Feel free to start.

Okay, great. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, Chair, both Chairs, thank you for coming. I have with me this morning Deputy Director Brian Furuto and my Executive Assistant, Erin Connor Jerome, who have helped prepare the presentation. And I may be referring to them throughout the presentation. So let's go ahead and get started.

First of all, thank you for the opportunity to provide an update on DHERD hiring programs and to share with you some of the projects that we're working on either right now are on the horizon.

First of all, I'd like to talk about our Wiki Wiki Hire program, which is an accelerated pathway for applicants to enter state government. It provides an accelerated way that applicants can access many vacancies across multiple departments by submitting their application.

And Deheard's commitment when we engage a Department to to use Wiki Wikihire is that we commit to screening those applications every two weeks. And so we provide a Department with qualified applicants that we've received within that last two week period. So we've been very successful in many of the jobs that we've had under Wikiwiki Hire.

The first that we piloted was the Child Welfare Services Branch, which is our social workers and human service professionals and child and adult protective specialists. And we've since expanded that to include engineers, office assistants. Now we're doing registered nurses and eligibility workers.

So this is a program that enables applicants to apply and then within a matter of weeks they get access to vacancies. They can. We give them a list of the departments that are recruiting for those jobs and we empower the applicant to go ahead and reach out to the Department to go ahead and schedule an interview.

So there's no delay in waiting for a list or waiting to be contacted. It empowers the applicant then to go and contact the Department directly. The next. Really exciting.

Sorry, Paul, I just wanted to clarify the two week period you said. So you're going to review them every two weeks. That means there's only maximum a two week gap between the application and getting the name to the Department. Is that under the Wiki Wiki system.

Yes, that's correct. And those are screened applications. So we know that the individuals that we're referring are qualified.

So within that two week period we do the screening and we send the names out.

Okay.

And I'm sorry, I missed the portion where you said so when someone is screened and qualified, you allow that applicant to also get in touch with the Department directly. So it's like a two way. Either could call each other.

Yes, correct. So it's a little different than the way we run other recruitments where we send the list to the Department HR office of the qualified applicants and then they forward that on to the manager who, who then contacts the applicant and oftentimes that can result in delays. Right, that whole process.

So Wiki Wiki is different in that we send the applicant a letter, we tell them you're qualified for for example, social worker 3. These are the departments that are currently recruiting for social worker 3. These are the recruiters names and contact information.

Go ahead and call them and schedule an interview so the very next day they can be interviewed. And the managers and the departments that are agree to participate in Wiki Wikihire all also make a commitment to be available to interview those interested applicants quickly. So the whole idea is to accelerate the recruitment process.

Do you have data on effectiveness for that?

I don't have it with me, but we can provide some if you'd like.

Okay.

So I understand that the presentation kind of goes by program by program. So perhaps after every program, you know, we could have a moment for questions by the Committee and then once we're done with all those questions for that program, we can move on to the next one. Is that right?

Go ahead. Yeah. Interrupt me anytime.

Okay, perfect. So if we're going to move on to the next one, I do have some questions regarding the Wiki Wikihire. So how are the specific positions qualified for this accelerated recruitment process?

Really it depends on, on the type of job. Typically the jobs that we try to put into Wiki Wiki are jobs where there are many vacancies. Because we are continually recruiting, it wouldn't be appropriate, for example, for a position that's say, or a class of work that's a single position.

Because we want to be able to consider all applicants at one time. Wiki Wiki is more likely to be used in situations where there are multiple vacancies. So if we get a great applicant on day one, we can hire that person. If we get another great applicant on day two, we can also hire that person.

And so forth until all of our vacancies are filled. So it's really used strategically when there are a lot of vacancies in a particular class.

And oftentimes it's generated by interest from the program because it requires the managers to buy into this program and to be, like I said, readily available, to interview continuously and to take those phone calls and to be available. So we want to make sure that departments that participate in WikiWiki are committed to making that work.

Okay. No, thank you. My second question is regarding the timeline for the Wiki Wiki hire program. It sounds like the average timeline is two weeks from what I guess being connected to the candidate and then hiring the candidate. Does that sound.

Not exactly. So our commitment, DHERD commitment is that we turn around applications, qualified applicants, every two weeks. So any application that we receive between day one and day 14, we will screen and then refer those on to the Department if and then another two week cycle. Right. So it's basically every two weeks.

We're making sure that any applications that have been received in the last two weeks are screened promptly and then referred to the Department. What they then do and what the applicant does is outside of our control.

But we do encourage departments also to access, even if they don't get contacted, they can still access the names of those individuals who are qualified and can reach out to them as well. So it works both ways.

Applicants can call as well as the departments, the managers and the HR offices can call the qualified applicants because we provide them a list of who we've deemed eligible and they can also make contact and schedule interviews.

So for comparison, how does this two week time frame compare with the standard administrative procedures when it comes to recruitment? How long? Right. Two weeks versus what?

That's tough to answer because it depends on how a recruitment is conducted. There are many different ways that we can set up a recruitment and that part of our staffing's responsibility is to work with the Department to come up with a recruitment plan.

So for example, like I mentioned, if there's just say one managerial position and it's a difficult to fill, it's a very specialized field, we may decide that we're going to take all applicants or we're going to have a conduct a recruitment for a particular time frame, say for 30 days or maybe even as long as two weeks, it's really up to the Department to help us gauge how long would be appropriate.

And so we'll wait that entire two weeks or 30 days before we close the recruitment. We determine who's eligible and we refer that list. So that's one way to do it. And it's kind of a time specific recruitment. We can also do a recruitment where we take for example, the first 25 or 50 applications.

If it's something that we feel like we're going to get a lot of interest in and we don't want to overwhelm the Department, we may say we'll take the first 50 applications. So once our system reaches that 50, it will shut it down and then we'll screen and. And we'll send the list to the Department.

So there's not one answer. It really depends on us working with the Department to determine what the best approach and method to and our historical knowledge and expertise in this area, what our history's been in terms of recruitment and how we would do it.

That wasn't exactly Chair's question though. I think the window of time that you're accepting applications, I understand that that can vary depending on the complexity of the job. Right. I think what Chair was asking was after that window is closed, what's the period of time between reviewing those applications and getting those window closes?

What start when, how long does it take for the departments to actually get the list of qualified candidates?

That also varies if we. The other type of that I didn't mention was we can do continuous recruitment. So if it's a class of work where we have a lot of vacancies, we may just leave it open until the Department fills all their vacancies.

So in that kind of situation, it's just periodically, whenever there's a point in time when the examiner feels like there's an adequate pool, they'll screen it and send the list out. If it's one that closes. Sometimes we do it very quickly. If it's very easy to screen, and some take longer.

Unfortunately, we're right now working on getting completely caught up, but we do have a backlog of screening for applications.

So maybe a better statistic might be. Instead of taking them as chunks for. Because individual applicants don't necessarily care about everyone else in the field. They don't know and it's not really their business. But per applicant, how long does it take on average for each application to be reviewed and sent to the Department?

I mean, I know it varies some, but that's why we're kind of taking an average. It doesn't take. I mean, can you kind of give us a ballpark?

It can take anywhere from a week to a couple of months.

But how long does it normally take I can't. The weekend, the couple of months I'm assuming, are the outliers. I don't. We don't want the outliers. We kind of want to know what.

The, I think, bigger chunk is at this point in time, we have a backlog, so we're working backward probably about two months. There are exceptions to that where we're able to send certain recruitments out very quickly and those go out very quickly.

I should also mention that when a Department requisitions for a list of names, if we have candidates that we've say we've conducted a recruitment recently and we have a pool of candidates, those names go out within 48 hours. So there is no waiting there.

So it's when we have to open a new recruitment and take in new applications and screen those applications and determine who's qualified and then send those. Those names out. That can take up to a couple of months. It doesn't always. Oftentimes it's very quick.

If it's easy to screen and we can get to it right away and we know it's a Department priority, then we accommodate those kinds of requests as well. But I can't tell you that for everyone, it happens within two weeks.

Okay. I think so. I appreciate the clarity on that. It sounds like there's a lot of case by case, and I think this line of questioning goes down to a more fundamental issue of data tracking and metrics and how we measure the effectiveness of each program, whether it be Wiki Wiki or Operation Hire Hawaii.

And so maybe after we review all these slides, we could go into a little bit deeper discussion regarding these metrics. But for the Wiki Wikihire, there are very specific positions that have qualified and are participating in the program.

So I think it'd be helpful for the Committee to maybe for the Department to look at, say, I don't know, a land boundary surveyor from Transportation and say, look, this is how long it took before Wiki Wiki. And now this is how long it takes during Wikiwiki, just, you know, even a specific position like that.

I think some metrics would be helpful. But, you know, we do have a number of slides to go through, so does the Committee have any. Okay, one more on Wiki. Janae. Okay. Okay.

Chair Matoshi, you could go ahead with. Yeah, Something stuck out to me about Wiki, which I really like the program, by the way, or this concept. We had talked before about the merit principle and how each applicant for a position needs to get an interview, otherwise they don't otherwise we're not following the merit principle.

But this wiki program seems to break that by allowing the candidate themselves to reach out to the Department to get an interview, which maybe I'm assuming something, I'm assuming that once the candidate gets the ability to do that, they can call them up and if they, they get the interview and they like them, they can hire them without having to interview every single other person on the list.

Is that true?

Partially. So first let me, let me correct that understanding. So departments do not necessarily have to interview everybody who's on a list. They can also use what we call culling criteria. So they what d her determines is which applicants meet the minimum qualification requirements.

And that's, it's, you know, each class is specific educational or experience or certification so forth, which constitutes the minimum qualification requirements.

But when we send out a list, a Department can also decide that they are going to call that list and say they're going to start with individuals who they would deem to be more than minimally qualified, you know, exceptional candidates and they can start the interviews with those candidates without having to interview everyone on the list.

As long as it's that criteria is done fairly and equitably and evenly across the entire applicant plan and before they.

Review the applicant kids at all.

Right, right and right. And it's to ensure that there's no discriminatory bias in their.

But that's really just when the Department started. What I'm talking about is if person A, if, if I apply to it you through the wiki hiring process, you send me a letter saying hey, congratulations, you're qualified, call these people if you'd like an interview and I call them, I can get that interview.

But do I then still need to wait till that Department interviews everyone else, even in the called list in order for me to get, get a job offer or can, if they like me, can they just hire me?

They can just hire you and it's basically like a first come, first serve.

Which again I like, don't get me wrong, that's a positive I think. But it seems to conflict with the merit principle as we had previously discussed, wherein they do need to call every single person on that list, however called they want it. Now you're allowing the applicant to call them, do one interview and get hired.

So is that consistent with the merit principle? And I hope the answer is yes.

Yes, don't get me wrong, it is. It is because everyone is. All of the applicants are given the same opportunity to call and get an interview. And I As I explained earlier, we use Wiki Wiki strategically when there are many vacancies. So like I mentioned, we get a good candidate on day one, right.

We hire that a person, they're still like, for example, eligibility workers. There are dozens of jobs available. So even somebody who calls on day two and we deem that person to be also a great hire, we can also hire that individual. And so we don't typically use Wiki Wiki when there's just one job. Right.

We want to make sure that there's a level playing field. So again, it's used strategically when there are many vacancies. And I would say that because everyone is given the same opportunity to call and schedule an interview, all the letters go out at the same time. They're all given that same opportunity.

They all get the same opportunity. But let's say Jackson applies too, and I apply at the same time and I call you first. Do you have to wait till Jackson has a 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours to call you?

Or if I call you immediately, can I get hired and then Jackson's just out of luck Because I mean, we both have the same opportunity. But do you see where I'm going with this? I do. Okay.

I do.

But as long as you, if you think, if your opinion is that is consistent with the merit principle, I like that. But it does seem to be a stretching of the merit principle from what we had previously discussed. So I'm hoping that we can continue to go on that down that line in the future.

But thank you, Jared. I don't want to take up any.

Other questions regarding the Wiki Wikihire program from the Committee. Okay. Seeing none, yes, we could please move on to the next slide. Director.

So the next thing I wanted to talk about was Operation Hire Hawaii. I think, as you folks are aware of, Governor Green signed an Executive order in February to expedite the hiring of not only federal workers who are impacted by the possibility of lapse of federal funds, but also anybody else who is interested in joining state government.

And so we launched this project in February and the results have been really promising through earlier this week, we received over 6,000 applications for about 127 recruitments that have been open to date. We've actually closed 81 because we've been able to fill those. We've had 142 individual hires through Operation Hire Hawaii.

And we have, we did a big job fair at the convention center in April and we're planning to do another big event this fall. We're still working on the details for that, but this program has been really successful in expediting the process.

And essentially I won't go into too much detail, but what it entails is when a Department decides to post a job under the Operation Hire Hawaii banner, which is a special filter on our website, applications that we receive on a particular day are immediately turned around and sent to any Department that's recruiting for that job under Operation Hire Hawaii the very next day.

So they have access to those applications immediately. They are able to then take a quick look at them. They do a little pre screen to, to see if the individuals are qualified.

And then they can refer those candidates onto their hiring manager and they can conduct an interview as quickly as humanly possible and make a conditional job offer within two weeks. That's our goal, is to enable hiring within two weeks.

DHERD only gets involved in screening for the qualification requirements for candidates that they have identified that they want to make a job offer to.

And then we do the pre screen, or actually we do the full screen at the end of the process and we give them the blessing and then they proceed with the hiring and the suitability check. So departments really like this.

This next slide shows the number of requisitions by Department that we have received for Operation Hire Hawaii and the number of hires that we've been able to identify in the departments. You'll notice that doesn't include some of the hires. We're still tracking down where about 30 of the of the hires belong.

We're working with the departments to remedy the disconnect there. But. So by and large, you can see the Attorney General has made very good use of this program as well as Human Services. They both have 22 hires, which is really promising. You know, it's sort of uncertain what will happen when the next federal fiscal year start.

So we plan to continue this project at least through early next year and, you know, continue allowing this as a. As an option for filling. Did you have any questions about.

Yeah, sounds like the program is going really well. So congratulations on that. I do have questions. So you mentioned another timeline, again, something about two weeks. So it's your department's commitment to make that turnaround again in two weeks. Similar to Wikiwiki.

Actually, most of the onus when it comes to Operation Hire Hawaii is on the Department. So DHERD commitment is that we turn around the applications daily. So if an applicant applies on Monday, departments receive that application on Tuesday and then it's their job then to contact the applicant.

To schedule the interview, to conduct the interview and make a hiring determination. They have about 1213 days. It's not a hard and fast rule. It's a little bit aspirational, but that's the idea, is that it allows for that hire within two weeks.

Okay. And then deheard you said does the final screening after the interview is completed.

So their own HR office is doing a preliminary screen though, because oftentimes when you look at an application or resume, you can, if you're a trained examiner, HR individual, you can usually weed out the ones that definitely don't meet. And sometimes it requires an interview to decide whether the person does meet as well. Right.

You need to ask them a little to expand upon, maybe perhaps something they put in their resume to see whether in fact they do qualify.

Would you say the hiring process under Operation Hire Hawaii is faster than the standard procedure?

It is.

Okay.

It is faster, but it also shifts the burden for doing a lot of the screening work and a lot of the HR work to the departments. So, you know, we're finding they're using it selectively when it's a critical job to fill or they have a lot of vacancies and they want to.

They want to try to use Operation Hire Hawaii. You know, they don't use it for everything. We still have about 500 recruitments that are posted on our regular recruitment site that we manage in the traditional method.

Okay. So. And I think you touched a little bit about this. But if this process under the EEO is, you know, faster and effective, then, you know, can we make this the standard procedure for recruitment?

I don't believe that the departments are resourced to be able to do this for all of their vacancies. And there is. There are a lot of advantages to doing recruitment centrally where an applicant applies one time and we can send their application to all departments who are recruiting without having each Department review mq. So there's.

There are some inefficiencies with Operation Hire Hawaii, but the trade off is that it's fast. Right. So you have to weigh both of those.

Characteristics and the demographics of these applicants and consequently recruits. Are they mostly individuals laid off from the Federal Government or are they just, you know, the full spectrum?

It's really the full spectrum. The recruitment is not limited to individuals who are impacted by the federal Fund restrictions or former federal employees. Anyone can apply for Operation Hire Hawaii positions.

So we're seeing about, I think out of the 6,000 applications we've received, about a third of those are individuals who have worked for the Federal government, or their last job was with the Federal Government, but so that tells you it's getting a lot of interest in other sectors as well.

Thank you. Just General Committee Members. Any questions regarding Operation Higher Hawaii or Garrett.

Hey, Director. Good morning.

Good morning.

How long is this EO in effect for?

It does not have a time stamp on it. I think our original proposal to the Governor was to pilot it for about a year. So that would take it through around February. I think we could probably extend it if there's interest and the departments want to continue.

Okay, thank you. You note here in your slides that there were 6,149 applications received, yet only 142 individuals were hired. I think that comes out to about 2%. What happens to the other 6,000 or so applicants?

Are they given any guidance as to other potential jobs, or are they just told no and then just kind of left to their own devices?

We can refer them to other vacancies. So, for example, if they applied for a class IT specialist. Right. That was a really popular one early on.

We got hundreds of applications for IT specialists, so we qualified those names, and then we referred them out to other departments who didn't necessarily use Wiki Wiki initially, but we can refer those applications to other departments that are hiring.

So you are making those referrals?

Yes.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Okay.

Okay, Chair Mataji. Thanks, Chair. I gotta admit, I'm a little irritated. Great program. But when you described it, it is almost exactly the bill we passed two years ago into HRS to allow all departments to do something extremely similar to this. So to say that you need the EO at all doesn't really make sense.

By the law that we passed two years ago, my own bill, that you folks can already do, that the departments can already do this.

And when we had talked about this bill earlier, after this bill had passed, you had represented to me that departments were just not interested in doing it, that their individual HR departments didn't have the capacity that they didn't want to.

But now you're showing me numbers that a lot of departments do want something like this when they could have been doing this for years. This process that we developed two years ago of allowing the applications to pretty much go directly to the departments for screening, for interviewing, and then a final check with you.

I believe Chair Aquino had nailed it down to about three or five days after. And you guys got the final say in the final version of the bill, which I was fine with. But this process is the bill that passed.

I don't understand why we even needed an EO if it's already in law and B why did the departments change their mind about this?

I'm struggling to figure out why this program is suddenly getting acceptance when you had represented to me that you had told all the departments that they had this ability and no one was using it before.

There are some differences between the bill that was passed and Operation Hire Hawaii. So departments don't have to do the full screening. They only have to do a pre screen. So DHERD still does the full screen on all of the applications that apply. All the applicants that apply under Operation Hire Hawaii.

I think that's where departments hesitate taking on the full responsibility because not only do they have to do the full screen and communicate that with applicants, but then they also have to handle any administrative reviews and any appeals that are generated from deeming a person not qualified. So DHERD under Operation Hire Hawaii still does that work.

So this is attractive to them because it only requires that they do the pre screen. But DHERD still does the full screen and still communicates with all the applicants.

But under the final version of the bill, De Heard did the full screen at the end to from the applicant that was eventually selected. I remember this in conference. It was a sticking point.

I think it still requires them to do the official screening.

If it's a class of work that a Department takes on full delegation for, then they have to do the full screening and they are the ones that make that determination and communicate that to the applicant and deal with any AD reviews and any appeals through the Merit Appeals Board.

Are you sure? I'm going to go back and check, but that is not my recollection of the bill. And even if it was, DHERD still would get final approval. So it really would be your sign off under the bill that previously passed.

I believe the bill requires DHERD to do the final approval only for the selectee for the hire. But I'm talking about the entire applicant pool. So those 6149 applications, DHERD is screening all of those.

Whereas the departments do not have that responsibility under Operation Hire Hawaii they do a pre screen and they don't have to communicate with the entire applicant pool. They determine who preliminarily they believe qualifies and they pass that on to the manager.

And then the official screening and determination is still with DHERD and we are still the ones that communicate with the applicant pool as to whether they're qualified or not. So departments are not responsible for doing that part of it.

Wait, does that comport with the merit principle again from all of our previous discussions with it? I mean, it's kind of blowing my mind here.

I feel like these programs are coming out which are exactly what I wanted, but they seem to be in direct conflict with what you were telling me before, why you couldn't do this.

Right now you're saying that the applicants are sent to the departments and the departments are doing kind of a vague pre-screening and already can start calling these people for interviews without DHRD doing the full screening.

Let's say that the three of us or the four of us went through this application process and Jackson and I were selected in the pre screen process to be interviewed. They interviewed us. But the other two, maybe Rep. Kapela is determined that yes, she is qualified and Rep. Garrett, no offense, was not then.

Would we have to go back then and interview Rep. Kapela as well as the Department? We'd have to give her the interview right, under, under the merit principle that we had discussed. How is that any faster? Well, let's start with the first one. Do they need to. If Rep. Kapela is later determined by.

Because you're reviewing all the applications, Rep. Kapela slipped to the pre-screening, but you determine that she's qualified, does the Department need to call Rep. Kapela for the interview?

No. Even under our current rules, it does not require us to go back. If we later determine through the appeal process that somebody is qualified. Even under our current rules, it does not require us to go back and consider that applicant. We consider them moving forward, but we don't go back and necessarily upset a selection.

Okay, so in that case, under the Bill that passed two years ago, the departments could do the exact same thing, right? They, they could make that initial determination, not the full one like you're saying, and they could determine who they think is qualified. It's very akin to the pre screening process.

They interview, they select the person, it comes to you for final review. Just like under Operation Hire Hawaii, it seems like the exact same thing. We're just calling it different things.

No, under, under the Bill, they, they're responsible for doing the full screen. They take, when they take on delegation, they do all of it. And that's, I believe what they're hesitant to do, and that's the feedback that I've received is that they don't want to be responsible for all of it.

They like Operation Hire Hawaii because it still is DHRD doing the full screen and communicating with applicants and handling appeals, but they don't want to take it on fully.

Okay. I don't want to take up any more time, but maybe we can discuss this later because it sure seems like if not exactly the same thing, very similar to me.

There are similar elements for sure.

Okay.

But the amount of work that comes with screening all 6000 is I think a deterrent for many departments to want to take on responsibility for that delegation fully.

Okay. Maybe we can discuss later what the difference between pre screening and actual screening involves, but. Sorry, Chair, thank you.

No, no, sounds good. All right. Rep. Kapela, any questions?

There's a lot of different programs. So I just want to clarify for my own understanding, if someone, say they make it through the prescreen and they've made it to.

They've made it to the system, but the department's already hired someone else. In all of these, whether it's operation hire or like the wiki wiki program, will you refer that person to a different Department that also has openings or similar to like what chair was asking, does it just. Does the buck stop there with that person?

No, they do become a part of the applicant pool that's deemed eligible. So any other Department that comes in and says we're recruiting for whatever, say accountant three. Right. They, initially we thought they didn't qualify through the process we see, we determine okay, they do. So we put them on the list.

Any other Department that comes in and asks for a requisitions a list for accountant 3, that individual will be referred moving forward.

Okay.

And I believe they're, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think their eligibility stays for a minimum of three months. It could be longer depending upon if we recruit again within that period and.

And then that applicant is made aware that they're eligible for the next three months if they don't get that position. And then they would then have to reapply.

Right, yes. Yes. So they're made aware, we communicate with them via our software that they've been deemed eligible and how long their eligibility is.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, thank you. Any other questions on this program? Okay. Seeing none, we'll be moving on to the next. I think believe that's NEOGOV.

Okay. So some of the things that I wanted to highlight for you today is some of the programs that we're embarking on, either we've started or are in are up for consideration. The first of which is NEOGOV Attract.

So I think you, Chair Matayoshi, had we had discussed this before about using our software to communicate with applicants and to be more personal in our communication.

So NEOGOV Attract is a feature that is allowed through the NEOGOV software, which is the software that we use to collect, to post our jobs and to collect resumes and applications and then to move individuals through the recruitment process.

And so one of the features that NEOGOV Attract allows is for us to, for example, we can use it at a recruiting event where we have individuals who attend a job fair register in our system and then we can track them to see whether they in fact apply, what they apply for.

We can send them communications, thanking them for attending and encouraging them to apply. If they haven't applied, we can also see what they're applying for.

And we can also tap into the database that NEOGOV has because they're used by many other government employers in Hawaii, city and county, Judiciary, DOE, I believe, HHSC, we all use the same software so we can tap into their database of individuals that they maintain and then we can communicate with them and encourage them to apply for a vacancy that we think they may be interested in.

If we see that they have, for example, a degree as a registered nurse and are licensed, we can communicate with them about our opportunities at Hawaii State Hospital or within the Department of Health and Public Health Nursing and so forth. So this is exciting.

We first piloted it in April and we used it at the job fair at the convention center. And our staff has been really pleased with the results and the flexibility that it affords. The nice thing about NEOGOV Attract is that the departments can also use it.

So we haven't rolled it out to the departments yet because we're still using it under a pilot agreement. In fact, the pilot has recently expired, but we're intending to pursue a contract with NEOGOV to enable us to use all the features of this and to roll it out to the departments moving forward.

So this is an exciting new tool that, that we believe will help us fill jobs. Any questions about Attract?

Why don't we take in the NEOGOV auto screen as well?

So one of the other features that NEOGOV allows is for an auto screen feature. So I think everybody's aware that AI is the wave of the future. So the auto screen is a way to use the software to do some of the heavy lifting for us.

So we've been talking with NEOGOV about how to go ahead and set that up. Obviously, it requires some, some work on our part to make sure that we set the parameters correctly so that we can accurately screen individuals for particular jobs.

But this is a feature that we hope to be using in the near future and it's exciting. Obviously, AI is going to be a real game changer for our team and help us to manage the recruitment quicker.

Okay, thank you. I'm happy to hear that the department's modernizing its processes through these softwares. When you said that, I think in the first slide, when you'll go Vitrak, you'll be rolling this out to the departments in the fall.

We need to enter into a contract first. We're working on the procurement right now and so we hope to have it in place very soon and then we'll be able to allow the departments to use the features as well.

And you'll be providing the training to the departments to be able to operate this new software?

Yes.

Okay, great. The auto screen function I'm a little curious about. So prior to this auto screen function, what was the process to screen?

Basically it requires our staff to do all the screening individually for each applicant.

Okay. Okay. So now it's much more automated and I assume it'd be faster.

That's the idea for sure. So we're just in initial discussions with them on how to set it up. We haven't started using it yet, but this is something that we're working with NEOGOV on implementing.

Okay. I remember during the legislative session we had discussions regarding certain line item budgets. One of them was the subscription fees for certain software uses. I assume this is. Was this contract included in that?

It was not.

So the additional,

Right. The funds that we received were basically just to kind of bring us up to current on our HRMS, our PeopleSoft contract, the NEOGOV, our base. So we use NEOGOV for recruiting and we also use it for onboarding. So there's two contracts related to that, to our NEOGOV software as well as our training software.

So it did not include any additional features. But you'll recall that last year you folks did approve funds for us for recruiting. So we've been using those monies for all of our recruitment initiatives, whether it be piloting NEOGOV, as well as our promotional funds and advertising. All of those have been coming after that.

Committee Members, any questions? Rep. Garrett.

Director, what is the value of this contract with NEOGOV?

I'm not sure. We have not. We've not embarked on a procurement yet, so I'm not sure what it will come in at.

The current contract.

Oh, the current contract.

Ballpark is fine.

Maybe 250. 250,000.

Quarter million. Okay. Okay. And that's annually?

Yes, annually.

Okay. Are there other modules within NEOGOV that are available that you haven't been able to procure beyond what you've discussed so far?

There are. They do have a number of them, but I don't believe all of their modules are as well-developed. NEOGOV started as a recruitment platform. I think the State of Hawaii was one of the initial subscribers around 2006 of NEOGOV, and they have since expanded into other areas.

But we have other software that we use, for example, for training. I believe they might have one around performance management and some other related areas, but they're not as well-developed, in my opinion, as we would like to see.

Do they have any products related to AI that would help expedite this process?

I believe that NEOGOV as a company. So it's a. I don't know how to describe it accurately. It's a collaboration of the users, so it's specific to government. And they take a lot of input and advice from the users of the software.

And when there's a lot of interest generated on a particular topic, that's what they tend to focus on in terms of making innovations. And obviously AI is an area that's of interest to, I think, practically every employer. So we are hearing that they're making a lot of upgrades to the NEOGOV software.

And I don't know what the timing is in terms of rolling out those features, but I'm sure we're not the only ones that are asking them to use, to utilize AI in their software.

Okay, thanks for the background. Thank you, Chair.

Okay, Chair Matayoshi, any questions?

No, I just wanted to give you guys credit. I know, I know I ride you guys kind of hard sometimes, but this is great. I really appreciate you guys. I know we've been kind of discussing different modules that you guys could use in NEOGOV for a while, so I'm really happy that you guys followed through with it.

The communications piece, great. I've been pushing the auto screening kind of using basically AI to review applicants for a while now. It sounds like that's working great. I'm assuming the pilot program, they gave you that freebie that I kind of hinted that they would.

They did. They did.

Okay, that's what I figured.

Because they want to catch you, they want to get you hooked on it.

Yes. And it worked.

So it's like a little bit of. Yeah. So, so good for them. You could probably. You could probably extend that pilot program, especially if you're going to RFP. I'm sure they'd be happy to continue to give you the addictive.

They have graciously extended our pilot, perhaps, I'm not sure for how many months past our original.

Extended three times.

Okay.

We needed new money for the fiscal year to begin, and so now we're in that process.

No, I mean, I. I would assume that they'd extend it as long as you would need to if you're in the process of possibly acquiring it. I mean, they want you to keep using it and get really hooked on it. Right. So good for you guys.

It's working. I think our team is really happy with it. They like the ability to reach out to our applicants and stay in touch, and I think the departments will like it as well.

And does this. I'm assuming that the auto screen would also comport with kind of the review process would also be kind of merit principle because everyone's going through the exact same screening. So the ones that get screened out, you don't have to go back and relook at them, do you? Or are they.

We haven't fleshed out all of that yet. And to what extent, you know, obviously this is a new thing for us, so we're going to be watching it very carefully. We're very sensitive to bias and ensuring that there's no unintended consequence of using AI, so we're going to be cautious and careful.

But we also understand that that's the way that this industry is headed. And so we want to be on board.

And for the communications thing, I think that's great because so many times we've heard people just don't hear anything for a long period of time. So using that to at least tell them that you're still reviewing it or they're still in the process is great, but great job, guys. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Certainly, Representative Garrett, you asked about our funding and I just did want to. This is going to be a tight year. We all understand that. But that is going to have to come out of our base budget for the Attract. That's going to be about 130,000. Thank you for asking that.

Does that include the auto screen too? Because there's two different modules, right?

Auto screen is actually something that is currently built-in. Well, it's currently been built-in. Initially, there were some issues with getting other states, you know, involved because like Director said, every government was a little bit apprehensive toward AI. And so now, as everyone is moving in that direction, Auto Screen has been included.

It's been included for about a year now. Admittedly, we are a little bit late in terms of the other states, so hopefully we'll get that implemented soon. Other AI issues, however, NEOGOV continues to work on and so we're hoping to see more rolled out.

Thank you. Seeing no other questions regarding NEOGOV, Director, we could take the next, I think four slides together. This is the LinkedIn, past job fairs, upcoming job fairs and advertising together.

Okay, great. So I think you folks are aware that we have increased our presence on LinkedIn and a lot of that is attributable to my assistant Erin, who managed our account. We inherited the State of Hawaii's LinkedIn account in 2021 and has since grown it from about 14,000 followers to now over close to 26,000 followers.

And we've also built out our presence on there. We have a landing page with, we highlight different career groups rather than focusing on specific departments. We've chosen to leverage sort of our five tabs and to focus on career groups so that we can hopefully highlight more departments that way. And it's been good. We've been.

We're pleased with the response that we're getting from LinkedIn. You know, obviously there's a challenge geographically when, you know, we get a lot of interest from mainland candidates, but our labor market is primarily local. But, you know, we're still pleased with the results and continue to use LinkedIn as well.

They have a feature that's similar to Attract, where we can communicate with applicants, but in terms of it's costly and we have to designate one individual to do all of that work. Whereas with Attract, basically all of our users can use the features. And that's what we like about the Attract versus LinkedIn.

Job fairs. I just wanted to again highlight the fact that DHRD is out in the community. We, over the last two years will have done upwards of 80 recruitment events. I think it's really important. Although we like to use technology, we like to do things, you know, in the cloud.

We also want to be accessible, we want to be out in the community. We want to give applicants an opportunity to come and talk directly with departments, with managers, with HR folks and with our team, and really engage with them on a personal level.

So recruitment events give us that opportunity just to have one on one time with applicants. Last year we did about 41 recruitment events and this year we're on schedule to do pretty much about the same amount. We go to pretty much anywhere and everywhere we're invited. We also organize and plan and execute our own recruitment events.

We've been piloting various different models for recruitment events, one of which is a rapid hire where we take applications in advance of the event and on the day of the event.

And we pre-screen and pre-qualify individuals and then we invite them to come for either an onsite interview or an interview back at the department's location shortly after the job fair. And those have been really successful. I think we had one earlier this week.

We partnered with the Department of Agriculture and they were really happy with the results. I got a message from Chair Hurd and she was ecstatic with the turnout. They had scheduled about 17 interviews on the day of the event and they had more scheduled for the following day. And the exciting thing was everybody showed up.

There were no no-shows for that event, so that's really promising. And we're willing to partner with departments that want to put on those kinds of events. The job titles that we have shown here are jobs that we specifically highlighted at some of these recruitment events to try to make a big dent in vacancies.

And professional trainees is a particular class. It's like the entry level for professional series. So individuals that apply for professional training, we can then refer them out to any Department that has entry level professional jobs and want to consider those applicants. In terms of upcoming recruitment events.

These are just some of the job fairs that are on schedule for the remainder of the year. Like I said, we accepted invitations to anybody who will have us. And our project team is excited to partner with, UH Manoa, with the community colleges and other employers to highlight our jobs.

I think we've done recruitment events as well with Hawaiian Airlines who recently had layoffs. So we're receptive to those kinds of invitations as well. I just wanted to say I'm going to do a shameless plug. We couldn't do all of these events without the recruitment team.

And these are the ARPA project team Members that we put in place about two years ago. And really none of this would be possible without those positions and the funds that came with that. So I know we put in a request this past year, it wasn't approved.

We'll hopefully have another shot at keeping that team on board because they're really integral to making these kinds of events happen. Advertising. I think you folks are aware we've been trying to get out there, get the word out that the state is a great place to work. Excuse me.

We've been doing advertising at UH Manoa Athletics, both basketball and volleyball. We had advertisements on all of the buses on Oahu. We had advertisements in the malls. We've also done ads on Facebook and Instagram and the consolidated theaters.

And really we're open and receptive to any kind of marketing that is affordable within our means to get the word out that the state is hiring and we're looking for talent across the board. Some of these things will continue in the next fiscal year.

We're kind of studying where we need to put our dollars to get the best bang for the buck. I think I'll stop there and ask if there's any questions.

No, thank you. I do want to circle back to the job fairs and you had mentioned the rapid hire pilot that you are deploying at some of these job fairs. It sounds like a great tool to expedite recruitment. And clearly based off of your testimony, it sounds like departments are very happy with it.

Is this something that can be done regularly at every job fair or are there certain limits, resources or otherwise?

It does require a lot of coordination and space. So it depends on where we can do. Thank you so much.

Where we're doing the job fair. So some of the job fairs are not our own. Right. We're a participant and so we don't necessarily have the space available to conduct onsite interviews.

And in those times when we were not able to do it, we may do something, next best thing. We've had, I think at the Capital Job Fair last year we had every Department come with appointment times and dates already set aside.

So when they had applicants approach their table and we prescreened and we pre-qualified individuals, then they were able to make appointments back at their and schedule interviews back at their work site for the coming days. And so we try to work within the circumstances that we have.

We do like to have the onsite interviews if the programs are amenable to that. But it again requires the supervisors and managers to attend and be available for the duration. So it's not appropriate for every job fair. But we do make it available when the Department is interested in that kind of event.

Thank you. And Asant with 41 job fair events, that's pretty impressive. I know other agencies or departments conduct their own job fairs for their own vacancies. Are you guys always invited to these job fairs to help with the prescreening or streamlining of the recruitment?

Oftentimes they will invite us or we'll collaborate with them. I think some departments, for example, Department of Labor, right. They have. They're very good at doing job fairs and so they do a lot of their own events, not necessarily just for their own Department, but in terms of workforce development and that sort of thing.

And we do go to many of their events as well.

Okay, thank you. Okay. Committee Members, any questions? Okay, seeing none. Chair Matayoshi, any questions?

Thank you Chair. We talked about this before, but is it. I guess I'll start from the basics. Is it a legal requirement that the supervisors or managers at the specific department need to do the interviews?

It is not a legal requirement, but it's typically a responsibility of a supervisor or manager to, to do the hiring for their positions.

Okay. So it wouldn't violate any law or any kind of regulation if DHRD were to. And I'm not saying that you, I'm.

I'm not saying you need to do all the interviews for every single job, but could DHRD do the hiring or, I'm sorry, the interview process for actually maybe even the hiring decision for some of the lower-level positions like the ones kind of listed at the bottom of your list, the more clerical positions, professional trainees and such.

Logistically, I don't believe that would be feasible. I think in one of the later slides you'll see that, for example, for office assistant, last year alone, DHRD qualified over 1450 applications for office assistant. So that volume, we simply don't have the staff to conduct all those interviews.

And I believe it's really important for managers to hire their own team. And not every office assistant is same. Although it's a generic title, it is used in many different job settings.

And so I think it would do a disservice to the applicant too, because they should come to an interview and have their questions answered about what is the nature of the job. And DHRD is simply not qualified to speak on every job.

You know, I don't know what office assistants say, for example, do in the Department of Land and Natural Resources versus the Department of Tax versus Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

And I think we owe the applicants the respect and the ability to answer those kinds of questions, to talk about the job, to talk about the culture, what, what they could expect in a workday, what the expectations are for their performance. And DHRD simply isn't.

We don't have the bandwidth to be able to have that kind of expertise for every Department and every specific vacancy that we're recruiting for.

And I'm not saying that with your current staffing, you should, either, or that you have the capacity either. You just said something that kind of put up a red flag in my head. You said that different Department, that the applicant should have the opportunity to interview with different departments.

Because even if it's a Clerk 2 position or whatnot, a Clerk 2 may not do the same thing in DLIR as DLNR or DOT or whatnot. But I thought that that wasn't the case.

I thought that the whole point of equal work for equal pay was that they are doing pretty much the same thing, otherwise they would be a different classification. Is that not correct?

The specific duties and responsibilities vary. So you might have an office assistant in the Department of Land and Natural Resources, which processes camping permits, for example.

I'm making this up, of course, because I don't really know exactly what they do, but I can imagine that perhaps they're reviewing, you know, they're determining what's the capacity, they're looking at the applications, they're issuing documents, they may have a lot of public contact versus an office assistant who is in the Department of Taxation, where they're perhaps processing tax payments and, you know, doing the paperwork to process returns.

And so one may have a lot of public contact, one may sit behind a desk and deal primarily on a computer and deal with internal constituents. I don't know. But.

But across the board, when we look at the classification of an office assistant 3, we look not specifically at, when it comes to classification, we're looking at comparable scope, complexity.

We're looking not at the specific duties, but we're looking at how they fit into our classification system, whether they're a working supervisor, whether they're a trainee, whether they're an independent worker. It's more at that level that we consider to be equal pay for equal work.

So not equal in the terms that every job duty is exactly the same. But when you look at it at the, the complexity of the work, that's where we're looking at. Consistency.

Maybe not every job duty, but surely maybe potential job duties of what they could be asked to do would be what I would think would be equal work for equal pay. That's kind of an aside because again, I agree with you on that. I think that different Clerk 2s in different departments might do very different things.

But in that case, shouldn't they. Can they then be paid differently? Because that sounds like they're doing very different jobs to the point where someone may not even want to do one job versus another, even though it's the same qualification. So should we have more flexibility in pay if someone is going to be.

I would assume that certain departments have a harder time hiring certain classifications that may have that other departments may have an easy job hiring Clerk 2s, whereas certain departments just have more responsibilities, different kind of responsibilities, same Clerk 2 position. But no one wants to do it because of xyz.

Shouldn't that, shouldn't we give them more flexibility then? Because the job is different.

So not in terms of their classification. Their classification is.

But a classification determines pay in a lot of things, right?

Yes, but it's not the only determinant. So the. If, if a Department has recruitment challenges, say they have a difficulty filling a job because of some criteria or some characteristic of that job that makes it less desirable, there are other compensation tools available to them, like shortage.

We have a shortage differential which is used when we have recruitment challenges.

So the base pay should be comparable, though. That's where we look to ensure that there's equal pay for equal work, is we look at the duties and responsibilities, the scope, the complexity, the nature of the work, and we try to make sure that there's consistency across civil service.

But there are, like you said, there are characteristics of certain jobs which make it difficult to recruit and to retain.

And in those instances, we have other pay programs that we can employ that are not related to the classification, that are independent of that classification analysis that allow us to increase the pay to try to attract candidates to those difficult-to-fill jobs.

I'm familiar with the shortage program and I agree with it. But certain jobs have been under shortage program for decades, I want to say. I mean, the shortage program is not. It's meant to be temporary. But can we both agree that sometimes it's not?

True. And if it's, you'll probably, you might be aware that we had a long-standing issue with engineers, for example, that was for like 50 years. We had shortage.

That was the longstanding, I think the class of work that had the longest standing shortage issue. And so we actually just did. We worked with HGA to set up a separate salary schedule. So it's no longer on shortage. We just have a separate schedule for engineers, because that seemed to make sense.

Other classes of work don't have the same historical issues like we had with engineers. They sort of seem to come and go, but that was the most pronounced one for sure. There are also other recruitment incentives that a Department could employ, although departments have not really taken the advantage of it.

We also have flex hiring where a Department can hire up to the midpoint of the salary range for individuals who are well qualified. They don't have to start at the entry rate. And that's up to the Department to decide whether they're going to use Flex Hire or not.

Thank you. Thanks, Chair.

Yep. No further questions. Okay, Director, we could take the next three slides together as they all relates to the classification systems in the study.

Sure. So I think it's no surprise to you folks that one of the other challenges that we have in filling jobs is making sure that the minimum qualification requirements and the classification system itself is current and modern. And so we've done some things recently to try to help certain departments with filling their vacancies.

The most recent of which was we worked with the Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity to update their Plant Quarantine Inspector series. And we've retitled it to Biosecurity Inspector to be more consistent with where they see that job series headed.

And we've also broadened the minimum qualification requirements to remove specific coursework requirements, which you can imagine if our minimum qualification requirements said you had to have taken specific courses in order to be qualified.

That puts a tremendous amount of work on our staff because we have to look at every applicant's transcript and it requires the applicant then to go find their transcript or get it from their educational institution and provide that.

So by removing those specific coursework requirements in favor of degrees or substitutions, we believe that will help broaden the applicant pool. It will empower the Department to flesh out the individuals who are most qualified through the interview and selection process at the departmental level.

So it kind of shifts the responsibilities to them and allows them to consider a broader applicant pool. Some other examples of recent changes to qualification requirements are natural resource management specialist, park caretaker, our state airport fire chief, our foster grandparent program manager, and farm manager.

So this is just a small sampling of recent changes, but really the bulk of this work we hope to accomplish through the classification and compensation study that you folks funded this last session and that we're getting working on. I'll talk more about that. I have another slide coming up. Other recruitment strategies.

We've recently retitled the Secretary series to Administrative Assistant to align it more with job titles in the private sector. We've also changed our practice in terms of accepting degrees. We now accept baccalaureate degrees, individuals who are within three months of completing their degree. So we'll begin taking their applications at that three month mark.

So they can basically go through the hire, through the application, the screening, the interview process, and have a conditional job offer ready when they're finished their degree. I mentioned recently, or excuse me, I just mentioned about flex hiring.

So departments can use this flexible hiring rates policy to hire qualified individuals up to the middle of the salary schedule. We also have recruitment above the minimum, which allows departments to hire above the minimum pay rate all the way up to the maximum if they have documented recruitment challenges and they believe it's due to pay.

So we don't usually approve that right away. We'll have them at least try to fill it. And if they come in and say, yep, not successful, then they can request for recruitment above the minimum.

And again, we're going to be looking to our classification and compensation study for not only ideas and best practices on other compensation planning, compensation tools that we could employ, but also to look at minimum qualification requirements, retitling, even just the structure of civil service.

I think you folks recall I've mentioned an example where we might have, you know, seven different levels in a series. Do we really need that many, many levels? Is that really serve civil service or can we reduce that to a more manageable number?

Here's the timeline for the classification and compensation study, and this is set by Act 180. We hope to have an interim progress report to you folks in February and some draft recommendations by next October. We are in the process now.

We've asked for the funds for that study to be released and are just waiting for those monies to be release. We're also, in the meantime, working on the procurement documents so that we can hire a vendor to work on that study with us. And I'll stop there in case there are any questions.

Okay, thank you, Director. So kind of working backwards, starting with the classification study. This timeline highlights that it's going to the interim progress report to the Legislature is what, next year February. So this is not. Is this just a progress report based off of what the Department has been doing on reclassification already, separate from the reclassification report?

No, this will be a progress report, a progress report specific to this study. So where we are in terms of. We hope to have a vendor in place by that time. So I can't imagine that. And we also will hopefully have. We'll know how much the study's going to cost us. We have a limited budget.

And I think I've shared with you folks previously that we're not certain that that will enable us to review all the classes. If it does not, then we will have to, of course, prioritize which classes, either by bargaining unit, by career group, by Department that we look at first.

I suspect that will probably be by bargaining unit, simply because we look to classification within a bargaining unit. Our comparisons in terms of classification and pricing are by bargaining unit. So that, to me makes most sense. And so that's the kind of progress report that we'll try to provide you in February.

It's kind of a temperature check as to where we are in the procurement and the process of embarking on this study.

And the recruitment above the minimum. That particular strategy. How long, is there some kind of criteria that the Department has proven that they've tried to recruit for this position within for past five years or something before they could qualify?

We don't make them suffer for five years. If they've recruited a time or two, then we're likely to approve their request for recruitment above the minimum. And like I said, they can already go up to the midpoint.

For individuals who are, you know, highly experienced or qualified, this enables them to go actually up to the maximum. And oftentimes, you know, we have also historical knowledge of our recruitment history with a particular class, so we can oftentimes validate their recruitment challenges without too much, you know, effort.

And the reclassify. Again, related to reclassification, changing, retitling the secretary position to Administrative Assistant. I know Office Assistant is probably one of the largest positions with the vacancies. So I'm curious, has changing this title made an improvement in recruitment efforts?

So Office Assistant is still an existing class. So we took actually the Secretary series and made them Administrative Assistants. So we still have Office Assistants. And that was a modernization many years ago, and it rolled together. We used to have a series, a Clerk series. We had a Clerk Typist series. We had Clerk Stenographer series. And those.

All three of those series were rolled into one series called Office Assistant. So that was sort of the first iteration of modernizing and consolidating related classes of work.

Understood. Okay, thank you, Committee Members. Any questions? Okay. No, Chair Matayoshi.

Yeah, thanks Chair.

It seems like you are giving, which again, I agree with, you're giving some flexibility to minimum qualifications and substituting certain things for other things. Or maybe not, maybe that's unfair.

In your review of minimum qualifications, it looks like you are taking certain certifications, degrees, whatnot, class requirements, and kind of rolling them into other things that might also satisfy the same requirement.

Is there any flexibility you can give to departments themselves when they're reviewing the applications to make that determination that five years of experience is kind of the same as such and such certification or whatnot? Because to me, I kind of trust the Department, no offense to you guys, but they know their business.

If they're hiring a specific job and they know what the field is and what requirement, what, what would be safe in the field or whatnot. I kind of rather allow them to make the determination of, yeah, I'd rather have a guy with 20 years experience than a guy fresh out of college with this degree kind of thing.

So what kind of flexibility can you give departments to make that kind of determination?

So departments have a lot of flexibility. So I think I mentioned earlier DHRD, we work very closely with departments when we set up the minimum qualification requirement. So DHRD did not decide for exempt. I'll go back to this biosecurity inspector. We didn't unilaterally decide to remove coursework requirements.

That was several meetings with subject matter experts in the Department and with the Director to decide how to move forward. And again, those are minimum qualification requirements. Right? So we're just determining minimum qualification requirements.

And then we send all of those applicants who meet mqs to the Department and they conduct the interview and they decide who's best qualified. So if they have a candidate with 20 years of experience who, you know, shines in the interview, who is heads and tails above the other candidates, obviously that's going to be their pick.

Right, but. And so they have a lot of control over who they hire. We're just determining based on their criteria who they, where that minimum qualification requirement cutoff is. And we have to balance the needs of the Department without also creating unnecessary barriers to entering state government. So we're looking at classes in series that are below that.

So we want to be able to provide a career ladder. So we're looking at consistency across the series, across the bargaining unit, and we're looking at jobs that lead into those. Right? Because we don't want to have something that has 20 years as a minimum qualification requirement.

Then, you know, nobody's ever going to get there except for that one unicorn is going to qualify. So we're looking at series that feed into that class of work and making sure that there's not a disconnect as well. Okay.

No, that's fair. In that same line, maybe in a similar line. I mean, you said that sometimes you'll meet with departments and they'll kind of guide you and the minimum qualification changes and things like that.

Has DHRD ever just sent out a survey to the departments to ask them, okay, which jobs are wrong right now and which. What would you suggest the changes be? I mean, each meeting, it seems like it's taking a lot of time to meet with each Department to do one job or maybe a couple of jobs.

Can you just gather all that data all at once by just asking them? I mean, I feel like a lot of departments have.

It's actually part of our current policies and procedures that departments are tasked with continually assessing whether the minimum qualification requirements are appropriate for their jobs. So if it's something that's specific to that Department, they can come in at any time and ask for a minimum qualification change.

And we have a process, we have forms that they complete and tell us what is not appropriate anymore, what they want to change it to. They can do track changes, we accept that, and they can show us what they want to strike out, what they want to add.

And we consider that we work with them to make sure that the language is appropriate. We might consult with other subject matter experts. It really depends also on whether that class of work is found solely in that Department or whether it's, say, in every Department.

And if it's in many departments, then we of course bring those departments into the conversation as well, so that we decide collectively what's the best approach moving forward.

But departments, they're aware of this, their HR offices know this is part of their responsibility to look at MQs and to reach out to us and to propose changes when they're appropriate.

Yeah, I just think nothing motivates like a deadline, including in this building. Obviously, if it's an ongoing basis kind of thing, there may not be an urgency, they can kind of.

But if you made a push and set a deadline, I'm just thinking for this giant MQ project that you're about to do, getting Department feedback beforehand and saying like, okay, if you want your things considered for this huge push that we're doing, get us information by such and such date on the things and then that might motivate people to actually do it, because I'm in talking to you before I Don't think very many departments use this kind of ongoing.

I mean, not to the extent that they complain to us about at least to try to update their job qualifications, but because we allocated money, because you're about to do a study, because we're about to make this push, I would just like you to consider at least putting a deadline on departments to say, hey, if you guys have MQs, you want to change and you want to be part of this big push, you know, we have resources to actually make it happen now, get it, get us this information by such and such date and just kind of see what comes back.

I foresee that that will be part of the conversation, that we'll certainly ask the departments for feedback what are their highest priorities, but really the review to look at everything. So I certainly anticipate that they'll be included in the conversation and we'll be essentially relying on them for their recommendations as well. So.

Yeah, I just think we could get started a little earlier, but yeah.

Thank you, sir. See no further questions regarding this issue. We could move on, I think, to the final one is regarding the vacancies, the annual report on vacancies.

So I wanted to highlight just a couple of things for you and I think the most promising and encouraging statistic that we've recently become aware of. I think it's no surprise, since I've been Director, you've heard me emphasize time and time again that our highest priority is filling our vacancies and moving the needle. And between.

This slide demonstrates that between. And I'm looking at civil service because I think, as you folks know, exempt positions are in the departments. They fill their own exempt positions. Those don't come to DHRD for recruitment. So our job is really to focus on filling civil service jobs.

And between June 30, 2023 and June 30, 2024 we made a dent. We added 248 to our headcount. These are actual headcounts of civil service and exempt employees. So we added 248 hires. And, and the significance of that is that we not only filled all the individuals that left state government so, but we added to the ranks.

And I think we saw that in a reduction of our vacancy rate. Prior to that, the vacancy rate was at 27%. So adding those 250 plus the cleaning up of some of our position counts, it caused the vacancy rate to drop to 24%.

And then you'll see between June 30, 2024 and June 30, 2025 we've added approximately 600 to our headcount.

So that, to me, is an indication that we're doing the right thing, that these strategies that we're employing, the outreach, the promotion, the project team, they're working because we're getting very close to where we were pre Covid in terms of numbers.

And all of this data will be captured in our next workforce profile that we provide to the Legislature every year. But I just asked our team to run this one specific number so that we could sort of take a temperature check on where we're at in terms of recruiting. And I'm really pleased with this number.

I think it demonstrates that what we're doing is effective and it's working. And our departments are really trying to fill their jobs, and they're doing a good job of it. So, next slide. This is actually for the. This is old data. This is in the current workforce profile.

But you can see sort of a breakdown of where our workforce is when we look at numbers. The Department of Transportation has the most civil service vacancies. They also have the most delegation in terms of recruiting.

When we add an exempt employee counts, then the Department of Health has the most total employee count at 2448, which is about 17% of our workforce. So this is just for your information, in terms of counts and employee counts. So these are employee counts, not vacancies, I should put point out as well.

So one of the other reports that we provide annually is our annual report on vacancies. And again, this report will be updated for, I think it's cut off in November, so you'll get basically most of 2025, calendar year 2025 in our next update.

But what I can tell you is that there's been a tremendous increase in activity in terms of recruitment. And so, Representative Matayoshi, I know you were talking earlier about why are there delays in certain things?

And some of it is we're doing a good job promoting the state, and that has resulted in a lot more applications, a lot more volume, which is outside of our control. We're doing our best to try to keep up.

It's those 6,000 Operation Hire Hawaii applications that weren't really factored in to our workforce, but we've been trying to keep on top of as well. So, you know, this is. This is a good thing, but it's also stressing our team in trying to keep up.

Applications have grown in the last three years from, you know, under 20,000 to over 30,000. We've received 28,000 just in the last seven months. So we're on track to exceed our highest number by far. We've also screened a lot more applications.

We've done set out a lot more listed apartments, which has generated in obviously a lot more hires. And we've also qualified a lot more individuals, from 27,000 to over 52,000 last year. And just this year up to July, we've qualified nearly 29,000 individuals. So a lot of increase in activity.

But you'll have the more current numbers come December is when we'll issue the new report. So this is a page from our current Act 57 report. You can see how the vacancies that that middle column, how they trended up. From 2018, there was a vacancy rate of 18%. 2019, again 18%.

Then it climbed to 20%, 20%, 23%, 27%. And then finally last year we saw it. We hopefully turned the corner. We're down to 24%. And like I said, with those even 600 additional hires up till June 30, 2025 even if we just. Even with those additional hires, I'm confident that that number will come down.

The vacancy rate will come down. Here's sort of a snapshot by Department in terms of the vacancy rate. And Again, this is 2320 data compared to 2024 data. So every Department, with the exception of I think two, have made progress in filling their vacancies.

And we'll update this table as well in the vacancy report to give you a Department by Department progress report in terms of filling civil service vacancies. But this is again, everybody's trending in the right direction. We added this table a couple of years ago.

I think it's valuable to sort of know what classes of work we have a lot of vacancies. And this is just by. This is by position title or series. And the sheer number highest to lowest of vacancies and the ones that are bolded are classes of work where we've made particular progress. Office assistance assistant is one.

I think when I first came to DHRD, there were well over 500 vacancies. We're now closer to 395 engineers. Through the compensation program that we rolled out the different salary schedule, we've been making progress on hiring engineers, which are critical for housing and homelessness.

And I think we have about 11 departments that have engineers of various types. So that's promising. It specialists, registered nurses, even things like account clerks and General laborers. We've been making progress in near and dear to my own heart are HR assistants and specialists. We've been making progress there.

These are the folks that we are going to rely on if we're going to do more delegation and expect more of departments. So that's really promising as well. So we'll update this. One of the things that we added this last year was that second to right column, the number of qualified applicants.

I think that's important to share with the Legislature and with Administration that there are interest in these jobs. And, you know, DHRD is not just sitting back and not doing anything about it like office assistance. We've qualified over 1400 applications for those jobs. The next slide. Maybe I should stop there.

If there's any questions about these reports.

Any questions? Yeah, why don't we stop there? Okay. So for. I mean, these numbers, again, are pretty good indicators that, you know, some of the success of the programs that we've mentioned before. And maybe this goes a little bit back to the issue of metrics, right? I think these vacancy numbers are one metric.

I think the metric that I'm interested in is the timing, right. The timelines for how quickly can we basically recruit and hire these applicants. Is there. Does the Department track that kind of data?

We do not. We not able to capture the data at the departmental level because I think most of you are aware that departments initially try to fill most vacancies internally first. So oftentimes a vacancy represents a promotional opportunity for their own employees.

So typically a Department will post that vacancy internally and allow their own departmental civil service employees to apply first and be considered first.

And only if they can't fill it internally, then they'll come to DHRD and they'll ask us to do an open, what we call an open competitive recruitment to the General public or to other departments. So there's time spent first with a Department trying to fill that vacancy internally.

Sometimes they're reclassifying that job or they're updating the position description or. Or they're undergoing a reorganization. There can be other reasons why a vacancy is not being filled right away. So DHRD only gets involved when they requisition names from us that represent a recruitment at a statewide General public level.

And then once we send that list of qualified applicants back to the Department again, the it's back in their Kuleana to then reach out to those candidates, schedule the interviews, make a hiring decision and fill in.

So I recognize that this whole recruitment process isn't only DHRD's Kuleana. There are a number of moving components, other departments, the applicants themselves. But I think for me, when I'm trying to evaluate the efficacy of a program, at least that's a program initiated by DHRD internally, I like to see some measure of success.

And if that measure of success is number of vacancies going down, that's great. But obviously there's a number of components that could factor into that. One of those factors I feel that is important is how quickly can DHRD, you know, pre screen or screen these applicants and get them to departments.

Now, that's not to discount the responsibility of the departments that need to interview these applicants as well. But again, maybe logistically and resources are limited and so it might not be possible to. Or is it possible to track internally within DHRD how quickly these processes, these recruitment processes are, you know, how long they take?

Yes, we can track that.

Okay, now if, you know, maybe by next session or, you know, by next session, do you think you have some data on that? You know, the timing of these processes?

We can certainly try.

Yes. Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you. Committee Members, any questions?

Representative Director Som, can we focus on your Department for a minute? In terms of vacancies? Sure. You have 89 budgeted positions, 72 filled, 17 vacant. What are the 17 vacant positions right now?

Actually, this was old data, so this was as of November of 2024. I don't have it with me right now. In terms of our vacancy, I think we're probably close to that number, though. We've progress and actually our total position count is now closer to 100, but we've. I think we still have about 17 vacancies.

Is that positions that were loaned to you folks when you say you have about 100 or is that all?

Those are all budgeted DHRD positions.

Okay, in the 17, does that cut across each of your divisions or is it concentrated in one area?

It's pretty much across. I know we don't have any vacancies in our labor relations division. We also don't have any vacancies in our EEO division. I think we have maybe a couple of vacancies in staffing. We've had some kind of internal movements.

We have a number of vacancies in our claims division, which manage workers comp claims, but we're making progress there. We also have a number of positions, vacancies in our employee relations division, which is about five different programs, classification, compensation, benefits, transactions. I know I'm missing.

What about staffing?

So staffing. I think we just maybe have one, maybe two.

Okay, you made a reference to like, you know, your team is doing a lot of things like Operation Hire Hawaii, things that weren't typically expected of them. Do you feel like you have enough staffing as it is, or could you benefit from additional resources? I have to ask.

We could always benefit from additional resources, but we recognize that resources are limited. I think if I had to prioritize something, I would prioritize our recruitment team, the ARPA project team, because I think their work is showing that it's effective. Right. We've not only replaced all the individuals who've left state government, we've added 600.

And I know how hard that team works. I know all of the creativity and the energy that they bring to the recruitment team. And they work really well with our examiners.

They are good about collaborating and they work well with the departments and trying to prioritize their needs and partnering with them on setting up these events like the one that we just did with the Department of Agriculture. And I think if we lose that team, I don't want to see us lose momentum in filling jobs.

So if I, if I had to to put prioritize something, it would be. It would be that team. We also have a couple of positions in our employee transactions unit that are critical. Will be critical for different reasons. You know, I know you folks are aware that the state is embarking on a enterprise financial system.

And one of the really critical elements of that is how do we make sure that our systems talk to each other and employee data and employee metrics are an important part of the state's fiscal health.

And to be able to have staff that can make sure that our human resources management system talks appropriately with the financial system is going to be critical. And so those are probably my two highest priorities.

One more question, Chair? Yeah, please go ahead. I know the focus of today's briefing is really on recruitment and the vacancy rate. Can you just.

Speak briefly as to what you're doing to retain the employees you do have.

So I think we do have a slide coming up. If I could maybe speak to that in just a second about retention. But in answer to your question, I think in terms of our other vacancies that we do have across the Department, all of our managers know that that is one of my highest priorities.

We talk about it every time we meet, we go over it, we strategize what's working, what's not working, what does the applicant pool look like, how are we going to fill it, do we need to lower it? Do we need to look at some kind of incentive? And so we are trying to fill every vacancy.

I can tell you that for sure. There's not a vacancy that indie heard that we're like, no, not right now. All of them are being actively recruited and every manager has a plan. Either they're working on a list or they're working with., we've done some advertising with our local SHRM office.

We've done advertising on our compensation industry experts. We've tried to leave no stone unturned to fill jobs. But I'll talk in just a moment about the retention, because I do have a slide that speaks to that.

One more question?

Yes, Sorry.

Since you mentioned the IVA, the Internal Vacancy Announcement process, I mean, back when I was with the Department, it was, of course, you always want employees to have upward mobility, continue to move up the ranks, but the challenge there was that you might be able to fill one position, but then you're leaving another one vacant, so the net effect is zero. How do you handle or balance that tension there?

It's, you know, I feel strongly that we need to provide promotional opportunities for our current employees. So it's just, you know, it can cause delays depending upon the type of job, too, and whether it's a series where there are a lot of vacancies.

I know when I was at Department of Human Services, we have eligibility workers across the state. So rather than post each and every individual vacancy, they would, every six months or so, ask. And I think they can apply at any point in time.

Any eligibility worker that wants to move or wants a promotion, they can apply and be on sort of a special list where they can consider those individuals at any point in time. So there are some tools that could be employed, I think, to sort of speed up that process.

Departments may also, if they just recruited for that series and there were no takers, they could consider bypassing the internal recruitment if there was no interest and they just recently recruited for it. So, but, but I think there still is advantage to, to making it available to internal employees first.

We want to make sure that we take care of our, our current staff first.

Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, thank you, Committee Members. Any further questions? If not Chair Matayoshi.

This is why, you never ask just one more question. Always leave it open. And I've also never heard a Department turn down money, so you guys are very consistent.

I kind of wanted to follow up on what Chair Garrett's question was too, because it kind of occurred to me, I know we had talked before about how departments are hiring internally first. So they do a recruitment process purely internally, not open to the public.

If they do find someone internally, that person will get promoted into that position or move into that position, and then they'll have another vacancy that they'll have to do the same process over again.

And it kind of, I would assume, creates a bit of a ripple effect sometimes where they're constantly opening up vacancies by filling vacancies and therefore that vacancy count number doesn't really change. But to go through that whole process just to get one more person net on board on the state seems a bit excessive.

I'm wondering, A, whether it's fair to not open a position publicly if a position is open, and, B, I guess whether. Well, I mean, let's start with that one first.

I mean, do, is it, is it fair if a position opens up that the public is not, for a civil service position, you know, a public position, is it fair that the public is not allowed to apply for that position?

I believe so. I don't, I don't believe that violates any requirement. No.

Maybe not a requirement, but I mean, do you think that's fair?

I think it's fair.

Okay, because I mean, I think if I was a person in the private sector and I could come into government at a higher level position, but those positions are never open because they're constantly being filled with people internally only.

Not only would the state be possibly losing out on highly qualified candidates that want to come into government, but also it's kind of creating a ripple effect in more work for a Department. Whereas if you just plugged someone in there from a private sector that might be more highly qualified, that would be it.

I'm not saying that the internal people shouldn't be able to apply. Obviously they should be able to apply, but why not have just one recruiting process for a position that's open to the public? Why are we keeping the public out of this process.

I'm not sure that I can answer that question succinctly. I don't think this is atypical of any employer who looks to their current workforce to fill opportunities. It's not to say that a department can't fill.

And I think you see this most oftentimes at the managerial ranks, not so often at the staff level or below, but at the managerial rings. Oftentimes we see departments who will do both processes concurrently. So they will do an internal recruitment concurrent with an external recruitment.

But we also don't want to advertise a job externally when we're pretty confident we're going to fill it internally because that's, I think, more frustrating or would be more frustrating to the public if they really don't have a legitimate shot at the job.

Because we're, we see this, you know, we're really happy with say a branch chief and we feel like they're ready for the next step, which would be a Division Chief. And, and that's a natural progression. And I think the civil service statute also talks about having, providing a career ladder. So I don't believe that that violates anything.

And I wouldn't want to frustrate an applicant by, by advertising an opportunity that doesn't really exist.

Well, I want to be real careful there because what it sounds like is we're not opening it up because we've pre selected the person to meet that to basically be put in that job.

Which I know is not what you're saying, but it's starting to smell like it, which is not great. If we are so sure that a person is qualified that we don't even need to take other applicants. I mean, that is, is kind of the antithesis of what we should be doing in government.

And also you said that employers, other employers do it. I'm assuming you mean in the private sector they can do whatever they want. I mean, that's the private sector. This isn't a government job paid for by tax dollars. I mean, I think that the government needs to be more equitable in its hiring practices.

Quite frankly, I'm a little and bad on me for not bringing this up earlier, but now that I'm thinking about strikes me as rather unfair that a government position, a public service position, is not open to the public.

And the reasoning is that we have someone internally that we want to hire, that we want to hire so badly that we will basically bypass or cut short or squeeze the recruiting opportunity or the employment opportunity, application opportunity to allow just internally, people to apply, because we kind of have someone in mind already that I think that would violate the law.

Okay, that's not what I meant.

Yeah, yeah, I know. But it started to head that direction.

I think what we're looking at is we're looking to our own employees. Are we reasonably comfortable with our applicant pool? And if we are, because either we have a sufficient applicant pool internally and we can also, we can also do transfers within state government.

So if you're a civil service employee in another Department, once they consider their, their own internal applicants, we departments can also entertain transfers from other departments as well. So I, I believe that there, there's justification for considering the applicant pool first.

It's no guarantee that you're going to hire an internal candidate, but if you want to, if you're reasonably assured that you have the kind of expertise, you have, the capable, qualified, experienced workforce who is successful in their current job, then why would you not consider them or give them an opportunity for the promotion?

We should absolutely. They should be interviewed like everyone else, and if they're that qualified for it, they'll get the job. I don't think that we have a bad workforce. I'm not trying to disparage our workforce at all, but I think they should be considered with everyone else.

I mean, A, we're limiting our options in government and it's not like we're flush with employees here. We have a huge vacancy rate. So if nothing else, you're getting someone at the door and getting their information in NEOGOV so you can offer them other positions. But, B, what you said kind of makes it worse.

I think saying that we can first do a process internally and then the next step isn't even offering it to the public. The next step is offering it to other departments to kind of come in. We're still keeping this in the sort of, you're already a state employee pool before we even offer it to the public.

I don't understand how that is fair or ethical. I mean, I know it's kind of how it's always been done, but does that not strike you as rather unfair to people who pay taxes that pay all of our salaries?

Well, at some point in time, once the ripple effect occurs, right, there is an opportunity for the public to come in. There are many opportunities. There's about 4,000 opportunities.

It ripples all the way down. I mean, we're not getting the top positions for the applicants to come in here. That's worse, I think. Right? It's like saying you can't, the CEO position will never be available because we're always going to promote internally, but if you want to apply for the mailroom, that's totally fine.

I mean, that's not how we get good employees and that's not how we get good applicants into government.

Well, that's how we provide promotional opportunities and a career ladder, which is in our civil service, civil service law.

But they can still apply. I'm not saying we only hire externally. That would be just as wrong.

And I'm also not saying that they have to be hired. They just are considered. So a department may...

But we're not considering anyone else, right? That's hard. They're not even competing against the public. Why not? Why shouldn't they compete against the public? Why shouldn't everyone compete against each other for a job?

I believe the way that we're doing it is more efficient because we are able to fill vacancies readily from our own resources before we have to resort to filling it externally.

Well, I think if we're going for efficiency, we've got a number of things that don't really fly that I've suggested in the past. And maybe they don't fly for good reason.

But how can we say that, no, efficiency is not important enough to do xyz, allow departments to not have to call everyone for interviews, et cetera, but then say that efficiency is so important here that we don't want more applicants. We don't want to expand the pool to see.

I mean, if that person that departments are thinking of is really that qualified, they'll get the job. But I'm not sure that's always the case. And I'm not sure we should be unfairly limiting that person's competition for that job.

I suppose we can have further discussion.

Yeah, I think we could continue this discussion, but is there another line of questioning on this subject?

For that one, we could continue it offline. I am a little concerned. I'm looking at the numbers too, to change the subject. This is the largest vacancy by Class of Work series. Is that up there?

It's the previous.

Okay, so the very top line office assistant or office assistant, you have about 1400 applicants and only 500 vacancies. Doesn't this kind of. And the reason why this number is so different, I think, is what you're saying is that the departments aren't really interviewing well, or they're not, maybe they don't like all of these 1400 candidates that you're feeding them.

Doesn't this speak to, maybe DHRD, interviewing them and just putting them there, especially for a job like office assistant. I mean, it seems like the system is not working.

If you have three times the number of qualified applicants for 500 vacancies and the vacancies are still vacant, don't you guys want to just put them in there?

Again, I don't think we have the resources to interview 1439 applicants and be able to answer their questions about specific jobs.

But if you could, I mean, we talked about that one already. But the applicants themselves, I believe in the application process, indicate which departments they would like to work for. Is that correct?

No, they do not.

Why can't we ask them? And then after you interview them, you can just put them in a department that they've already indicated they want to work for too. I'm not sure why we're not asking them where they want to work when they apply. That seems odd too. How do you know which department to?

I mean, sure, someone applies for office assistant, I apply for office assistant. I go through the minimum qualification process and then just random departments try to pick me out of the hat. And whoever calls me first, I'm kind of, I don't know, maybe I really want to work for Department of Ag, but they're a little slower.

And I get calls from DLIR and I'm like, I wanted to work for Department of Ag. Why shouldn't we tell Department of Ag, hey, here's an office assistant who wants to work for you. Call them.

So office assistant is a class of work that we have on Wikiwiki Hire. So the way that it works, we take in applications periodically. We take in 100 plus at a time. We screen them all one time. We send letters to all the applicants telling them, here's a list of contacts. You're qualified.

First of all, you're qualified for Office Assistant 3 or 4, whatever the case may be. These are the departments and the contact information of the individual recruiters for hiring.

Other things.

Yeah. So office assistance is under Wikiwiki. So the those applicants can call if they want to work for Department of Health. They can call the Department of Health and say, I want to work for the Department of Health. I would like to schedule an interview. And they can do that.

And Department of Health can also call all the applicants on the list and try to schedule interviews as well. So some particular jobs. For example on the list, Adult Corrections Officer recruit. Obviously that's only DCR, so. Right. So everybody who applies for that knows they'll be working at DCR.

There are some advantages and some disadvantages to having departments or, sorry, having applicants identify which department. First of all, when we conduct a recruitment, it may be, say, Department of Tax, who at that point in time is recruiting for Accountant 3. So it lists the vacancy either. Or maybe there's two departments. Let's use two departments.

Department of Tax and Department of Land and Natural Resources. So we ask the applicants, do you want to work at Tax or do you want to work at Land? And then they click. But what if tomorrow we get a requisition from the Department of Health that says we also need Accountant 3?

Well, we've only asked those applicants to identify two.

Why restrict it to those two? Give them all. And then, and then you can say like, oh, well, they selected seven, but only two are looking right now. But then you'll have their information. Why restrict them?

We, if we. Well, if an applicant then says, I want to work for Human Services and Human Services never has a vacancy for Accountant 3, then they're going to sit there idle.

Because then you don't have to go through that whole thing with them and offer them to other people who they don't even want to work for them. Seems like a lot of work for you guys.

They can tell the Department. I believe it's better for us to send all the names to all the departments that are recruiting because oftentimes an applicant doesn't know. They're not familiar with all of our departments. And there are some departments which have greater challenges, like DCR.

But are all these guys actually calling them. Because, I mean, in a perfect world, if every department called every single applicant and talked to them and said, hey, come work at DLNR or whatnot, that. Clearly that's not happening though, right? I mean, we could at least admit that.

I don't.

Not, not every, not every department is calling every applicant.

Probably not every office assistant.

So in that case, why not get all, all of, why not just ask them? They're not getting this whole wide spectrum of information from every department and then deciding anyway. What they're probably getting is the couple of departments that have time to call them or decided to call. I mean, it just doesn't, it doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't see the disadvantage to it.

Also, I mean, if this number is constantly like this, where we have three times the number of qualified applicants, it seems like, I don't know, it seems like a lot of work for you guys because you're going through this Wiki process. You're doing all the minimum qualification review for all of these applicants constantly churning through DHRD.

But you're not willing to just interview them and put them there. And instead you're willing to just let it linger at 500 openings. It seems like more work for you guys to just constantly review these applications over and over rather than to just interview them and stick them in there and reduce this vacancy count significantly.

How long does it take for an interview versus minimum qualification examination?

That's hard to say. I mean, it's, that's a huge time. Probably 45 minutes to an hour at least.

For an interview.

I would say typically.

Okay, and then how long does it take, take you folks to do like a minimum qualification for. For an office assistant?

Probably a few minutes each.

Okay.

I think the minimum qualification requirements may be a year of experience. It's a fairly straightforward and easy class to screen.

Okay, so maybe the timing doesn't work out there then. I still think you should do it though. But we'll talk later. So I have one more question, Chair. Sorry, I know I said I wouldn't ask that. I really do only have one more though, for this. General laborers. Why is the number so discrepant?

You have about over 1,000 qualified applicants and 76 job openings. What? That one really stuck out at me.

I don't know specifically where those 62 vacancies are. General labor is one that I believe has no specific minimum qualification requirement. It's individuals who are involved in, just as the name implies, General labor. It's a blue collar worker who assists with construction and maintenance.

I don't specifically know where those vacancies are and why they're not able to fill those jobs.

That's an incredible number of qualified applicants per vacancies, though. Can we tap that for another job or are there any other? I know General labor is kind of zero minimum qualifications, but it just seems like a lot of people want to work for the state and we have no jobs for them. Really?

No jobs for them for that? Has there been any effort to reach into that pool to see if they want to weed whack? Because Kahikili Hayer could use.

That's actually a groundskeeper. The groundskeepers are the ones that do the weed whacking. But we can take a look at it and see where the vacancies are and work with those departments if they're having particular challenges.

Well, I think the applicant pool too. I mean, that's an incredible number. It's almost as high as office assistant. But the number of openings are just nowhere near it.

Right, right.

Anyway, I just wouldn't mind more investigation than that. Just let me know. Thank you, Chair.

All right, let's move on then to the last subject is the retention. Yeah, the retention slides, please. Thank you.

So I've just included one slide in terms of sort of a snapshot historically of our turnover. So the left side is moves out of a department. And this is for all departments combined. So you can see that kind of dark orangish at the top.

That's the number of individuals who every year are discharged, either resignation, everything except for retirements. So those are the individuals that leave state government. So last year that number was 759. The kind of brownish band underneath that is the annual number of retirements from civil service jobs.

So that number hovers around between 3 to 400 to 500, close to 500 per year. So those are the individuals that we're looking to. That's the number that we're targeted to try to replace. So together we're looking at between 11 to 1200. We know we're going to have in terms of attrition every year.

The other colors are moves out of a department. So individuals transferring between departments. So like I mentioned, we do allow employees to transfer internally. And then the bottom part is moves within a department. So you can see there's about almost an equivalent number of moves in a department. And that's really important.

We want to make sure that our team has upward mobility. And you can see that that's exceedingly popular. And that's part of my hesitation for upsetting that is because it does represent a lot of movement within our employee ranks. The right hand side is now movements to fill a vacancy.

So internally that same number moves in the department and then we're looking at new hires into the state. And what's promising is that that number is continuing to climb over the last since 2021, which we when we had came out of a hiring freeze. Since then we've been very good at adding to our total number of employees.

And I think that will necessarily impact on the vacancy rate when we run the numbers come November. So there's a breakdown by individual department in the Act 57 report. And I should have mentioned earlier the complete report as well as the workforce profile, they're both available on the DHRD website.

And historically, so you can go back and look at at prior reports, they're all posted there. We've been doing the Act 57 report in its current form since about 2019. So you can see sort of the trends and historical information there.

But I wanted to speak to the turnover because I think there's been some interest and we haven't specifically talked about the turnover numbers. So the next slide, you can see fiscal year by fiscal year, the number, total number of retirement to end terminations in comparison to our total employee account and what that turnover rate looks like.

I think oftentimes the messaging is that state government is not good at retaining employees. And I would tell you that the numbers don't support that narrative. We actually are very good at retaining our workforce.

In terms of our comparables statewide, we have access to data from the Hawaii Employers Council, which we are a member of, and statewide, all industries, the turnover rate is closer to 15 and a half percent. So in comparison, we do very well, actually with retaining our employees. And I think part of that is because we do offer promotional opportunities.

We do want our employees to grow in state government. We do want to keep them and have them advance and move up and use and grow in the position. If they felt that there was this glass ceiling and we're bringing everybody into management from outside, that would have a chilling effect.

They would feel like, I need to go to the private sector to advance. And we don't want that to be the messaging. Again, we're highlighting the total number of employees that we've increased just in the last year is close to 600. I have one more slide.

This is just a department by department comparison in terms of the turnover rate. So you can see where we do have some challenges. Those departments that are kind of above that median line and the ones that are sort of hovering around it and above. So we do have some work to do in certain areas.

But overall, I think the message is that our turnover is pretty good. That is the last slide I have, so I'll stop there and ask if you have any questions around turnover.

Yeah, thank you, Director. Just regarding the turnover rate on that second to the last slide, with departments who are struggling with extremely high turnover rates, like Hawaiian Homelands, DCCA, Budget and Finance, do you guys go and help them address, you know, what are the factors to the high turnover? Or is that more of their kuleana?