The Budget and Control Board’s Office of Human Resources has again won top honors for leading one of the nation’s best personnel systems, according to a national study of state governments.
The Pew Center on the State’s Grading the States 2008 gave South Carolina an A- for management of its state workforce – placing as one of the four best nationwide. The non-profit, non-partisan study which is conducted every three years said OHR “sets a model for the rest of state agencies.”
The study noted South Carolina’s thorough state workforce plan, good use of data and moderate turnover rate. The Pew Center also praised OHR Director Sam Wilkins for creating a weekly podcast for state agency HR directors. OHR’s new online job recruitment system was also cited as having potential to help agencies find candidates for hard-to-fill jobs.
“We have a passion to work with agencies to help them recruit and retain a world-class workforce to serve the citizens of South Carolina,” Wilkins said. “The credit for our top ranking goes to the staff of OHR and the agencies' human resources departments whose creativity and thoughtfulness has kept us at the top of this very competitive report card.”
All 50 states received report cards Monday evaluating each state government’s performance in serving the public. Grading the States 2008 is the only 50-state assessment of its kind that evaluates and grades each state based on a range of areas, from budget and finance to roads and bridges. South Carolina’s overall grade was a B-. The report and 50 state summaries are available online at www.pewcenteronthestates.org/gpp.
Report findings are the result of a thorough and rigorous review by a panel of the nation's leading state government management experts that paints a clear and complete picture of states' performance. State-level managers and opinion leaders provided more than 12,000 pieces of data. States are not ranked, or graded against each other; they are graded based on a set of criteria.
Grading the States 2008, released in partnership with Pew's Government Performance Project and Governing Magazine, is the fourth in a series, the most recent issued in 2005. States were evaluated on how well they were advancing -- or backsliding -- in key areas such as recruiting and retaining highly qualified, productive public employees; using information and technology to measure performance and communicate more effectively with the public; managing fiscal resources from budgeting to procurement; and planning for, maintaining and improving roads, bridges and buildings.