About

In order for Our City of Madison to be a community that is inclusive, innovative, and thriving, our City of Madison Human Resources needs to use adaptive, sustainable policies and practices that allow us to recruit and retain top talent.

To do this, our 2023-2027 Strategic Plan focuses on creating an exceptional employee experience, developing innovative development opportunities and career pathways, prioritizing customer service, and developing a high performing organization. We have exceptional staff performing a variety of Human Resources services to implement this plan. We have four units in Human Resources:

• Administration: We support the entire HR team by providing strategic direction, records and data management.
• HR Services: We manage recruitment, classification and compensation, and position studies, and provides strategic HR support and training for agencies and employees.
• Organizational Development: We support employees and agencies to function better within the organizational context and improve the organization itself by providing Organizational Leadership, Learning and Development opportunities, Performance Excellence, and Organizational capacity building support. 
• Employee and Labor Relations: We coordinate benefits, labor relations, leave, and occupational accommodations. Provides assistance to managers, supervisors, and employees related to supervision, performance management and conflict resolution.

For more information on individual staff roles and contact information, please check out our Meet the Human Resources Team page.

A Message from the Director

Dear TeamCity Partners and Colleagues –
Our Human Resources team is excited to publish our five year strategic plan.  This plan is ambitious in its goals, aligned with our City vision and values, and will support us in becoming a leading employer for recruitment and retention as a high performing organization.  Our vision for the future is that people will choose to work at the City of Madison with the aim to make a difference, and to stay because they belong. We can only accomplish this by working with the help of our partners inside and outside of City government, and by creating an exceptional experience for all of our employees. 

Plan Goals

Our strategic plan was developed after gathering feedback from every City agency, targeting gaps identified in the workplace culture surveys completed by our partners on the Multicultural Affairs Committee and Women’s Initiative’s Committee, and sourcing best practices from both public and private sector employers. A more complete list of feedback is listed in the introduction of our strategic plan. Our goals are to:

• Attract a talented and diverse workforce;
• Retain an engaged and diverse workforce where all employees feel they belong;
• Develop our employees and organization to be an inclusive and high performing City; and
• Implement innovative and progressive Human Resources practices. 

Annual Focus

The plan provides an annual focus for each of the coming five years including:

2023 Strategic Foundations	2024 Employee Experience and Onboarding	2025 Career Pathways and Employee Development	2026 Organizational Excellence	2027 Planning for the Future

Plan Major Projects

A few of the major projects you will see in 2023 include: the development of clear metrics for all aspects of our Human Resources work; a rewrite of our personnel rules using the framework for quality jobs provided through our Results for America fellowship; development and purchase of a Human Resources Management system; and to begin a citywide compensation study which is expected to be completed/implemented in future years. These projects intend to ensure we provide high quality, attractive jobs to applicants in an extremely competitive labor market, and to improve the customer experience related to our processes.  More information on these projects and our progress will be forthcoming, and we will be asking for your ideas and input along the way.

Please take some time to read through our major goals in each of the five years.  In addition to the day to day work we do, we have major goals listed for each year, and sub-goals to help improve our efficiency and customer service.

This is an incredible amount of work for the next five years, but as the Director of Human Resources, I am so proud of the team we have working to improve our systems toward a better experience for our applicants and employees. Team HR is dedicated to the services we provide, and the efforts we make as an organization to ensure Our Madison is inclusive, innovative, and thriving. 

Thank you so much for all you do.  I look forward to receiving directly any feedback you would like to provide.

Best –

Erin Hillson
City of Madison Human Resources Director

• View our Customer Service Framework
• View our Internal Communications Strategy
• View our 2024 HR Unit Workplans

2023 Annual HR Report

View our 2023 Annual HR Report