Developing and Managing the Personnel Budget

Does your organization struggle with managing personnel spending? Does your finance or budget office get frustrated trying to track what positions are filled and what you’ve budgeted for salaries and wages? Position control, a system to maintain budgetary control on the authorized number of funded positions, is a critical responsibility for local government finance and budget offices. But many struggle to set up even a basic position control process, or to maintain their existing process effectively.

This workshop will cover advanced concepts of personnel management and budgeting and provide practical advice for how you can develop position management and control policies and procedures to track position information (including job classifications, pay rates, and attrition and vacancy data), keep your organization within its personnel budget, and forecast the impacts of policy changes. Attendees should have a deep understanding of their organization’s personnel budget and budgeting practices and a basic understanding of its hiring practices. Attendees will discuss and evaluate their practices and develop a plan to implement an effective system for position management.

An effective position management system requires collaboration across human resources/personnel, finance/budget, and operating departments. With this in mind, we encourage you to bring stakeholders from these different areas of your organizations to this workshop.

Those who successfully complete this seminar should be able to:

• List the steps involved in establishing an effective system of position control
• Identify the information necessary to establish an effective system of position control
• Evaluate your organization’s position control practices
• Address the challenges local governments may encounter when implementing position control and identify ways to overcome those challenges
• Develop an action plan that outlines specific focus areas and recommended next steps for your organization to implement an effective system of position control 

Budget director/manager, finance director, CFO, HR manager, department director

This course is taught by experienced budgeting practitioners and GFOA staff including Katie Ludwig. Instructors will be familiar with GFOA best practices and have experience as finance director, budget director, or CEO of various size local governments.