Commonwealth of Kentucky case study

From tourism, to transportation, to education and more, the Commonwealth
of Kentucky – Personnel Cabinet provides a diversity of services to communities across the state.

As a public sector employer, Kentucky State Government is accustom to competing with the private sector for talent. However, with recordlow unemployment across the country on top of existing pay differences between public/private sector jobs, the vacant positions were piling up.

“We needed to find a way to attract talented people,” says Robbie Perkins, Director of IT for the Kentucky Personnel Cabinet, “And then we needed a way to develop and retain them.”

Cornerstone’s Recruiting and Learning Suites have proven successful in doing both. The Cornerstone implementation was fast—less than six months, the quickest of any enterprise system in Kentucky State Government to date—and affordable, actually saving IT budget and avoiding any additional appropriation of funds.

Streamlined Internal Processes

Before the Kentucky State Government could attract new candidates with opportunities, it needed to streamline its internal systems and processes. The Kentucky State Government, which oversees HR functions, had disparate systems for recruitment and learning, and no electronic solution for onboarding, performance management, or succession. Leadership didn’t have visibility into talent analytics—keeping them from using data for workforce planning or improvements to their existing processes.

With Cornerstone, the Kentucky Personnel Cabinet consolidated its recruitment and training systems and implemented onboarding, performance management and succession planning thus providing a holistic solution for talent management. This allowed the team to operate more strategically. Cornerstone streamlined and automated HR processes to make day-to-day operations better for the HR team and managers and improved analytics and dashboard reporting to help them operate with data.

In addition to having these new “talent” tools at their fingertips, the Kentucky Personnel Cabinet also rebranded employment with Kentucky State Government under the moniker “Connecting People to Purpose.” “Purpose is what employees are looking for today, so we wanted to sell that –
we even branded our new Cornerstone Talent Suite MyPURPOSE”, states Robbie Perkins.

Driving Talent Learning and Longevity

In addition to implementing Cornerstone Learning, the team implemented Cornerstone’s CyberU, a subscription to a library of online courses, branded as “CommonwealthU” internally. Over 1,400
courses are available online, 24/7—a resource that existing employees can leverage for career development. Today, CommonwealthU has over 31,000 employee users and more than 187,000
online courses were completed in the first year.

Building a Culture of Learning and Growth

Kentucky State Government also implemented a team of internal advocates called Talent Management Champions to capture and share employee stories and experiences. Using interviews, the team creates Talent Engagement Videos to help develop and sustain a culture that embraces, enables and exemplifies the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s mission, vision and values. Moreover, the videos connect employees to each other throughout their career growth.

To date, these initiatives have been met with excitement and positive feedback from employees and stakeholders. And as the program builds momentum, the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s new branding begins to become a reality: “Come for a job. Stay for a career. Make a difference for a lifetime.”