State Chamber of Oklahoma Research Foundation: A Comparative Analysis of States' Civil Service Reforms

Human capital management has been a longstanding challenge at all levels of government. In order to attract, develop, and retain a talented state workforce and deliver services to the public, the state must have a human capital management system that effectively accomplishes its goals. A merit system, first established for the federal government in 1883, aims to ensure fairness in human capital management practices while ensuring that state employees have certain protections from wrongful, adverse personnel actions. In the following century, many states followed the federal government’s path and adopted a form of a merit system. Since the 1990s, several states have reformed their civil service systems in ways that dramatically changed public employment rules and policies, especially in regards to the hiring, compensation, evaluation, and reward processes in those states. Oklahoma established its merit system in 1959 and has seen relatively few reforms to the system since then. The State Chamber of Oklahoma Research Foundation seeks to learn how other states have modified their civil service systems in attempts to match their workforce management needs.