Building a More Efficient Human Resource Model
Redesigning human resource business processes to improve efficiency, strengthen consistency, and support better use of City resources
The Challenge: Improving Efficiency, Retaining Service
The City of Long Beach was looking for practical ways to improve efficiency across Human Resources and make better use of staff time and City resources.
As part of a broader effort to strengthen operations, the City focused on reducing avoidable administrative burden, improving process consistency, and creating workflows that could support employees more effectively. Within that work, Return to Work emerged as a priority.
Return to Work touched multiple leave types and required coordination across HR, Benefits, Payroll, Occupational Health, and management roles. But the process relied heavily on manual forms, routing, approvals, and compliance review. Employees had limited visibility into status and next steps, while staff were left managing fragmented handoffs, repeated documentation, and reactive case activity.
The result was a process that demanded more time and effort than it should, created avoidable inefficiencies, and made it harder for the City to deliver consistent service in a sustainable way.
Finding the Friction Points
KAIP’s discovery work showed that what appeared to be isolated process pain points were symptoms of problems in the underlying model. The fragmented design of the current system made the work more labor-intensive, slower to move, and harder to manage efficiently.
The current-state analysis found that Return to Work was built around forms, manual review, and disconnected systems rather than coordinated case management. Protected leave determinations relied heavily on manual interpretation. Communication across HR, Benefits, Payroll, and Occupational Health was fragmented, and compliance review often happened late in the process. Catastrophic leave also required manual donation tracking and Payroll coordination, while built-in system dependencies added delays and payroll timing constraints.
The broader HR system review reinforced the same pattern. Staff were working across multiple HR systems, as well as email and shared folders, often re-entering data and routing PDFs instead of managing structured workflows. Serial approvals, shadow tracking logs, unclear ownership, and document-based processing were driving rework, slowing cycle times, and making audit traceability harder than it needed to be.
KAIP clearly identified the root causes:
- no centralized leave management platform,
- no unified employee communication or status view,
- heavy manual validation,
- disconnected systems, and
- workflows designed around paperwork instead of employee cases.
For the City, that meant too much staff effort was being absorbed by process friction rather than being directed toward higher-value work and more consistent service delivery.
Surfacing Opportunity
A Disciplined Approach to Improvement
The KAIP team brought multiple Program Services disciplines to the table, leveraging experience in business process mapping, program management, and organizational change management to navigate a complex efficiency project.
Mapped the current-state process end to end
Documented how Return to Work and the related HR systems functioned in practice, including workflow steps, handoffs, compliance activities, bottlenecks, and rework points across the employee leave lifecycle.
Facilitated stakeholder-led discovery and validation
Facilitated 18 workshops with internal subject matter experts and engaged cross-functional stakeholders to validate process realities, confirm pain points, and align the work to operational needs.
Identified root causes behind delays, confusion, and compliance risk
Analyzed the structural drivers behind the process breakdowns, including manual compliance logic, fragmented communication, HR system dependency, disconnected systems, and lack of centralized case ownership.
Designed a future-state Return-to-Work model
Developed a future-state approach centered on centralized self-service intake, automated eligibility determination, dedicated case ownership, parallel reviews, integrated systems, automated notifications, and real-time workflow visibility.
Delivered a practical modernization roadmap with quick wins
Translated the redesign into concrete recommendations, including enterprise leave administration technology, API-based integrations, SLA-driven routing, centralized dashboards, standardized forms and documentation, validation checklists, role consolidation where appropriate, and training to support adoption.
Ready for Efficiency
As the City prepares for the future, it now has a stronger design for what is now possible with a firmer foundation for moving from analysis into action.
Clear Visibility into the Improvement Area
- Documented view of where the Return-to-Work process breaks down
- Defined understanding of the root causes behind delays, rework, and compliance risk
- Clear picture of the employee experience issues impacting the process today
A Stronger Model for the Future
- Future-state design for a more connected and manageable Return to Work process
- Shift from form-based, reactive work to centralized case management and automation
- Better workflow integration and improved employee communication
- Stronger foundation for leadership and staff to make modernization decisions
Implementation-Ready Foundation
- Current-state and future-state deliverables to support next-phase planning
- Governance structure including milestone tracking and executive reporting
- Validated findings and a concrete direction for implementation
- Clear path toward fewer manual touchpoints, less rework, faster cycle times, and a better employee experience
The Road Ahead
For the City of Long Beach, the next step is focused on turning design into operational readiness. That includes finalizing future-state workflows, updating forms and supporting documentation, securing stakeholder buy-in, conducting training on the future-state process, and aligning implementation with leadership and labor priorities.
The City of Long Beach now has a clearer vision of the opportunities to increase efficiency in their Return-to-Work program, as well as a more modern model for how it should work and a stronger path forward.
