The Personnel Board of
Jefferson County (PBJC) was
established in 1935 by state statute
as the human resources agency
responsible for administering the civil
service system in Jefferson County.
PBJC is responsible for recruiting and
assessing candidates for employment,
creating hiring registers and for referring
qualified candidates to hiring departments
throughout the County. PBJC also performs
other traditional HR activities such as classification
and compensation, employee relations, and records management.

The governing statute, more commonly known as the Enabling Act, sets forth the authority for and the regulations under which a county’s Civil Service (Merit) System operates in the State of Alabama.

The Act applies to all counties in the state with four-hundred thousand (400,000) or more inhabitants. Currently, this includes Jefferson and Mobile counties. Within counties having multiple municipalities, such as Jefferson, the Merit System is inclusive of municipalities having five thousand (5,000) or more inhabitants and whose borders lie geographically within the county. Police Officers of municipalities having two-thousand five hundred (2,500) inhabitants are also statutorily included. For purposes of inclusion, the population of the counties and their respective municipalities is counted as of the last official federal census.

Currently, employees of eighteen (18) municipalities throughout Jefferson County are part of the Merit System. These eighteen municipalities, together with several countywide entities such as The Jefferson County Department of Health, The Emergency Management Agency (EMA), the Jefferson County Commission, Judges, and the Personnel Board itself make up the twenty-three “jurisdictions” that are part of the Merit System of Jefferson County. There are approximately nine-thousand (9,000) employees throughout the twenty-three jurisdictions.

All employees of covered municipalities and the other defined countywide entities are automatically covered by the Merit System unless they are statutorily exempted. Some of the classes exempted by statute are: employees or appointees of the city or county Board of Education, teachers in public schools, elected officials, the judge of any court, resident physicians, and common laborers.

The Personnel Board of Jefferson County was established by the Enabling Act as the administrative body responsible for governing the county’s Civil Service System, for providing human resource services to member jurisdictions, and for assuring compliance with the requirements contained within the Act. Compliance is accomplished through a set of Rules and Regulations that serve as the administrative and procedural guidelines applicable and adhered to by all Merit System jurisdictions and their respective employees.

Services provided by the Board include:

• Facilitating the hiring of qualified individuals to fill vacancies within the jurisdictions. The responsibility of the Personnel Board is to manage job requisitions, recruit, accept and screen applicants, test qualified applicants, and send names of qualified applicants who pass legally defensible tests to the employers within the Merit System.
• Managing and administering job classes and salary structures across the jurisdictions. The responsibility of the Personnel Board is to survey and develop class specifications via job evaluations and analyses, conduct salary surveys, establish compensation plans and salary schedules, and address position and salary management requests throughout the jurisdictions.
• Managing and maintaining employee history. The responsibility of the Personnel Board is to maintain the civil service record of employment for all employees under the Merit System. This includes employee set up upon hiring, administration of employee changes such as promotions, leaves of absence, merit increases, job class changes, and voluntary or involuntary separation.
• Managing and facilitating employee relations and employee development. The responsibility of the Personnel Board is to mediate employee appeals or grievances that are based on alleged violations of civil service protections, as well as administer the standards for performance management across the jurisdictions.

The Personnel Board of Jefferson County is an independent agency within the County and is not a part of any political, county, or municipal subdivision within the System. It reports to a Citizens’ Supervisory Commission (CSC) comprised of seventeen (17) community leaders, including heads of local colleges, universities, and civic groups. The PBJC is governed by a three-member Board. Board members are appointed by the CSC and serve staggered six-year terms.