Recommendations from the Commission on Reform and Efficiency (CORE), Staffing Division sponsored Refocus Groups, the implementation of the Unclassified Project Class Series and the need to continuously improve customer service all contributed to the development of the Statewide Class Standards Project.

• In February, 1993, the Commission on Reform and Efficiency recommended that the State of Minnesota create 20 broadly-defined Occupational Families to improve the structure of the job class plan.
• During Fiscal Year 1994, Refocus Groups of agency Human Resources partners, managerial and supervisory customers and union stakeholders recommended "statewideness" as an approach to ensuring the consistent application of Staffing Division policies and services (including job classification) across state agencies.
• In July, 1994, the implementation of the Unclassified Project Class Series provided alternative job class choices for allocating temporary unclassified positions. Prior to the creation of this class series, class concepts for statewide job classes such as Research Analyst were "stretched" to accommodate the immediate service delivery needs of state agencies.
• Continuously improve customer service to reduce job audit turnaround time by organizing job class series information more conveniently and completely.

The Job Classification Reengineering Team [August 1998-April 1999] replaced the 20 Occupational Families and 71 Job Families with 39 Career Families. The team's objective was to develop career families that contain occupational career paths which: contain jobs that perform similar types of work; more easily enable employees to move laterally between similar career paths; and provide a better starting point than currently exists for the development of career paths within career families. The new career families were installed in SEMA4 in November 1998.