Workforce Diversity

A second area in which the Obama administration has left its mark is that of workforce diversity. Separate executive orders have been issued requiring agencies to improve the hiring of individuals with disabilities,12 Hispanics,13 Asian and Pacific Islanders,14 Native Americans,15 African-Americans,16and women.17 In the 2013 Federal Equal Opportunity Recruitment Program Report, the Office of Personnel Management reported that the federal workforce was 17.9 % Black, 8.2 % Hispanic, 5.8 % Asian/Pacific, and 1.7 % Native American. Overall minorities constituted 34.6 % of the federal workforce while women constituted 43.5 %. Figure 4.1 shows the percentage of the federal workforce represented by each group compared with the percentage each group represents in the civilian labor force as a whole. The figure shows that with the exception of Hispanics, the government’s record in hiring women and minorities is relatively strong (Office of Personnel Management 2013).

The Obama administration has extended diversity to include the hiring of veterans. Although veterans’ preference has existed since the Civil War, President Obama has placed additional demands on agencies to increase the number of veterans hired. Executive Order 13518, Employment of Veterans in the Federal Government, directed each agency to establish a Veterans Employment Program Office, to develop an operational plan for promoting veteran employment, and to provide annual training to human resource personnel on veterans’ preference.18 In 2012, OPM reported that the number of veterans employed by the federal government grew from 512,000 in 2009 (25.8% of the workforce) to 567,000 (28.3% of the workforce) in 2011.19Additionally, a new focus has centered on hiring the spouses of military members.

Figure 4.1 Comparison of Permanent Federal Workforce and Total Civilian Labor Force (September 2012)

Source: OPM (2013).

Performance Management

Performance management has long been an area of concern within the federal government. One problem has been a reluctance on the part of supervisors to make meaningful distinctions in employee performance. In a 2011 speech, then-OPM director John Berry commented that “Employees may be getting useful feedback from their manager, but the formal review process seems to take place in Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon where everyone is above average” (Davidson 2011). Berry offered a “blueprint for changing the way we manage personnel performance” to include performance standards that are, detailed, objective, aligned to agency mission and goals and had employee buy-in.”

The National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations subsequently approved a package of reforms to overhaul performance management practices in the government. The Council agreed to pilot the new program, called GEAR (Goals, Engagement, Accountability, and Results) at six agencies. The changes, more evolutionary than revolutionary, provide for quarterly reviews of employee performance and improvements to “the assessment, selection, development, and training of supervisors.”20 In a departure from the recommendations of other reform groups, under GEAR, performance ratings would not be linked to pay.

Senior Executive Service Reforms

The Senior Executive Service, consisting of the top tier of career civil servants as well as a small percentage of political appointees, was created by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. The intent was that SES members serve as a corps of generalist executives whose careers would traverse agency lines and who would thereby promote interagency collaboration and cooperation. In a 2012 report, the Partnership for Public Service (PPS) and McKinsey & Company cited the benefits of this model: “Executive mobility increases the government’s ability to fulfill cross-agency missions. It also allows individual agencies to build executive managerial skills, fill vacancies strategically and infuse new thinking into the organization” (Partnership for Public Service 2012b: 1). However, in concluding that “The original vision for the SES as a mobile corps of leaders has never come to fruition,” PPS and McKinsey & Co. cited data showing that only 8% of SES members have worked at more than one agency during their careers. Options for increasing mobility and listed in the report include (1) requiring SES candidates to demonstrate “multisector, multiagency or multifunctional experience,” (2) allowing agencies to pilot a variety of mobility programs, (3) having agencies report on cross-agency mobility and (4) centralizing management of SES mobility. To date, OPM has not acted on these recommendations. However, in 2012, OPM did act to create a new SES performance management system centered on the same five “core qualifications” used for selection into the SES: leading people, leading change, results driven, business acumen, and building coalition.

Perhaps the most dramatic change for the SES was the passage of the Department of Veterans Affairs Management Accountability Act of 2014 in response to scandals where leaders manipulated the wait times of veterans seeking medical care from one of the Veterans Health Administration hospitals. For the first time, an SES member could be fired with their appeal process curtailed. Previously, SES would be placed on paid administrative leave and could appeal their termination to the Merit System Protection Board (MSPB). The new law allows the secretary to immediately fire a member of the SES, and MSPB must adjudicate the appeal within 21 days.

Conclusion

As of early 2015, it was unclear whether and to what extent reform of the civil service and of HRM practices in general would be a priority during the remaining years of the Obama administration. In November 2014, Republicans won a majority of seats in the U.S. Senate giving them control of both houses of Congress. The incoming chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee expressed his support for reforms that would give agency heads “the tools and flexibility to discipline the workforce to effectively manage” (Clark 2014). Similarly, the incoming chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said in an interview that the government needs to make it easier “to root out the bad apples” in the federal workforce (Davidson 2014). He further expressed support for a measure that would extend to other agencies the authority granted the Department of Veterans Affairs to expedite the removal of senior executives. Any such changes, however, would have to secure the approval of President Obama, whose term of office extends to January 2017.

Notes

The views expressed in this paper are those of Mr. Seidner personally and not those of either the Office of Management and Budget or the federal government.

1. Title 5 of the United States Code includes those laws relating to federal personnel matters.

2. Various groups of federal employees including those in the Department of Veterans Affairs, the intelligence community, and the Foreign Service have been exempted from provisions of Title 5 over the decades, but a large proportion of federal employees remain under traditional Title 5 rules.

3. Executive Order 13203 of 2001, Revocation of Executive Order and Presidential Memorandum Concerning Labor-Management Partnerships.

4. Executive Order 12871 of 1993, Labor-Management Partnerships.

5. See Executive Order 13522, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-creating-labor-management-forums-improve-delivery-government-servic. Accessed December 8, 2014.

6. Data retrieved from Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov.

7. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement. Accessed December 8, 2014.

8. See www.bestplacestowork.org. Accessed December 8, 2014

9. Categories assessed include employee skills/mission match, strategic management, teamwork, effective leadership, performance-based rewards and advancement, training and development, support for diversity, family friendly culture and benefits, pay, and work/life balance (http://www.bestplacestowork.org).

10. See Presidential Memorandum—Improving the Federal Recruitment and Hiring Process, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-memorandum-improving-federal-recruitment-and-hiring-process.

11. See Executive Order 13562, Recruiting and Hiring Students and Recent Graduates, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/27/executive-order-recruiting-and-hiring-students-and-recent-graduates.

12. Executive Order 13548, “Expanding Federal Employment for Individuals with Disabilities.”

13. Executive Order 13555, White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

14. Executive Order 13515, White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

15. Executive Order 13592, American Indian and Alaska Native Educational Opportunities.

16. Executive Order 13621, White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans.

17. Executive Order 13506, White House Council on Women and Girls.

18. Executive Order 13518, Expansion of Employment Opportunities in the Federal Government for Veterans, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2009-11-13/pdf/E9-27441.pdf. Accessed November 9, 2012.

19. Feds@Work: Initiative Grows Government Employment for Veterans. AOL Government, August 31, 2012, http://gov.aol.com/2012/08/31/opm-initiative-grows-number-of-federally-employed-veterans/. Accessed November 14, 2012.

20. “Update on GEAR Pilots,” presented January 18, 2012, to the National Council and Federal Labor-Management Relations, http://www.lmrcouncil.gov/meetings/handouts/GEAR%20Update%20January%2018-2.pdf. Accessed November 10, 2012.

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