The Blended Workforce and “Nonstandard” Work Arrangements
During the 2000s, attention within the federal HRM community was directed at what was labeled the “blended” or “multisector” workforce (Thompson and Mastracci 2005). The focus was on how federal agencies could balance the use of full-time employees with workers in alternative arrangements including part-time workers, seasonal workers, and contract workers. As an example, agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and the National Park Service that experience seasonal fluctuations in workload have found it advantageous to make extensive use of seasonal employees. The Naval Research Laboratory enters into contracts with staffing firms whereby individuals with specialized skills are brought in on a temporary basis to work alongside regular employees on a research project. Once the project is complete, the contract worker can be reassigned or simply released.
From the agency perspective, the use of contract workers in place of permanent employees offers significant advantages. First, staffing firms are not bound by federal hiring and pay restrictions and thus have recruitment advantages over the agencies. Second, permanent employees cannot be let go at the end of a project without going through lengthy reduction-in-force procedures. After the September 11 terrorist incident, the intelligence community relied heavily on contract employees in responding to congressional and executive branch demands that it ramp up its counterterrorism activities. By 2007, it was estimated that contract employees made up a third of the CIA’s workforce (Pincus 2007). Although the Bush administration was generally sympathetic to the use of contract employees, subsequent to 2006 when the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives, pressure was exerted to reduce the proportion of contract employees in favor of hiring more federal employees. In 2010, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy issued a policy memo instructing agencies to “avoid an overreliance on contractors for functions ‘closely associated with inherently government’ or that are ‘critical’ for the agency’s mission” (Brodsky 2010).
The Obama administration added a new element to the blended workforce discussion when a new policy facilitating the use of phased retirement was approved in 2012. Phased retirement is when a full-time employee retires but continues to work on a part-time basis. The new law permits agencies to allow select employees to retire but to remain employed on a half-time basis. These employees collect half their full-time salary as well as a corresponding proportion of their retirement annuities. The advantage of phased retirement from the perspective of the agency is that it is able to retain the knowledge and experience that long-time employees bring to the workplace. For example, some agencies use the part-time retirees to train or mentor new employees. Many older employees in turn prefer to remain active while working less than a full-time schedule.
The Obama administration has also promoted the use of telework by federal employees and in 2010 Congress passed the Telework Enhancement Act. Telework arrangements allow employees to work from their homes or from a remote location. Studies have shown that telework can assist with employee retention and recruitment, for example by reducing commuting time. Telework can also facilitate continuity of operations in case of an emergency or natural disaster. OPM has updated its procedures to direct employees with a telework agreement to work from home when the government closes an office for weather or as a consequence of other emergency conditions. Previously employees were provided administrative time off for those days. By the end of 2013, about half of federal employees were eligible to telework (Office of Personnel Management 2013).
New Directions
Hiring Reform
One area of activity where the Obama administration has left its mark is that of hiring reform. Hiring reform was a natural issue in which to get involved in light of the president’s appeal to members of the millennial generation and because of his interest in promoting public service. The slow and opaque nature of the federal government’s hiring process has long been identified as a deterrent to government service for newer workforce entrants. In 2006, the Merit System Protection Board issued a report in which it reported that “promising candidates interested in public service turn away from careers with the Federal Government because they cannot decipher the application process, cannot wait 6 to 9 months for a hiring decision, or cannot find a job offer that is competitive with other employees” (Merit Systems Protection Board 2006: 1).
In May 2010, President Obama issued a memorandum on “Improving the Federal Recruitment and Hiring Process.”10 The primary goal was to improve the notoriously complex hiring process while simultaneously making working for the government “cool again.” The president’s mandate made explicit demands that agencies overhaul the technical and structural aspects of hiring. Specifically, it mandated “plain language” and shorter job announcements, resume-only applications, expanded assessment and applicant referral (known as “category rating”), and significantly reduced time-to-hire periods. From a cultural standpoint, hiring reform requires that managers be held accountable for their role in the hiring process as part of their performance evaluation. Within a year, OPM announced that the average time-to-hire had dropped from 160 days to 105 days and that nearly 90 % of job announcements were five or fewer pages long.
Hiring the Next Generation
Consistent with its intent to make government service attractive to students and newer workforce entrants, the Obama administration overhauled the federal government’s internship programs. Prior to the new Pathways program, students interested in government employment were confronted with a confusing array of internship programs, each designed for a separate purpose. For example, under the Federal Career Intern Program (FCIP), students were hired for two-year internships that could be converted to permanent positions upon completing the program without having to compete with other applicants. The Student Temporary Experience Program (STEP) was intended to help students pay for college, while the work performed under the Student Career Employment Program (SCEP) had to relate to the academic and career goals of the student. Under STEP, the work did not have to relate to the student’s academic or career interests, and STEP participants were not eligible for noncompetitive conversion to permanent employment.
The FCIP and SCEP programs in particular were popular with agencies because of the flexibility they afforded in recruiting, assessing, and selecting job candidates. However, in 2010, the Merit Systems Protection Board found that FCIP violated provisions of Title 5 governing veterans’ preference and fair competition for jobs. Rather than revamp FCIP, President Obama determined to scrap the program along with SCEP and STEP in favor of a new set of Pathways student employment programs.
In December 2010, President Obama issued Executive Order (EO) 13562 entitled “Recruiting and Hiring Students and Recent Graduates.” The EO cites the benefits to the federal government from hiring students and recent graduates “who infuse the workplace with their enthusiasm, talents, and unique perspectives.”11 The executive order created three Pathways programs each targeting a different audience:
· Internship Program: The Internship Program is targeted at current undergraduates as well as at high school and trade school students with targeted skills sets. The primary purpose is to provide students with a means of financial support during their years in school.
· Recent Graduates Program: The purpose of the Recent Graduates Program is to promote careers in the federal government. Individuals within two years of graduation from qualifying educational institutions are eligible to apply.
· Presidential Management Fellows Program: According to the executive order, the Presidential Management Fellows Program “aims to attract to the Federal service outstanding men and women from a variety of academic disciplines at the graduate level who have a clear interest in, and commitment to, the leadership and management of public policies and programs.” To qualify, an individual must have received an advanced degree within the preceding two years. The goal is to appoint each fellow to a career-ladder position upon completion of the program. PMF graduates can generally enter the federal workforce at a level higher than others with similar qualifications and receive special recognition as prospective organizational leaders.
Unfortunately, as a consequence of continuing fiscal pressures faced by agencies, the number of internships and recent graduate hiring has plummeted, from a high of about 46,000 in 2010 to about 6,000 in 2013.
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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