This is the title of the latest study released by the Partnership for Public Service, a bipartisan non-profit organization dedicated to Federal employees and their agencies. Research was conducted by PPS in conjunction with Grant Thornton, whereby 55 interviews were conducted with Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCOs - pronounced “Chicos”, as in “the man”) and other key HR leaders from 28 major Federal departments and other small agencies. The findings were released this morning at a forum attended by approximately 80 public sector, private sector and media this morning here in Washington, DC (myself included).

Eight major findings came out of the study:
1) HR and human capital related issues are considered front and center in today’s Federal environment.
2) The General Schedule (GS) pay system is outdated and needs to be modified.
3) Recruiting and hiring are increasingly too difficult for agencies.
4) Performance management is improving in pockets, but has a long way to go.
5) Skills among HR personnel are lacking.
6) The demographic gap between new Federal workers and pending retirees is increasing.
7) The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) get mixed reviews.
The HR Lines of Business (HRLOB) initiative, whereby intergovernmental service providers offer consolidated back-office functions, is met with cautious optimism.

During the Q&A portion of the forum, a very good panel comprised of Dr. Ron Sanders (Asst Deputy Director and CHCO, Office of the Director of National Intelligence), Marta Perez (CHCO, Department of Homeland Security) and Michele Pilipovich (Director of Human Resources, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation) were asked a series of questions. As an example, the panel was asked about the addressing the skills gaps among the ~20,000 HR professionals working in the Federal government. Sanders focused in three areas of need, namely “cultural anthropologist, systems architect and astrologist”, for HR needs to increasingly reflect the new world of diversity, be prepared to identify connective tissue via systems thinking, and apply foresight in planning for the future needs of the workforce and related agency goals. Perez agreed and spoke of a need for “forwardcasting”, and that the day-to-day transactional activities of HR personnel are limiting their ability to be consultative to the organization at large. Pilipovich provided a small agency perspective, adding that “mastering the basics [of Federal HR] can take years to develop”.

Although I have pages of other notes and findings, my overall impressions are that the CHCOs recognize that today’s employees have a choice and will not dedicate their life to public service. Instead, employees will “vote with their feet”, as Sanders put it, if the Federal government does not materially improve pay-for-performance, HR technology, opportunities for advancement, knowledge share/knowledge capture and service delivery. Another final note is that agencies are not only competing with the private sector for talent, but also battle one another for top candidates, leading some agencies into a perpetual backslide if they cannot find a means to circumvent current limitations to the HR offerings.

Let’s keep the conversation going.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 11:58 am and is filed under Human Capital/Human Resources, Public Sector. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.