A study is being carried out by the Office of Personnel Management in order to find out the reason behind government having a hard time disciplining non-performing employees. OPM Director, John Berry said that they are analyzing how the agency penalizes nonperformers.  He shared that an emphasizing on performance accountability will provide an opportunity for OPM to cooperate with new congressional leadership.

Mr. Berry further added that “We have a credibility problem with the public. They believe that we have a tenure system, and nonperformers aren’t held accountable for their performance and good performers aren’t rewarded. And that is reflected in our employee surveys. It is crystal clear that we have a problem — our own employees are telling us this.”

This study, at present, is only being done for OPM; however, Mr. Berry wants to extend it to other agencies as well.

Monday, November 1, was a momentous day in Washington, D.C.—particularly if you are a federal employee, or aspire to be. The date marked the end of government-wide use of Knowledge, Skills and Abilities tests.

Following the Excellence in Government conference held in the Ronald Reagan Building, Miss DC 2009 Jen Corey joined Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry and Center for Human Capital Innovation President Allen Zeman in a reception to “Hail” the new use of cover letters and resumes in the federal hiring process and bid “Farewell” to the much-maligned KSAs.

Director Berry announced that OPM is100 percent compliant with President Obama’s May memorandum mandating the abolition of KSAs. Berry is optimistic that all agencies can meet the requirements that the President laid out in his call for reform.

Berry concluded the toast by saying he looks forward to receiving the results of other agencies hiring reform attempts later this month.

Has your agency made any progress in regards to hiring reform? Why or why not? What do you think the mid-November progress reports will look like?

According to the National Council on Federal Labor Management Relations, agency managers are exerting too little effort to engage their employees and union representatives before entering decision-making processes that effect daily work.

At a recent council meeting, Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said that pre-decisional involvement, or gathering input from employees, needs to be performed more.

Executive Order 13522 mandates that agencies must include pre-decisional involvement “in all workplace matters to the fullest extent practicable.”

John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, voiced his dissatisfaction towards the council’s chairman, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry, saying, “A lot of people are getting soured, John, because the process is not happening.  Let’s get pre-decisional [involvement] moving.”

Does your organization practice pre-decisional involvement? How so?

Last Wednesday, the Senate approved a bill to broaden its federal telework programs. Under HR 1722, agencies now have 180 days to determine which of their individual employees are eligible to telework, and formulate a policy under which these workers could operate remotely.

In addition, in the case of government shutdowns similar to last winter’s snow storms, agencies are now required to incorporate telework into their continuity of operations plans. The bill also calls for increased education and training opportunities for government employees, managers, and supervisors in regards to the advantages of telework.

Patricia Niehaus, president of the Federal Managers Association, is one of many to voice her approval of the bill’s passage: “Telework has the potential to revolutionize federal agency operations and is a vital resource in meeting the challenges of retaining experienced professionals and enticing talented employees.”

Do you agree with Niehaus? Should the government implement more telework policies, or are there other, more worthy, issues that federal leaders should tackle first?

A key component of the hiring reform initiative finds its future existence in doubt, as few federal agencies expressed an interest in using it, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

The program in question is the Office’s centralized hiring register. In April of this year, OPM established the register for 13 of the most common jobs in the federal government, into which open positions like contracting specialists, accountants and secretaries could be placed.

The system sounds easy enough to use: When a hiring manager is required to fill a job opening, he can inform OPM via its register about the kind of skills he is looking for, and in turn, OPM would evaluate the applicants and rank them accordingly before handing over a list of suitable candidates to the aforementioned hiring manager.

Despite its user-friendly attributes, Ted Cuneo, chief of staff for Angela Bailey, OPM’s deputy associate director for recruitment and diversity, stated that during the first seven months of the hiring register program only 71 of 106,000 qualified job candidates were hired by the government. Cuneo further said that “OPM has been paying for [the registers] out of pocket. This was a freebie, and it’s not used much…we can’t continue doing this forever.”

OPM Director John Berry seems to disagree with Cuneo, however. In response to whether he thinks the register should be cut, Berry reiterated what he said earlier this year in a statement before a House subcommittee on hiring reform that the system is a huge time-saver, estimating that it saves federal agencies three weeks in the hiring process. He has no current intention to do away with the program.

Are you a federal hiring manager that has used the register? If not, do you plan to use it in the future? Why or why not?

In a memorandum released by OMB’s Shelley Metzenbaum on June 25, the Obama administration declares its intent to shift its emphasis from collecting information for government-wide reform initiatives to actually using the gathered data to improve performance outcomes.

Metzenbaum, associate director for performance and personnel management, called for agencies to consider this year a transition period in which they will focus more on performance planning, management, improvement and reporting framework.

To better track—and implement—the information it gathers, the administration aims to establish a single federal performance website to display organizations progress in achieving their targets.

While having a single source for all government agencies to log their performance data is undoubtedly a good idea, is it an active enough tool to ensure that performance is improved? Or does it fall more under the category of collecting data than actually implementing change?

How might you suggest the government go about ensuring performance improvement?

The Center for Human Capital Innovation (CHCI) convened its Human Capital Council for its second official meeting last Thursday, June 24, at PDRI’s offices in Arlington, VA. In light of President Obama’s May 11 memorandum on hiring reform, the private and public sector workers gathered to review the mandated changes and exactly how they could be implemented throughout the government.

Leadership Inc.’s Mark Abramson, the Graduate School’s Jack Maykoski, Dutko Worldwide’s Brian Sailer and PDRI’s Elaine Pulakos were among  those who discussed the past and future role of KSAs as assessment tools, OMB and OPM’s role in the reform, and whether or not November 1 was a feasible deadline date for the changes to be made government-wide.

Participants also chimed in on CHCI’s future, requesting more input on the content of the company’s magazine, Leadership Excellence in Government, and that portal memberships remain free. CHCI was also encouraged to expand portal membership to those with .com email addresses, in addition to those with .gov and .mil addresses.

Guests enjoyed a reception in PDRI’s lobby immediately following the session.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on the hiring reform process in the comments section. And, as always, suggestions for future meeting discussion topics are welcome.

CHCI President Dr. Allen Zeman, along with PDRI’s Elaine Pulakos, served as a panelist during Thursday’s hiring reform webcast featuring the Office of Personnel Management’s Angela Bailey and Andrea Bright. Bailey, Deputy Associate Director of the Recruitment and Diversity department, and Bright, head of Classification and Assessment Policy, were subjected to questions from some 300+ webcast participants on the subject of President Obama’s May 11 hiring memorandum and what it means for the federal government. Among the topics covered were categorical ratings, in-sourcing, the impact on veterans and the elimination of KSAs from job applications. CHCI is set to host a series of seven additional webcasts on the more specific components of the planned hiring reform through September, with an OPM official present at each session. The next webcast, “Defining ‘Valid and Reliable’ Assessment Tools and Processes”, is scheduled for July 13. For more information on the memorandum’s requirements, visit OPM’s website at www.opm.gov/hiringreform/

By Allan Schweyer

There is a strong consensus in Washington that the federal workforce should be more modern and flexible in the way that it gets work done. Just last week, President Obama argued that the impact of the DC snowstorms, which brought the city and the government to a standstill, could have been tempered if workers were better set up to telecommute and do their jobs from home.

John Berry, Director of the OPM, is experimenting with the Results Oriented Work Environment approach, known as ROWE. ROWE has transformed organizations like Best Buy – dramatically raising productivity and reducing turnover by focusing on what a worker gets done rather than where or when she does it.

ROWE operated as a clandestine operation in Best Buy headquarters for two years before the company’s CEO found out. He liked what he saw so much that the company has plans to implement the program organization-wide. Before Best Buy, Brazilian CEO, Ricardo Semler of Semco became famous for a “Treat them like adults” approach to his 5,000 person workforce. At Semco, employees work when and from where they want. Meetings, even those called by Semler himself are optional.  Semler’s policies were implemented about 20 years ago when the company had $4 million in annual revenues. Today, Semco is a $200 million plus multinational conglomerate.

No organization can or should borrow every element of even the most successful workforce programs from others. What worked at Best Buy and Semco, worked within their unique cultures. It is nevertheless clear that the federal government, which is comprised of a very high proportion of knowledge work, would gain tremendously from greater workforce flexibility and a focus on results rather than face time.