Six months after President Obama’s May memorandum mandating hiring reform government-wide, the Department of Defense seems to be making serious strides. According to the Federal Times, The DoD is just one of federal agencies that have made considerable progress in reducing the time taken to hire new employees.

Kathy Ott, acting deputy undersecretary of defense for civilian personnel policy, says the DoD now takes 79 days on average to hire new employees, as compared to 151 days on average this past January. At a hiring reform event held at the Housing and Urban Development Department’s headquarters, Ott vouched for the faster, more efficient hiring of civilians.

“DoD understands the need for, and has embraced, hiring reform,”Ott said. “Hiring qualified talent and making sure it is available when we need it is a key to our mission readiness. It is critical we have the civilian talent we need to support our warfighters. There is nothing more important.”

Attracting good candidates and developing useful hiring assessments are next on many agencies hiring reform to-do lists.

Are you surprised that DoD has reduced their time to hire from 151 to 79 days? Do you work at an agency that has similarly reduced its time to hire? Share your hiring reform experience with us in the comments.

HR 1722, or the Telework Enhancement Act, recently passed by Congress, aims to dramatically increase the amount of federal employees who participate in telework programs. Rather than mandating a specific number of federal workers that must telework, however, the bill simply requires agencies to determine within six months which employees are eligible to telework, to notify them, and to set a policy for them to do so.

Managers and employees are expected to work together to outline what will be expected of everyone in the new environment. Officials hope that the new legislation will cast telework in a better light and encourage more people to work remotely.

In 2008, just 102,900—less than nine percent of the 1.2 million employees eligible to telework that year—did so. This number is down from the 110,600 who teleworked in 2006.

In addition to work-life balance benefits, telework is proven to drastically reduce costs: The Patent and Trademark Office said it has saved $11 million in office space over the 13 years its employees have teleworked.

President Obama is expected to sign the bill in the coming weeks.

How do you feel about this bill? Do you—or anyone within your agency—telework?

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?

In an executive order issued by President Obama this Monday, federal agencies have been instructed to take adequate steps in order to increase the number of disabled persons that they employ.

The order states that an additional 100,000 disabled Americans need to be hired over the next five years—an order originally mandated in a July 2000 executive order from former President Clinton.

President Obama justified the plan, stating that “As the nation’s largest employer, the federal government must become a model for the employment of individuals with disabilities. Executive departments and agencies must improve their efforts to employ workers with disabilities through increased recruitment, hiring and retention of these individuals.”

Currently, approximately 54 million Americans have a disability. Through the implementation of this order, President Obama aims to remove the stigma attached to disabled workers and to encourage disabled Americans to actively aspire to be a part of the federal workforce.

Is this initiative a worthwhile one? How should agencies go about recruiting more disabled employees?

Findings from the largest survey ever of the federal workforce, and the first to be conducted by the Obama administration, were released Monday morning. The results demonstrate that while employees are mostly satisfied with their jobs, they remain unconvinced that career advancement in the government is based on merit.

Of the 500,000 workers who received copies of the survey in February and March, a little more than half returned their responses.

Over half of the respondents—56 percent— said they have a high level of respect for agency leadership, with 8 in 10 enjoying the work they do and more than 90 percent believing that their job is important.

In light of all the headlines conveying the public’s poor perception of Obama and the U.S. government in general, these statistics are good news.  It would be interesting to note, however, how the numbers would change (if at all) had every worker, and not just half, filled out their survey form. Would the results remain as positive or would there be more of a balance between the satisfied and unsatisfied employees?

Rather than conducting the review every other year, as they have done since 2002, the Office of Personnel Management will now perform the survey annually. The Partnership for Public Service will use OPM’s data for its annual “Best Places to Work” review, due in September.

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.

In February 2010, the White House proposed a General Schedule pay raise of 1.4 percent for federal civilian employees, effective in 2011. However, in April 2010, the Senate voted to freeze the pay for the members of Congress. They unanimously voted against the $1,600 pay raise that Congress members were scheduled to get the next year.

The federal pay freeze proposal was defeated on June 18 when the Senate rejected it due to the size of the workforce. The chamber also dismissed an amendment by Senator John Thune (R-SD) which was aimed at paying for a tax and jobs bill by dropping federal bonuses and the 2011 pay raise.

Senator Thune defended his proposed amendment, stating, “The alternative amendment I proposed was a common sense step toward restoring fiscal sanity to our nation’s runaway spending and ballooning deficit.” He further added that “the defeat of my amendment was a missed opportunity for Congress to prove they are serious about tackling our dangerous spending habits and $13 trillion national debt. This amendment would have lowered taxes for families and small businesses as they struggle through these challenging times.”

Senator Ted Kaufman (D-Del), argued that the Republicans were using incorrect information regarding federal pay and bonuses; he stated, “Over the years, as I’ve witnessed countless acts of personal courage, devotion to country and real sacrifice” by federal employees, but “I have also seen and heard such disheartening and baseless attacks against those who choose to serve. The pending amendment is just the latest assault”.

By Allan Schweyer

President Obama has so far held the line on civil servant salary increases. But is he making a mistake? Public opinion isn’t likely to go against the President on this one.

USA Today, GovCentral.com, Reuters and many others have recently reported that Federal Government compensation is already out of line with private sector pay across the country, some even suggest pay cuts to reduce the deficit.

Most articles fail to differentiate between a Federal civil service comprised mainly of college-educated, knowledge workers and a private sector workforce that is, on average, less educated and more blue-collar. On the other hand, few private sector organizations offer the range of benefits and job guarantees that civil servants are used to.

Are federal civil servants overpaid or overcompensated when all factors are considered? Are the comparisons to the private sector fair? This issue will be a hot one as the President and Congress seek ways to rein in spending and control massive deficits. It is also a potentially dangerous issue for civil servants, as they could be made scapegoats for a problem that Americans from all sectors of the economy helped to create.

Comments welcome, let’s hear your thoughts.

For any large organization, managing the risks of using independent contractors is a tremendous burden. The whole question of 1099 vs W2 worker classification is perplexing, and the coemployment aspect of 1099 risk plus the fear of contractor lawsuits makes things even murkier.

But for federal contractors — those organizations that do business with our government — the bar is set much higher, and the consequences for getting things wrong are far more worrisome.

So what’s so special about 1099 risk for federal contractors?

Two things: Enforcement of Tax Compliance, and the new E-Verify rules.

Tax Compliance

Every year, the federal government pays more than half a trillion dollars to contractors  from a wide variety of goods and services. Yet, the GAO has discovered that tens of thousands of contractor companies owe the government over $5 billion in unpaid taxes . . . and are still permitted to bid for and win lucrative federal contracts.

In January, President Obama signed an executive memorandum calling out federal contractors that fail to pay their taxes. The action would allow the IRS to share tax information with contracting officers and block federal contractors from winning future contracts if they are seriously tax delinquent.

Those of you who read our Contract Talent Blog regularly may already understand that a company that misclassifies workers as independent contractors — whether knowingly or unknowingly — can end up seriously tax delinquent. Getting worker classification right, and applying the correct independent contractor test to ensure 1099 compliance, is critical.

It may be inconvenient for a regular business to have to jump through the compliance hoops to properly handle contract labor and contractor compliance, but for a federal contractor heavily reliant on doing business with the government, this is no longer an option.

Next steps: If you have reason to believe your business is mis-classifying employees as independent contractors, it is time to do a full contractor assessment. Seek the guidance of a third party Independent Contractor Engagement Specialist if you do not have the compliance expertise in house.

E-Verify

The second unique aspect that federal contractors face with regard to independent contractor use is E-Verify.

Federal contractors out of compliance with E-Verify can face debarrment from federal contracting, bottom line. And yet, many (if not most) major federal contractors are using independent contractors that would likely not pass a reclassification audit.

These may seem like separate issues, but they aren’t. If you are not correctly classifying your workers, and have misclassified employees sitting in the 1099 contractor bucket, then guess what . . . . you have not used E-Verify on those workers.

Next steps: Be sure that the hiring of independent contractors and sub-contractors is highlighted in your business as an area of tremendous risk. Centralizing a compliance process for independent contractor classification should help. Be certain that you implement new risk management processes going forward, and then go back and take care of incumbent 1099s working in your organization.

The Take Away

Independent contractor compliance is, for many businesses, the weakest link. For a federal contractor, the stakes are even higher. Failure to properly classify workers (1099 vs W-2) may be the end of your ability to do business with Uncle Sam in the short term or the long term. Whether the determination comes from the IRs and your tax delinquency, or if it comes from DHS and your failure to use E-Verify on all required employees, you are now being held to a higher standard of compliance.

Unfortunately, 1099 risk isn’t going away any time soon. In fact, at every level — legislation, enforcement, lawsuits — the climate is getting more rigorous.

The best practice is to perform your own internal audit now — leveraging the expertise you need from specialists in contract talent risk mitigation — before a regulatory agency steps in and does it for you.

Or as Nat King Cole sang so memorably, “Straighten Up and Fly Right!”

Bonus: Click here for your complimentary PDF download of, “E-Verify Requirements for Contractors.” This paper, jointly produced by MBO Partners and Michael Best & Friedrich, LLP, highlights the special concerns federal contractors should attend with regard to using Independent Contractors and the current E-Verify rules. No registration required for full text access.

Is your business concerned about the new Obama memo on tax delinquency? Or are you confused by the E-Verify requirements?