Key personnel officials identify obstacles to federal hiring reforms

By Joe Davidson
Wednesday, August 18, 2010; B03

President Obama's ambitious plans to reform the federal hiring process are in danger of being stalled by a corps of personnel staffers who are not equipped to do the job.

That's one jarring conclusion from 68 government chief human capital officers presented in a report that the Partnership for Public Service (PPS) planned to issue on Wednesday.

The "competency of HR workers" is one of seven "major obstacles to building a first-class federal workforce" identified by the officers, known as "CHCOs" (pronounced "chicos").

It's not that the human relations professionals are incompetent. They don't have the training or the technology needed to keep up with a quickly changing workplace.

Kathryn Medina, executive director of the Chief Human Capital Officers Council, said there are "unprecedented efforts by [the Office of Personnel Management] to train and educate federal agencies across the country on the reform initiatives."

The council, in partnership with OPM, "is working to deliver a federal-wide HR University to address the issue of training our federal workforce on critical skills and competencies," Medina added in an e-mailed statement. "The CHCOs themselves will decide where the training focus needs to be, and [will] groom and develop the next generation of HR professionals capable of handling the complex issues we face today and in the future."

Although the CHCOs fully support administration plans to overhaul the government's dysfunctional hiring process, "they expressed strong doubts that the human resources community, the very people who will be on the frontlines seeking to implement the hiring reform plan, are up to the task," the report says.

The HR bosses fear that new requirements coming with hiring reform could place their staffs even further behind.

"In fact, they believe the situation may get worse with new demands and expectations driven by the administration's hiring reforms and other initiatives," according to the PPS, a nonprofit organization that focuses on the federal workforce. (The PPS and The Washington Post have collaborated on projects in print and online.)

The reform efforts flow from a presidential memorandum Obama issued in May. It called for a major overhaul in the way the federal government hires. Among other things, federal agencies are moving to a résumé-based system, instead of one that relies more heavily on applicant essays. Agencies also will be required to keep in touch with candidates on a regular basis, rather than letting them go months without hearing anything, as has been common.

In addition to the competency of HR workers, obstacles identified by the CHCOs are hiring practices; federal pay, classification and performance-management systems; a sometimes tense relationship between OPM and other federal agencies; the leadership abilities of federal managers; substandard information technology systems; and labor relations.

John Palguta, a PPS vice president, interviewed the CHCOs between November 2009 and May 2010. He noted that they express a high degree of agreement with administration objectives concerning key personnel goals related to hiring, pay, collaboration with unions, veterans and diversity.

They also give high marks to Obama's point person on these subjects, OPM Director John Berry, but say they sometimes don't get the support they need from others in his agency. Medina and OPM declined to address a section of the report that says CHCOs feel some tension "over OPM's aggressive reform agenda that is straining the resources of some agencies. CHCOs also believe there is a disconnect between what OPM's leadership says and what some of the career OPM staff do."

In light of the growing expectations faced by HR professionals, Raymond Limon, the CHCO for the Corporation for National and Community Service, said he wonders, "Are my people in a position to keep up with the latest round of requirements?"

The PPS interviews found that a large majority of CHCOs see a need to beef up staff and believe that the General Schedule, the government's main personnel classification system, is "antiquated and too rigid." The rigidity "stymies the ability of managers to compensate workers fairly," the report says.

Although they want greater flexibility to pay workers, the CHCOs are not as keen on pay-for-performance systems as constituted when they were interviewed two years ago. Since then, Congress dismantled the government's largest such system in the Defense Department, citing scant support among workers.

Among their recommendations, the CHCOs suggest giving agencies greater hiring flexibility, such as the Federal Career Intern Program. Union leaders have long opposed that program, because they say it allows managers to circumvent civil service requirements.