GovernmentExecutive.com

"Uncle Sam wants you" could become the federal government's motto. With a record number of workers nearing retirement, the government needs to attract new talent and provide greater incentives for seasoned employees to stay on the job.

Congress and the Bush administration have been floating education proposals and civil service reforms designed to offset a talent drain. Over the next decade, about 60 percent of the 1.8 million full-time federal employees will be eligible for retirement, including 90 percent of senior executives.

"Aggressive and immediate action is needed to strengthen the federal service, match new skills to current challenges, and build a government that the public deserves and the times demand," said Max Stier, president of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service.

Office of Personnel Management Director Linda Springer announced last week that her agency has sent a proposal to Congress to allow workers who retire from the civil service to work part-time while still earning their full annuity and salary. Current law cuts their salaries by the amount of their pensions if they come back to work for the government, so retirees often shift to working for government contractors. Allowing retirees to return to the federal sector without being penalized would enable the government to fill critical skills gaps and train the next generation of employees, Springer said.

Beyond retirement incentives, Stier suggests that one of the government's greatest challenges is recruiting talented young people to the workforce. While the military spends millions of dollars on targeted marketing campaigns to attract recruits, the civilian side is lagging, he said. OPM rolled out an advertising campaign last year designed to attract people to the recruiting Web site USAJOBS.gov. Tens of thousands of additional visits to the Web site have been made by residents living in the media markets where the ads aired, according to OPM spokesman Mike Orenstein.

In Congress, several proposals aim to make the federal workforce more appealing to the next generation of workers. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Reps. Jim Moran, D-Va., and Christopher Shays, R-Conn., have proposed creating an undergraduate public service academy that would offer free tuition to approximately 5,000 students in exchange for five years of public service. But with a price tag of over $205 million a year, new appropriations could be difficult to secure. "I think the [academy] is a very positive move to try to focus around government service," Stier said. "I think we need to look at the most cost-efficient way of doing it."

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, has offered legislation that would boost repayment of student loans for new employees. Under current law, federal departments and agencies pay student loans up to $10,000 per year with a cumulative cap of $60,000, but the incentive is taxed. The legislation would make the loan repayment program tax-free for incoming federal workers; Voinovich touts his plan as a cost-efficient approach that would make the federal workforce more competitive with the private sector.

"The Partnership for Public Service has long championed [Voinovich's] legislation because we know that the burden of student-loan debt drives many talented people away from public service in favor of high-paying, private-sector jobs," Stier said.

From its start, the Bush administration has proclaimed that the key to making federal employment competitive is to replace the decades-old General Schedule pay system with one that ties pay to annual performance evaluations. But its proposed Working for America Act, which would have imposed pay-for-performance on all federal agencies, has not attracted much interest on Capitol Hill. And although some agencies, notably the Defense and Homeland Security departments, have implemented such a system, federal labor unions have strongly opposed it, arguing that it encourages cronyism and political manipulation, and would cut salaries in the long term. Providing "leadership would do more to improve the quality of applicants and performance than alternative personnel systems and pay-for-performance projects as proposed by the administration," said National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley.

Stier holds that the government's outdated pay system fails to reward and recognize employee achievements, and that replacing it is essential to improving the government's competitive edge. "Talented people at all levels, from new college graduates to seasoned professionals, look to work in environments that reward and recognize effort and results," he said.

This article was originally published in National Journal.

COMMENTS

• This problem can't be fixed until USAJOBS is fixed. It is not the one-stop application site that OPM claims it to be. Almost every agency has its own (probably contract) application system that USAJOBS only links to. The site also claims that one can determine one's status by going to USAJOBS after filing an application. This isn't true either. Most agencies do not follow up and most never tell the applicant what happened. Only the Department of State seems to do this, and they do it well. Maybe OPM should find out how they do it and fix the hiring process. Why go through the federal quagmire for a job when corporate HR departments can hire in two or three weeks? And why isn't anyone paying attention to this problem? 20 Year Employee Posted June 4, 2007 7:35 AM
• The Leader in Motion program is a good one. However, the Government forgot to take care of their own again. I might be approaching 50 but still I have at least 20 more years of working before I can retire. The government encourage it employees to continued their education. Now at least 50% of the work force went back to school and received their degrees and some or still young enough to be future leaders, remind you now they have the degrees and the experience and they go out and hire fresh college kids to come in and management us. What a slap in the face. They need to work their way up like the rest of us. A person does not go into the military a SGM or a General they have to work their way up the ladder and in Corporate America. Most of these young people do not know how to handle diversity issues. My solution is for every college student hired and inside person should be hire and the two can buddy together and climb the ladder together this could accommodate the new LIM a lot better than having them be trained by annoyed and un cooperating employees whom has felt jilted. DFAS Employee Posted May 22, 2007 10:45 AM
• The government does have a few good hiring practices such as the Federal Career Intern Program and the Student Career Educational Program. The SCEP program allows you to hire college students either year round or during school breaks, gives the student experience in their chosen field, and management can either pay their tuition for courses that pertain to the job (i.e. science, technology, admin, etc.) or use the student loan repayment benefit upon their hire. Hiring is non-competitive upon graduation and if paying their tuition the student is required to guarantee a certain number of years within civil service or pay back the cost of tuition. The FCIP program hires college grads (for one) right out of school filling career ladder positions. Using a variety of recruiting tools we have been able to replace/add approximately 20 percent of our workforce over the last 3 years with younger applicants ready to commit to a civil service career. We even offer moving expenses to some. Most of our recruits have been in hard to fill positions (engineering and IT), but that in itself has allowed us to compete with the private workforce by offering hiring bonuses (up to 25 percent of base pay) and a first promotion at 6 months instead of 12. We still lag behind in base pay compared to the private sector - but we make up for it in job stability, quick career ladder promotions, and the ability to move throughout the world and retain their benefits. We are now looking towards a formal leadership program to start our first hires on the track towards management. There are tools out there to use, one just needs to search and learn. Why aren't these hiring tools promoted more within civil service? Marsha Davenport Posted May 7, 2007 1:09 PM