TOPICS
TOPICS
Panelists call for change in human resources workforce and mission
Federal human resources offices must attract employees with a wider variety of skills and change the processes they rely on so they can devote more time and energy to strategic efforts, HR leaders said during a forum on Tuesday.
"The human resources field out there is changing rapidly," said John Palguta, vice president of policy for the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, which hosted the discussion. "We're looking at speeding up the hiring process, possibilities of pay reform in some shape or another, a new era of labor relations, perhaps, training and development...The concern is that first line of defense may have some holes."
Gail Lovelace, chief human capital officer at the General Services Administration, said she thought human resources officials often had difficulty focusing on their own personnel and training needs because their jobs require them to look out for other offices. But the panelists agreed that as economic stimulus spending and the pending retirement wave prompt large rounds of federal hiring, changes in the HR workforce are long overdue.
A related challenge for human resources professionals, the panelists said, is finding a place for themselves in strategic conversations about the future of their agencies, even while they perform traditional tasks such as hiring and benefits processing.
"We don't have a ticket to the strategy dance if we can't deliver on the transactional stuff," said Jeff Neal, CHCO at the Homeland Security Department. "If I have brilliant ideas for the future, but I can't get jobs filled on time, no one's going to listen to me."
Rick Hastings, deputy CHCO at the Treasury Department, said human resources officers should recruit people who can do more than the basics. For instance, skills in management consulting and knowledge of agencies' missions would be helpful, he said.
Neal, who was CHCO at the Defense Logistics Agency before joining Homeland Security, said DLA was able to improve its HR operations considerably by drawing distinctions between employees responsible for transactions such as hiring and benefits, and those in charge of strategic human capital planning. That structure made transactions more efficient by consolidating them, and freed up the strategy side to focus on long-term projects.
Lovelace said one priority should be updating HR technology and examining processes like hiring to see if they are as efficient as they could be. If agencies can make basic processes simpler and speed them up, HR offices could decrease staff devoted to transactional work and beef up the strategic side, she said.
And the panelists agreed that individual agencies must start improving their human resources processes and workforces without waiting for a governmentwide mandate. The process would be easier and faster if agencies share best practices and if officials don't expect the Office of Personnel Management to do the job for them, panelists agreed.
"We're going to have a champion, or we're not," said Suzy Barker, deputy CHCO at the Labor Department. "I've been part of subcommittees [and], I've been part of councils. I've been providing advice, energy, piloting things. And you just have to make up your mind to do it. This is like the Wizard of Oz to me. We all have the ruby slippers, and if we click three times, we can get home."
COMMENTS
- Michael, opine? that thesaurus is a great tool huh? If the "Tax payers" don't pay for the military salary so you can express yourself freely, who will? And yes, just as many private companies do, the military does give assistance to military members to obtain higher education. Education, training and experience lead to higher performance. Paying for education reaps much higher benefits than the initial cost. And helping those that put their lives on the line for us each day doesn't seem like a bad thing to me? Why don't you talk to a mother, father, spouse or child of a fallen soldier and then tell me about how you aren't even willing to just pay money to keep the country free. They paid with their lives, you only contributed money. If a veteran gets some preference over me getting a job, so be it. Why don't you go do something that makes a difference in the world? More than likely the rewards will be more than just preference for a job. Mike Fox Posted September 1, 2009 10:39 AM
- Hey Doug, You opine that "many of those veterans also earned degrees WHILE working in their career field." As a vet myself, why didn't you also state the fact, yep the FACT that these degrees were earned at full US taxpayer expense while these all volunteer admin support members were given a generous US taxpayer funded salary while they attended school, and were given an extremely generous US taxpayer furnished housing allowance (besides a meal allowance and other odds and ends allowances). And, oh yea, last but not least, let’s stipulate that all of these members 'earned' their way into these institutions of higher learning not by legitimately competing with other non-DOD prospective applicants but rather via a little known non-competitive back door that allows selected military members to gain de facto non-competitive acceptance? Yea, let's tell the whole story before you again opt to crawl atop of your self-praising and self- congratulatory soapbox. Michael J. Smith, MPA Posted August 27, 2009 2:00 PM
- wanting to work, enlist the military I'm sure can use your skills and then you can be hired once you have developed skills that mean something. What have you done for your country?? NOTHING dan m ketter Posted August 24, 2009 6:16 PM
