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During his first press briefing on Monday, the government's new personnel chief said one of his priorities is ensuring that agency leaders take responsibility for workforce issues, including the hiring process.

"I think that each agency, they have to be totally accountable for human capital," said Michael Hager, director of the Office of Personnel Management. "There's only one thing that makes everything function, and that's human capital... The leadership at the top absolutely owns it."

He noted that he worked at Banc One Corp. during a period when the company was bringing on more than 10,000 new employees annually. That experience made him realize the importance of a smooth hiring process, he said. Hager assigned regional leaders to oversee hiring and required them to report back regularly.

Hager added that his experience at the Veterans Affairs Department, where he sought to minimize the time it took to hire new employees, also would inform his approach to OPM's new hiring roadmap.

It's not enough for agencies simply to meet the goal of filling new positions within 80 days of posting them, Hager said. As soon as a major agency or department sets a record for speed, that benchmark will become the next governmentwide goal, he added.

"What I call the hiring thing, in my opinion for HR, is the single biggest customer issue that we have," Hager said.

As associate administrator in the Office of Capital Access at the Small Business Administration he realized "that was a big deal," he added. "I was not in HR and I constantly complained about the hiring thing. At VA, literally from the day I interviewed, the hiring thing was the biggest irritant we had at the VA."

Hager also said he would work to make the transition to a new presidential administration smooth, though he did not provide much detail.

The new OPM chief sounded cautionary notes on direct hire authority and the troubled RetireEZ contract, and he downplayed reports of a dispute with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., over a proposal to move some federal employees to a four-day workweek.

Hager said OPM should retain its authority to sign off on direct hiring. His predecessor, Linda Springer, had approved some expansions of that authority such as letting agencies fill certain acquisition positions through direct hires.

"I do think you have to be very careful with direct hire authority," he said. "I think in some places it works well. You do not want to create a policy or a philosophy that would distract from our desire to hire veterans."

And Hager said he would not make a decision about how to proceed with the RetireEZ contract until sometime in October. OPM officials suspended that contract in late May after they decided that Hewitt Associates had done an unsatisfactory job developing a new retirement calculator, dealing a blow to one of Springer's priorities.

Hager also said he thought that he and Hoyer actually were not very far apart on the goal of promoting flexible schedules for more federal employees. Hoyer has called for agencies to move more employees to a four-day workweek with longer daily schedules, and asked OPM to provide more details on how many employees would be eligible. Hager and Hoyer have not yet spoken directly about the issue.

"We have a wonderful set of programs, where flexible schedules, [telework], are available," Hager said. "Almost 50 percent of our population participates in these programs."

But he said alternate schedules should not be mandatory.

"Explain that to someone who needs child care," Hager said. "They won't take my child for 11 hours a day. We'd rather say, 'Does it fit for you?'"