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A group of academics wants to make a science out federal human capital management.

After two years of focus groups, data analysis and consultation with experts, The George Washington University's Center for Innovation in Public Service released a 76-page "Strategic Framework for Implementation of Human Capital Management in the Federal Government" in October, and is hosting a symposium on the results Dec. 12.

The scholars, whose work is sponsored by the consulting firm BearingPoint, aimed to help move federal agencies from being "people-averse" to "people-centric." Agencies also can fall in between these two levels of human capital maturity, the report said, by being "people-aware" or "people-aligned."

The report is intended for federal executives and agency chief human capital officers and boils workforce management down to charts, with fill-in slots, to diagnose and solve problems.

There are seven functions of human resources, according to the report: recruitment and hiring, retention, staff development, workforce planning, performance management, information sharing and personnel transaction support.

There are also three steps to human capital management: strategy, implementation and results. Within each of these are three to five mini-steps, such as "goals and objectives" or "organizational ability."

Put together, agency executives will find a dizzying array of factors to consider in their attempts "to increase the federal government as an employer of choice and to improve overall workforce productivity," the two primary human capital objectives, according to the center.

Proponents of personnel reform in government argue that employees need to move off the General Schedule to a performance-based pay and management system that is grounded in measurable results. Results would be shown in a performance matrix.

But the center's researchers found that human capital itself has no performance matrix.

"Human capital leaders and managers stressed for time recognize the strategic advantages of performance metrics, but they might not be familiar with developing and/or using them," the report stated. "Our ... framework aims to reduce the pain of climbing the learning curve by providing performance metrics across each HCM component and implementation step."

The researchers used the implementation of pay-for-performance schemes as an example. Their findings were based on interviews with three agencies: the Government Accountability Office, the program executive office for Enterprise Information Systems in the Army and the Washington field office of the FBI.

The report diagnosed a range of problems in implementing pay for performance. For one, the vision, which is part of strategy, is off.

Agency supervisors need to lay out a vision, in the form of clear performance criteria, so employees know what they are aiming for. Right now, too many agencies struggle with "vague and irrelevant performance assessment criteria," the report said.

The center's solution? Hold off on pay reform.

"Despite the urgency expressed by political leaders for civil service pay reform, until perceptual and actual problems are addressed, conversion to pay for performance is ill advised," the report said. "At the vision and policy level, agency leaders must develop, in concert with the rank and file, sound performance management guidelines with leadership commitment to funding and other resource support."

Dr. Kathryn Newcomer was the principal investigator for the report. Deborah Trent, Brent Bushey, Charlene Johnson, Mike Davis and Allen Cermak made up the rest of the center's research team.

COMMENTS

• In looking over the report, it is basically a good approach, and resonates with elements found in generic approaches such as Baldrige and strategy mapping, among others. So, it's essentially a compilation of arguably "best planning/operating practices" as applied to a specific area: human capital management. It seems to suffer from a common ailment of reports, in that it promotes its recommendations from an underlying assumption of pie-in-the-sky selflessness on the part of those who would implement it. If that level of altruism were truly in abundance, there would be no need for the study in the first place. As to Joseph's wish list, a few comments: (1) Reform federal contracting (the money fountain will still flow)-- other than competence on the part of those setting up contracts, I'm not sure what the connection is to human capital. (2) Raise federal pay scales across the board -- an important factor, but many or most surveys on job satisfaction do not find pay as a primary motivator. Would higher pay really make the low-turnover, existing workforce work harder or smarter? (3) Raise the bar on hiring (skills, certifications, require exams) -- remember PACE and why it had to be dumped? It would take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and validate tests for individual occupations. After all that, if the results were found to be culturally or racially biased based on score rates, I guarantee they, too, would be dumped. Also, given the low turnover, at what point would this begin to make a difference in the quality of the workforce? Also, certification of current employees would get tied up in litigation for years. (4) Raise benefits -- this would be a harder sell then raising wage rates. (5) Kill the current expensive assault on the personnel system; just make sure the old rules are properly enforced -- if the old rules were properly enforced, we'd need few changes of any sort, anywhere. EJC in ATL GovExec.com reader Posted November 16, 2006 8:06 AM
• I agree. Put off pay reform for federal employees. The proposed National Security Personnel System (NSPS) would take money out of federal employees’ pockets and put it into a so-called "pay pool." Supervisors and managers would then decide which of their pet employees get the money from the "pay pool" with so-called performance-based awards and bonuses. NSPS is ripe for abuse and corruption. NSPS would reverse the Civil Service Reform act and put patronage back into federal service. Ronald W Ballew Posted November 15, 2006 10:14 PM
• In response to the question from Marty Emory, the Dec. 12 symposium will be held from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Jack Morton Auditorium in George Washington University's Media and Public Affairs Building. That building is located at 805 21st St. N.W., Washington, D.C. The contact for the event is: Allen Cermak, (202) 994-5731 or cips@gwu.edu GovExec.com Posted November 15, 2006 1:52 PM