Government Executive - Authors - Robert M. Tobias

Federal collective bargaining is in the U.S. national interest

Robert M. Tobias and Ronald Sanders — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 14:27:00 -0400

While we come from different sides of the federal bargaining table—one a Democrat and former union president, and one a long-time management advocate at that table, as well as a political appointee in the first Trump administration—we both support collective bargaining in the federal sector because we believe in it. Without question, it is the most effective workplace problem-solving mechanism devised by our government.

Why do we need to say this now, on Labor Day 2025? Because we believe that (a) our country has enough problems to deal with, most of which require some sort of government involvement, and (b) we believe that federal unions and the frontline federal civil servants they represent are critical to solving those problems. They contribute to the health of our republic and our government. However, those civil servants have come under furious, unjustified assault by the Trump Administration, in part by two recent actions by the president.

First, President Trump’s Executive Order 14251, issued on March 27 of this year, banned 75% of federal employees currently covered by collective bargaining agreements, ostensibly on the grounds that such bargaining—particularly by “hostile” federal employee unions—undermines our national security. And second, in a separate presidential memorandum, POTUS banned those same employees from voluntarily having their union dues deducted from their agency paychecks and remitted to their unions, making it much more difficult for those unions to acquire the financial resources necessary to effectively engage in collective bargaining.

We must also note that President Trump, in an ironic effort to “commemorate” this Labor Day, just moved on Aug. 27 to exclude even more federal agencies from collective bargaining on these very same “national security” grounds, but the points we make herein remain valid: That is, if POTUS and/or an agency head he has appointed feels that collective bargaining with a federal union has somehow impacted national security, far more precise procedures already exist in current law to raise and adjudicate that concern.

But we believe that President Trump, whether with his past and most recent actions, has failed to provide a convincing rationale for the twin bans, and as a consequence, he should rescind them both, so that our frontline colleagues, those who represent the interests of federal agencies and their employees, can get on with the difficult business of resolving workplace disputes.

Executive Order 14251 simply fails to make a case

Here’s our rationale. Executive Order 14251, cited above, as well as his more recent Aug. 27 order, lists those agencies that POTUS has now declared as having “...as their primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work” as enumerated in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act’s title VII, the Federal Labor Management Relations Statute. And the vast majority of those agencies currently have collective bargaining agreements with the unions representing their employees.

Thus, despite literally decades to the contrary—with workplace disputes effectively resolved via the CSRA—the president’s order would preclude employees in cabinet departments and executive agencies from Commerce to Agriculture and Labor to Veterans Affairs from participating in collective bargaining, including the likes of VA nurses, Social Security claims examiners, IRS customer service representatives, National Park Service rangers, analysts with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and more. Why? Because POTUS asserts that bargaining over their terms and conditions of employment (just as their private sector counterparts and even their contractors do), would allegedly impact our national security.

But neither the EO and its accompanying fact sheet, nor the president’s most recent action, explain how those federal employees, all currently represented by labor organizations, fit the national security criteria in existing law. In our view, a president’s bare and bold declaration that the criterion is applicable, made without any explanation whatsoever, is not convincing enough to supersede that law. We also note that employees in the CIA, National Security Agency and FBI, whose position descriptions describe their national security work, have been validly excluded from participating in collective bargaining for years, by President Carter’s 1979 Executive Order 11271.

Interestingly, those federal employees who may actually impact national security—such as law enforcement officers like uniformed Border Protection personnel in the Department of Homeland Security, whose union has been a strong and vocal supporter of President Trump—are not covered by any such national security exclusion. So says the fact sheet accompanying EO 14251. Why are those employees allowed to bargain and VA nurses, CDC analysts, IRS customer service representatives, etc., are not?

The president’s executive orders are a solution in search of a problem.

The 1978 CSRA already provides two complementary procedures to prevent “national security” from invading the sphere of federal collective bargaining.

First, if an agency believes that a union proposal directly or indirectly impedes national security, it can declare that proposal “non-negotiable” and thereafter, it can simply refuse to bargain any further on that proposal. If the union disagrees with that agency’s non-negotiability determination, it can file a negotiability appeal with the Federal Labor Relations Authority, an agency established by the 1978 CSRA, and have it adjudicated. And if it loses, it may appeal to the federal courts.

Moreover, if there’s a national security exigency, Section 7106(a)(2)(D) of that same 1978 CSRA states an agency may “take any actions that may be necessary to carry out the agency mission in the case of an emergency,” including superseding the terms of an existing collective bargaining agreement. Thus, if an unexpected but bona fide national security issue emerges and impedes an agency’s operation because of its collective bargaining obligations, that agency can declare an emergency and act.

But the president’s orders cite no specific national security threat or incident, past, present or future. Thus, they are unnecessary.

Potential “inconvenience” is not enough to abolish federal collective bargaining

The White House’s fact sheet accompanying EO 14251 states “The CSRA enables hostile Federal unions to obstruct agency management” (emphasis added), and it points to an agency’s inability to unilaterally open existing collective bargaining agreements or to implement midterm changes until that midterm bargaining is completed. It also points to the fact that “the largest Federal union is wildly filing grievances” in an effort to thwart the administration’s agenda. To us that sounds like the give-and-take of a normal collective bargaining relationship, one that Congress has long concluded is in the national interest, first in the U.S. private sector and subsequently, in the U.S. federal government.

A bit of history is in order here. Congress first sanctioned collective bargaining in the private sector with the 1935 Wagner Act because it “encourage(d) practices fundamental to the friendly adjustment of industrial disputes.” President Kennedy later applied that same rationale to the federal sector in 1962 when he signed Executive Order 10988, and President Nixon reaffirmed it in Executive Order 11491 in 1971. Those executive orders—as well as their rationale and their adjudicatory model—were subsequently codified in federal law by a bipartisan Congress in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, which included the Federal Labor-Management Relations Statute as its Title VII.

In so doing, that bipartisan Congress passed the CSRA by a vote of 85 to 1 in the Senate and 365 to 8 in the House, declaring that “...experience in both private and public employment indicates that the statutory protection of the right of employees to organize, bargain collectively, and participate through labor organizations...safeguards the public interest... contributes to the effective conduct of public business, and facilitates and encourages the amicable settlements of disputes...therefore, labor organizations and collective bargaining in the civil service are in the public interest.”

Congress was fully aware of what it was doing. Their action then and now represents literally decades of unequivocal support for the push and pull and give and take of collective bargaining. While federal unions may “frustrate” agencies and delay this or any president’s agenda in a non-emergency situation, that frustration is not a justification for extinguishing the right of federal employees to bargain in the federal sector and thereby ignore the public interest that that bargaining serves.

Workplace disputes will still be resolved, no matter what

The reality is that the federal collective bargaining has been supported by every presidential administration, Republican and Democrat, since 1978, save one. For example, presidents from John F. Kennedy to George H.W., Bush supported traditional collective bargaining, and while President Clinton ordered agencies to take a more collaborative approach, as did President Obama, intervening Republican presidents swung the pendulum back to a more traditional model, including President Trump in his first term. However, the current POTUS would go further and eliminate that process altogether, under the guise of ‘national security.’

But we fear that President Trump’s actions, which abolish collective bargaining in most of the federal government because “it cannot be applied...in a manner consistent with national security requirements and considerations,” together with President Trump’s willingness to discharge any federal manager or union leader who fails to follow his policy, will discourage all such contact between political appointees and/or career federal officials and union representatives. All of the benefits of collective bargaining in the federal government will cease. And that is bad.

Bottom line: The actions of the Trump Administration are unnecessary, unjustified and not in the public interest. They should be rescinded, either by the president himself and/or by the Congress.

Both Robert Tobias and Ron Sanders are elected Fellows of the National Academy of Public Administration. Sanders, a civil servant for almost 40 years (over 20 as a member of the Senior Executive Service), served as director of civilian personnel for the Defense Department, chief human resources officer for IRS—where he first met Robert Tobias—and associate director for HR strategy at OPM, as well as the chair of the Federal Salary Council in the first Trump Administration. Tobias is the former National President of the National Treasury Employees Union, where among other things, he served as the "voice’"of over 90,000 IRS employees; he has also been a longtime leader and commentator on the federal labor movement.

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The Pandemic Has Created an Opening to Improve Federal Labor-Management Relations

Robert M. Tobias — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 10:45:01 -0400

When data showed that federal employees maintained, and in some cases increased, productivity after the Office of Personnel Management urged agencies to impose mandatory telework wherever possible to combat the spread of COVID-19, the loudest critics of telework were silenced. In a recent report, the Defense Department’s inspector general found that almost 9 in 10 survey respondents said their productivity level remained the same or increased after maximum telework went into effect.

Will the positive results be sustained with a new workforce model as federal employees are able to return to offices? Or will the data be ignored and agencies return to their previous practices?

The pandemic experience offers a unique opportunity for change because old assumptions about the effectiveness of telework were blown up by the data. It is an opportunity for new assumptions tied to increasing employee productivity with less stress and more satisfaction.

Labor-management relations may have much to say about the path forward.

When President Biden signed Executive Order 14003, he made the “methods and means of performing work” a mandatory subject of bargaining. Federal employees, through their unions, will have a seat at the bargaining table when the post COVID implementation of telework is defined.

If, however, union and management leaders continue the adversarial collective bargaining relationships fostered over the last four years, the focus will be limited to union leaders seeking maximum work flexibility for employees, and management leaders seeking maximum discretion to determine who is allowed to telework and when.

Winners and losers will be determined by which position prevails. Most likely, the final outcome will please no one, other than arbitrators getting rich deciding multitudinous grievances.

Another option is for unions and managers to collaborate to find solutions that support the interests of both employees and managers in the new reality. A new, more collaborative relationship could start with a joint effort to gather data from employees and managers, for example, about what behaviors of managers and employees were critical to the success; what additional equipment is needed; what job characteristics allow for 100% telework; and what are the real impacts of mixing work with other home responsibilities. How widespread was the prevalence of burnout?

Based on the data, negotiators might explore, for example, an expanded agenda to determine:

What policies might be adopted to support the successful changed behavior?
What child-care subsidies are needed to support teleworking parents?
How can work processes be reorganized to eliminate burnout?
Which core hours are critical and which are convenient?
What actions and activities might address loneliness for remote workers?
How can leaders foster professional development and career networking in a virtual environment?

A change from adversarial to collaborative relationship to resolve mutual problems requires a change of mindset. Both management and union leaders need to move beyond mutual suspicion and create an atmosphere of mutual trustworthiness—a change that must be earned. Perhaps specifically carving out the telework negotiations as a collaboration experiment with the right to return to regular bargaining, might provide the protection needed by both parties to try a different approach.

When the path forward is unclear, the parties have a real opportunity to creatively improve the work environment to the advantage of employees, managers, and the taxpayer.

Robert M. Tobias is distinguished practitioner in residence at the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University, and the former president of the National Treasury Employees Union.

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Collaboration Between OPM and OMB: Is It Even Possible?

Robert M. Tobias — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 08:00:00 -0400

In a recently issued report, “Elevating Human Capital: Reframing the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s Leadership Imperative,” the National Academy of Public Administration responded to former President Trump’s attempt to choke off OPM’s independent HR policy development and implementation role. To those who may have forgotten, the prior administration insisted that all HR policies initiated by OPM first be approved by the White House Office of Management and Budget’s deputy director for management. It then closed off independent policy development by dual-hatting the OMB management director as the acting director of OPM. To guarantee total control, the former president sought to permanently eliminate OPM’s policy role created in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, by merging OPM into the White House budget office.

NAPA recommended instead that Title 5 be amended to elevate the role of the OPM director to become “the principal advisor to the president on human capital” (emphasis in original), to provide “governmentwide leadership in strategic human capital management,” rather than reporting to the OMB deputy director for management; an expansion of its new role to include all civilian personnel systems; and to “lead in the development of data and data analytics … to inform policy, oversight, and services.”

NAPA’s rationale was to ensure the OPM director remains a non-political, independent “steward of the merit system,” and to improve the quality of HR data collection “to realize the untapped potential of data analytics as key drivers and assets in human capital development.”

If these recommendations are adopted, the OPM director will not report through the OMB director to the president; rather, the OPM director would have a “seat at the table” with the OMB director when HR policy is finalized. Using this new-found independence and elevated responsibility, would OPM be more effective creating, implementing, and evaluating human resource policy by partnering with OMB?

NAPA recognized that a seat at the table does not automatically guarantee the ability to influence those at the table. To achieve that goal, OPM needs to fundamentally transform itself into “a state-of-the art human capital organization capable of elevating and supporting human capital as a strategic priority across the federal enterprise and address the needs of a 21st century federal workforce.” No small task.

Assuming OPM does design new, creative, innovative HR policies, there is no guarantee that its policy will be implemented. Among the 137 independent executive agencies and 268 units in the Cabinet identified by USA.gov, some will need support, others will need prodding, and some will be resisters.

NAPA recognized the need for agency support, and recommended the “fee for support” model currently used by OPM be eliminated. OPM support for agencies should be provided free of charge: “services and assistance that support agencies’ implementation of government-wide HR policies … should be provided without cost” to an agency; a laudable policy and a significant increased cost to OPM.

Similarly, good HR policy, when implemented, does not guarantee improved agency performance. OPM needs the ability to constantly measure performance success as its new policies are implemented, to enable agile changes. The NAPA recommendations did not recognize this need.

NAPA hopes Congress will increase OPM funding to carry out its new responsibilities, which may or may not materialize. In the meantime, is it possible for OPM and OMB, as NAPA suggested, to “work in concert” and use existing staff to achieve “administration priorities” while ensuring OPM is “the clear lead on human capital matters?”

“Working in concert” may be possible because OPM and OMB have the same outcome goal: improved agency performance. An information sharing arrangement might be established that includes OMB and OPM working together to gather information concerning HR policy implementation during OMB’s regular contact with agency representatives concerning budget implementation. OPM might provide OMB an opportunity to participate in designing new HR policies, the HR data to be collected, and the creation of a research agenda, while recognizing that OPM has the “lead.”

As NAPA points out, “Meeting the needs of a 21st century workforce will require a reinvigorated focus on strategic human capital management and performance.” We need all available resources working “in concert” to achieve the goal.

Robert M. Tobias is distinguished practitioner in residence at the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University, and the former president of the National Treasury Employees Union.

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It’s Back to Work, But Not Back to Normal

Robert M. Tobias — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 09:59:36 -0500

It isn’t over yet.

After the 35-day partial government shutdown, 800,000 federal employees are now returning to paid work and soon they will receive back pay checks. But it will be very difficult for them to pick up where they left off. The fear, anger, and uncertainty over the past shutdown is replaced with the fear, anger, and uncertainty over another potential shutdown in three weeks.

For 35 days, federal employees woke up in the morning wondering if they would be able to pay their bills, and for many, buy food. They suffered the humiliation of asking for help, despite holding good jobs they had worked hard to get and hard to keep it.

They feared President Trump might be right when he said the shut down might last “for months.”

They heard the taunts: “Why are they complaining, they’re going to get all their pay back?” “It’s just a vacation for them.” “Why don’t they just get a loan?” “We don’t need them anyway.”

The felt helpless as hostages taken in a fight that had nothing to do with them, their frustration exacerbated by unsympathetic comments from administration officials and some members of Congress.

Federal employees take pride in their belief that they serve the American public and are involved in something larger than themselves. Many will now question that premise, and we, the American public, will pay the price.

We also will pay a steep financial price for this travesty: The shutdown burned through $90 million a day in accrued costs of back pay for more than 300,000 furloughed workers. That’s $3 billion taxpayers will have spent paying employees to stay home from work.

There also are the incalculable costs to the public of lost public service. Closed Social Security offices, late tax refunds, long airport security lines and delayed flights, harm to our public lands.

The costs will not stop mounting when federal employees return to work. The frustration over lost work hours and the anger generated by the cavalier treatment employees received from some leaders will be on the minds of those returning to work.

Many workers will be focused on determining how much money they’ll need to save to cover themselves for the next shutdown. The energy and passion most employees bring to their agencies’ missions will be slow to return.

Recruiting the best and brightest will undoubtedly prove more difficult going forward. Historically, the government’s ability to offer job stability and good benefits has helped it compete with the higher-paying private sector to attract service-oriented talent. No more.

Federal workers and potential recruits have every reason to believe there will be future shutdowns. President Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday that he is not relenting on his demand for a wall on the southwest border and another shutdown “is certainly an option.” Why would they subject themselves or their families to the anxiety of an uncertain paycheck if they have other options?

It is time to enact legislation introduced by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the Stop Shutdowns Transferring Unnecessary Pain and Inflicting Damage in the Coming Years Act, which, during future appropriations lapses, would maintain existing spending levels for all unfunded agencies while ending appropriations for Congress, its associated agencies and offices, and for the Executive Office of the President.

The costs of government shutdowns, both monetary and human, should never be replicated.

Robert M. Tobias is director of business development for the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University, and the former president of the National Treasury Employees Union.

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Let’s Make This the Last Shutdown. Please.

Robert M. Tobias — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 12:37:36 -0500

The Constitution created the executive branch and Congress as co-equal branches of government, each with the ability to negate the action of the other. The founders assumed that inaction was preferable to hasty bad decisions.

But what the founders failed to envision is the corrosive power of inaction when the president, the speaker of the House or the Senate majority leader refuse to enact a budget and shut the government down indefinitely.

There is no institutional check on inaction. The only solution is acquiescence. It’s time to restore a balance.

Congress and the president could avoid all future shutdowns by enacting a law providing that in the event of an appropriations lapse, a continuing resolution automatically kicks in to fund the government at current levels until a permanent appropriation is enacted.

That way, we would move back to budget decision-making based on ideas, data, persuasion, passage of legislation and potential vetoes by two co-equal branches of government. In our current state, success is based on who most successfully blames the other side for a shutdown, whose constituency cares least about the failure to deliver public services during one, and who is most subject to coercion.

An automatic continuing resolution would eliminate the collateral damage caused by holding federal employees hostage. They are innocent bystanders. Those furloughed lose pay temporarily, and their suffering is exceeded only by those required to work without being paid in a timely fashion. Both groups struggle to pay their bills.

The public suffers from undelivered or diminished services: long security lines at airports, reduced food safety inspections and limited operations at national parks, to name just a few consequences.

The public is also damaged by a slowing economy. Kevin Hassett, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said this week that the shutdown was reducing quarterly economic growth by 0.13 percentage points for every week that it lasts.

This is no surprise. The Office of Management and Budget has reported that the 17-day shutdown in 2013 resulted in $2 billion in direct costs to the government, and Standard and Poor’s estimated the total to be $24 billion if costs to the private sector are included.

We can’t blame the founders, who couldn’t have foreseen the consequences of shutting down all or part of a government of nearly 2 million employees serving a population of 350 million people. We can, however, ask Congress to eliminate the lasting damage to federal employees and the public.

The first six lapses in federal funding—one during the Ford administration in 1976 and five in the Carter administration—were simply ignored by Congress. Federal employees continued to work, the public continued to be served, and a budget was ultimately enacted.

Then Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti issued a series of opinions in 1980 and 1981 stating the government may not operate when government funding lapses. The subsequent 15 lapses have been fought using the new coercive power of inaction. This has culminated with President Trump stating that he’s willing to shut down the government for “months or years” if his border wall proposal isn’t funded.

It is time for Congress and the president to lay down their arms in the interest of eliminating the collateral damage and restoring the balance of power envisioned by the founders. It worked from 1976 to 1980. It can work again. Enact a law to automatically fund the government if lapses occur until a permanent budget is approved. No more government shutdowns.

Robert M. Tobias is director of business development for the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University, and the former president of the National Treasury Employees Union.

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What the College Football Championship Teaches Us About Leaders and Followers

Robert M. Tobias — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 15:41:22 -0500

One of the most critical leadership characteristics is decisiveness: Dithering is destructive. But decisiveness alone does not automatically translate into implementation. A leader must do the hard work of creating followers who effectively, efficiently, and successfully respond to the leader’s decisions.

A perfect example of that truth occurred this week during the college football national championship game. Alabama coach Nick Saban replaced his long-time quarterback, Jalen Hurts (who held a 23-2 record), at halftime with a freshman, Tua Tagovailoa, who up until that point had played very little.

Tagovailoa led Alabama to an overtime victory on a 41-yard touchdown pass. The interesting question is, why did Alabama’s players follow Saban’s decision, support the rookie, and win the game?

Following a leader’s decision with full support is never automatic. In the real world, vision creation is often difficult, but Saban can tell his team every year, “our vision is to create a team capable of winning a national championship.” Vision creation, though, is only the first step. Unifying the 125-person roster around the vision is the challenge.

The Alabama team roster is filled with type-A personalities, five-star high school rated athletes who dream not just of being starters, but future first-round draft picks by a National Football League team. Some will be chosen to start at Alabama and many will not. For the latter group, their dreams will be crushed—as I suspect were those of Jalen Hurts. A football team is a competitive and potentially corrosive environment filled with individuals seeking personal success. What did Saban do to create a team full of enthusiastic followers?

Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones, in a 2000 Harvard Business Review article titled “Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?,” write that followers are created by leaders who are vulnerable with those they lead, who have intuition to gauge the appropriate timing of a decision, the ability to manage with tough empathy, and who capitalize on the differences in the team. These characteristics fit Saban.

Saban has a reputation for asking his team for advice in creating the starting lineup and developing game plans. He recognized that his long-time quarterback was not being successful, and that he needed to take a risk on a freshman with better passing skills. We don’t know what words Saban said to his new quarterback, but based on the ultimate team response, he must have been empathetic. And Saban understood he needed a different skill set to win.

Saban, in other words, exhibited each of the characteristics identified by Goffee and Jones. But the characteristics do not describe the process he used to create the followers.

To do that, Saban had to forge relationships between himself, his other coaches and each team member, and to facilitate the creation of trusting relationships between the individual players. He had to spend the time, energy and focused attention to know, understand and develop every team member. Followers are created by trusted leaders.

A football team is no different from any high-performing unit in the public or private sector. A leader who creates followers is one who has developed the capability to establish the relationships needed for those led to choose to give their all to accomplish the leader’s goals.

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Why Congress Should Act Like a Board of Directors

Robert M. Tobias — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 12:15:39 -0400

In the Constitution, “we the people” mandated Congress to set the nation's strategic direction while providing for the “general welfare of the United States.” Through its constitutional powers—including enacting budgets and laws “necessary and proper for carrying into execution” its policies—Congress must also monitor how well the executive branch implements that direction.

We the people are owed the same duty of care from Congress that stockholders would receive from a private sector board of directors when its sets strategic direction, approves budgets and conducts oversight to ensure its decisions are implemented.

But Congress does not exercise sufficient care in its actions concerning the executive branch. Lawmakers fail to make budget allocations based on agencies’ performance, to proactively seek to improve agencies’ performance and to avoid actions that are detrimental to that performance (e.g., continuing resolutions, government shutdowns and threats of shutdown).

Like a private sector board of directors, lawmakers are obligated to not waste taxpayer funds. Congress had the right idea when it passed the Government Performance and Results Act, which requires agencies to report performance results regularly—presumably so the information could be used to create an executive branch budget and allocate funding. Rather than using the results, however, Congress members make budget decisions using other criteria. Maximizing taxpayer value is impossible when agency performance results are not the primary criterion for spending decisions.

Oversight implies an obligation to gather data prior to making decisions. Congress does gather a great deal of data—more than 850 Government Accountability Office reports and thousands of inspector general reports each year—but fails to use the information effectively. Often oversight hearings are scheduled based on the reports, but the focus is almost always on fixing what happened in the past rather than preventing problems in the future.

An effective Congress would be proactive rather than reactive. Acting as a board of directors, it would conduct oversight to avoid future problems, rather than waiting for a GAO or IG report, or a front-page news story. The lessons from a proactive hearing could be applied immediately; lessons learned from a reactive hearing may fix past problems, but cannot guarantee the future.

Sometimes Congress fails to gather needed data, making it impossible to act proactively. Just one example: For years it was well known among Veterans Affairs Department employees that the VA was not meeting its timeliness goals for scheduling veterans’ medical appointments. The cause was also well known: a shortage of doctors on staff due to underfunding. Yet the VA failure did not get on the congressional radar screen until it became a front-page story.

As board of directors, Congress also must not engage in activities that it knows will adversely impact the performance of agencies. It is a fundamental responsibility to establish a budget before the fiscal year begins, so funds can be used effectively. Without a budget, funding levels for necessary investment—particularly in information technology—are uncertain and plans for reorganizations that would increase efficiency cannot be implemented. In addition to affecting citizens who worry about receiving government services on time, the uncertainty also generates fear among federal employees over loss of pay, compelling many good workers to leave government.

Congress’ recent budget decision-making has had little certainty:

The budget for fiscal 2011 (which began Oct. 1, 2010) was not finalized until April 15, 2011, after seven continuing resolutions and $8 billion was stripped from the previous year’s budget.
The budget for fiscal 2013 (which began Oct. 1, 2012) was subject to a continuing resolution until March 27, 2013.
There was no continuing resolution in fiscal 2014 (which began Oct. 1, 2013), but the government shut down from Oct. 1 to Oct. 16, 2013. That shutdown was said to cost taxpayers $12 billion to $24 billion, according to economic analysts.

Nevertheless, the cumulative effect of uncertainty and loss of productivity since Oct. 1, 2010, did not dissuade Congress from pursuing the same path again this year.

Fiscal 2015 started on Oct. 1, 2014, with a continuing resolution through Dec. 11, 2014—more than a quarter into the fiscal year—when funding for all government agencies except the Homeland Security Department was finalized. Six months of the fiscal year elapsed without the certainty of a DHS budget; the funding bill was just passed in March.

Congress owes the same care to the people that is analogous to a private sector board of directors’ duty to stockholders. It is time for Congress to acknowledge its duty and act now to fulfill it.

Robert M. Tobias is a professor for Key Executive Leadership Programs at American University.

(Image via mariakraynova/Shutterstock.com)

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When the Executive Core Qualifications Aren’t Enough

Robert M. Tobias — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 16:00:00 -0500

What skills do Senior Executive Service aspirants need to succeed in federal sector management positions? Are they developed to elicit employee engagement? Do the executive core qualifications defined by the Officer of Personnel Management create a hurdle high enough to ensure success as an SES leader?

The short answer seems to be no. Meeting the ECQs does not guarantee that a leader will be successful.

The most objective measure of SES capacity can be found in four questions in OPM’s Federal Employee Viewpoint survey, according to the Partnership for Public Service. They are the most critical to creating employee engagement and increasing agency productivity.

From 2011 to 2014, positive answers to the following questions have been trending down:

Q 53: “In my organization, senior leaders generate high levels of motivation and commitment in the workforce.” (down 15 percent, from 45 to 38 points)
Q 54: “My organization’s senior leaders maintain high standards of honesty and integrity.” (down 12 percent)
Q 61: “I have a high level of respect for my organization’s senior leaders.” (down 12 percent)
Q 64: “How satisfied are you with the information you receive from management on what’s going on in your organization?” (down 10 percent)

It seems clear that a significant leadership problem exists and needs to be addressed.

A good leader needs foresight, insight, resilience, critical thinking, emotional and social intelligence, and the ability to create an environment where those led are willing to give their discretionary energy to their leader to accomplish their leader’s goals and objectives.

Do the executive core qualifications challenge SES candidates to develop the kinds of skills and abilities that are necessary to lead others to achieve their full potential?

OPM states, “The executive core qualifications define the competencies needed to build a federal corporate culture that drives for results, serves customers, and builds successful teams and coalitions within and outside the organization . . . The ECQs were designed to assess executive experience and potential—not technical expertise.” So far, so good. Technical expertise does not predict success as a member of the SES.

But neither do the five core competencies of “leading change, leading people, results driven, business acumen and building coalitions,” as defined by OPM. More is needed.

The ECQs describe necessary skills, but do not include the necessary mental and emotional capacity needed to create a collaborative, interdependent, learning environment that leads to increased employee productivity.

The good news is that SES applicants have the ability to develop their mental capacity. Neuroscientists have taught us that there is no age-based cap on our ability to grow and change. We can, with intention, rewire our brain. We can challenge our assumptions and beliefs, and as a result, change our behavior at any age.

But rewiring our brain is not easy.

In Transforming Your Leadership Culture, John B. McGuire and Gary Rhodes make clear that horizontal, or skill, development is not enough to become an effective leader. Leaders need vertical development, or the increased ability to make sense of the world and to create an organizational culture where leaders successfully engage those they lead.

McGuire and Rhodes describe three levels of organizational cultures:

Dependent-Conformer: characterized by hierarchy, control and a fear of being excluded for nonconformance. Engagement is based on loyalty and obedience.
Independent-Achiever: a culture based on success. Winning is everything. Engagement is motivated by self-interest and the interest of the primary group.
Interdependent-Collaborator: a culture in which “engagement gets beyond individual achievement to a point where successes and failures are shared because both are equally regarded as knowledge,” the authors say. “Group interaction centers on opening up the subject at hand and reaching multiple right answers that can be advocated, integrated and prioritized.”

According to McGuire and Rhodes, it is difficult to move oneself and those led from one level to another, especially if one’s mind-set is to be a dependent-performer selected to supervise because of technical expertise. In a 2010 report on improving first-level supervision in government, the Merit Systems Protection Board said selection of first-level supervisors is heavily based on technical expertise “without an interest or aptitude in leadership.”

Movement from one level to another, McGuire and Rhodes say, requires a willingness to accept that there may be different ways of doing things and making sense of the world. Furthermore, a successful leader must have a willingness to challenge old ideas and test new ones. After such testing, the leader must be willing to implement the new ideas until they dominate the old.

We need more leaders with independent-collaborator qualities to successfully address the many problems in the federal sector. But leaders need support and assistance as they struggle to move themselves and their organizations from one level to another. Few can do it merely by reading a book.

Robert Kegan, in In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life, describes some of the “how” to move from one level to another.

He says we often don’t understand or challenge our mind-set. We act automatically in certain situations. If we act automatically, without knowing the values and assumptions driving our behavior, we have no chance of changing. If we can use our emotional intelligence to stop and identify our values and assumptions, we have an opportunity to make a choice to change our behavior.

Stopping to examine one's assumptions and values, however, is always a challenge. It is much easier to continue to do what we have done in the past, because it is easy and comfortable.

To stop, reflect and make a choice to change, leaders need the self-awareness to recognize their emotions, the self-management to stop in the face of often strong emotions, the social awareness to understand the impact of their behavior on others, and the capacity to collaborate in a way that creates something new and different that could not be created by acting alone, explain Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee in Primal Leadership.

Successful leaders need values and assumptions that support engagement. In Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams, Roger Schwarz identifies the values (transparency, curiosity, informed choice, accountability and compassion) and assumptions (I have information, so do other people; each of us sees things others don’t; people may disagree with me and still have pure motives; differences are opportunities for learning; and I may be contributing to the problem) necessary for a “mutual learning leader” to implement a “mutual learning model.”

These ideas—the need for leaders to develop themselves, creating the self-awareness to move from one level to another, developing necessary social and emotional intelligence, and creating a collaborative learning workplace environment—are not included in the ECQs. Those aspiring to be in the SES are rarely exposed to these concepts or given the opportunity and the support necessary to develop personally.

The current ECQs, which are primarily skill-based, put more tools in the aspiring SES applicant's toolbox. But having more tools does not guarantee knowing which tool to select or how to use it. Would-be leaders need support, so they can engage their followers in designing and implementing solutions to federal challenges.

It is time for the Office of Personnel Management to update the ECQs to include personal development, as well as leadership skill development, as a first step in addressing the employee engagement gap.

Robert M. Tobias is director of public sector executive education at American University.

(Image via Palto/Shutterstock.com)

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Analysis: The buck stops with program managers

Robert M. Tobias, John Driessnack, and Patrick K. Barker — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0400

"Program managers who view themselves as mere agents for the execution of program costs, schedule and performance may be self-limiting. Rather, every PM should assume the role of chief executive officer of his or her entrepreneurial 'corporation' and use the tools of upper-echelon leaders to manage programs with greater accountability and empowerment." -- Roy L. Wood, Defense Acquisition University

Time and again, reports from the Government Accountability Office point to federal capital investments that flounder because of inadequate controls over cost, schedule and technical performance. Why do so many programs fail to stay on time and on budget? The answer has more to do with leadership than with technological capacity.

Process improvements such as earned value management and firm-fixed price contracting help, but those alone do not address the root causes of program failures. As we peel the onion, we see program offices, and the management systems that support them, are stovepiped. There often are separate teams, processes and meetings for disciplines such as risk management, cost assessment and engineering. Typically, the most proficient technologist from one field is promoted to program manager, and that person must interpret information from multiple disciplines in real time. Most agencies recognize that linking these disciplines is important, but few actually have networks of policy, standards and procedures that generate usable input for program management decisions.

Government should prepare acquisition leaders to make better decisions based on linked multidisciplinary information. One would never dream of giving a pilot the keys to the cockpit of a high-performance aircraft after he completed only handful of online courses. Yet that is what's happening for acquisition program managers and the functional leaders who support them.

A July 2009 Defense Department study of major acquisition programs noted program managers had significant gaps in practical training and experience needed to deal with daily engineering, business analysis and decision-making challenges. In a June study by Meritalk, an online community of government information technology specialists, interviews with more than 200 acquisition officials indicated that more than half lacked adequate training. Program managers need leadership competencies, as well as knowledge across functional areas, to ensure integrated teams of technical experts can meet benchmarks, create coalitions within and outside their organizations, and provide the best value to their customers.

Beyond solving technical problems, program managers must be able to create and sustain cross-functional teams. They must spot patterns and trends that are likely to affect their organization, think systemically, design a holistic system that fits the mission, and motivate collaborators to set up processes to achieve that vision. Those tasks also require emotional intelligence.

These skills cannot be taught in a set of brief online courses. Integration of leadership and technical competencies must be addressed through a comprehensive agency-sponsored program in which managers can learn to link functional skills with the decision-making support system unique to their organization.

This personal evolution requires a safe learning environment where participants can challenge themselves and their peers to change the way they do business. It should include executive coaching, which encourages intensive, candid dialogue. Executive coaching also is an excellent antidote for managerial myopia, helping program leaders to think more effectively.

Steeping program managers in a leadership development program focused on both intellectual and emotional development is the only way to prepare them for the challenges that lie ahead. And it would go a long way toward eliminating the stovepipes, fixing flawed processes and boosting program performance.

Robert M. Tobias is director of public sector executive education at American University, John Driessnack is senior director of the project solutions group at MCR LLC, and Patrick K. Barker is chief practitioner of program assessment at MCR LLC.

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Role Model

Robert M. Tobias — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

President Obama works side by side with agency leaders to get results.

Many presidents have talked about the need to improve executive branch performance, but President Obama is the first to assume personal responsibility for doing so. Without that impetus from the chief executive officer of the executive branch, there is unlikely to be the kind of change many have talked about but none so far has effected.

True leaders model the behavior they seek. While prior presidents-Democratic and Republican-have proposed various public policies after railing against the supposedly ineffective and inefficient executive branch, none has been willing to devote his time or that of agency heads to executing those policies. The gap between policy creation and implementation is deep and wide, and so far no president has been willing to leap the abyss, much less risk falling into it.

But Obama has announced a change in this pattern. He has pledged to use his most valuable resource-his time-to improve agency productivity. In the Analytical Perspectives section of his fiscal 2010 budget proposal, the president said he would conduct "meetings with Cabinet officers to review their progress toward meeting performance improvement targets." Obama also made it clear he expects his Cabinet officers to spend their time on increasing productivity.

Office of Management and Budget Director Peter R. Orszag put teeth in Obama's plan when he directed agencies to define outcome-oriented goals, the internal and external programs that contribute to accomplishing them, the people responsible, and the strategy for reaching the targets by the end of July.

When performance matters to the president and his top political appointees, it also will be important to members of the Senior Executive Service, mid-level managers, first-level supervisors and employees. When performance matters to the president, appointees can no longer avoid personal engagement and blame others for nonperformance. Instead, they must devote themselves to engagement and discussion with their workforces about how to achieve their goals. It also is easier to delegate authority for achieving goals when they are specific and based on outcomes. Political appointees can be satisfied that their policy goals are identified, and they can measure the results, rather than attempting to micromanage.

Obama said in the budget document that he wants to see "collaborating across levels of government" during the process of setting agency goals and creating plans to achieve results. He recognizes that, given the complexity of the problems and the need for innovation, it is impossible to achieve goals without collaboration.

The president is modeling the behavior he seeks. He has created 20 czars, each of whom has the responsibility to collaborate across agency lines. He also created a chief performance officer position, filled by Jeffrey Zients, whose job includes developing "a performance agenda across government."

Recognizing the collaborative role employees must play through their unions to improve performance, Obama has indicated he understands that an engaged workforce is a higher-performing workforce.

This attitude contrasts with the Clinton administration's recognition of-but failure to enforce-the need to collaborate with employees through their unions on performance, and the Bush administration's attempt to enforce agency goals while rejecting collaboration to achieve the targets.

The potential impact of Obama's personal leadership on these goals is significant. We might at last begin to focus on performance and improve it, and use federal employees' intellectual power and desire to serve the public. Let's hope this change is in our future, because the nation has never needed high performance from public employees more than it does today.?

Robert M. Tobias is a distinguished practitioner in residence and director of the Institute for the Study of Policy Implementation at American University and former president of the National Treasury Employees Union.

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Role Model

Robert M. Tobias — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400

True leaders model the behavior they seek. While prior presidents -- both Democratic and Republican -- have proposed various new public policies after railing against the supposedly ineffective and inefficient executive branch, none has been willing to devote his time or that of agency heads to implementing those policies. The gap between policy creation and its implementation is deep and wide, and so far no president has been willing to leap the abyss, much less risk falling into it.

Obama, however, has announced a change in this pattern. He has pledged to use his most valuable resource -- his time -- to improve agency productivity. In the Analytical Perspectives section of his fiscal 2010 budget proposal, the president stated that he would conduct "meetings with Cabinet officers to review their progress toward meeting performance improvement targets." Obama also has made it clear he expects his Cabinet officers to spend their time on increasing productivity.

Office of Management and Budget Director Peter R. Orszag has put teeth in Obama's plan by directing agencies to define outcome-oriented goals, the internal and external programs that contribute to accomplishing them, the people responsible, and the strategy for reaching the targets by July 30.

It also is easier to delegate authority for achieving goals when they are specific and based on outcomes. Political appointees can be satisfied that their policy goals are identified, and they can measure the results, rather than attempting to micromanage.

Obama stated in the budget document that he wants to see "collaborating across levels of government" during the process of setting agency outcome goals and creating plans to achieve results. He recognizes that, given the complexity of the problems and the need for innovation, it is not possible to achieve goals without collaboration.

The president is modeling the behavior he seeks. He has created 20 czars, each of whom has the responsibility to collaborate across agencies when program outcomes cross agency lines. He has also created a chief performance officer position whose job includes developing "a performance agenda across government."

Recognizing the collaborative role employees must play through their unions to improving performance, Obama also has indicated he understands that an engaged workforce is a higher-performing workforce.

This attitude contrasts with the Clinton administration's recognition of -- but failure to enforce -- the need to collaborate with employees through their unions to increase performance, and the Bush administration's attempt to enforce agency performance goal accomplishment while rejecting collaboration to achieve the targets.

Collaboration as a tool for increasing performance has advantages:

Learning takes place as decisions are considered;
Better decisions are made;
Decision-making takes longer, but implementation is faster and with much less resistance;
Working relationships improve;
Participation is broader and deeper, and leads to broader and deeper support for results;
Employees at all levels have a clearer idea about how their role advances the mission of the agency; and
Employees at all levels have an opportunity to act on the public service impulse that brought them to the federal government.

But achieving increased agency performance through collaboration will not be easy. Among the many obstacles are:

Hierarchical, stove-piped organizations that use information as power rather than as a resource to share to make better decisions;
The enduring myth of the need for hierarchical control;
The difficulty of changing relationships that were built on mistrust; and
The significant reorientation required to refocus from speedy decision-making to decision implementation.

The potential impact of Obama's personal leadership on these goals is significant. We might at last begin to truly focus on performance and improve it, and we might truly use the intellectual power and the desire of federal employees to serve the public. Let us hope that this change is in our future, because the nation has never needed high performance from public employees more than it does today.

Robert M. Tobias is a distinguished practitioner in residence and director of the Institute for the Study of Policy Implementation at American University. He was president of the National Treasury Employees Union from 1983 to 1999.

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Cleaning Up Their Act

Robert M. Tobias — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 -0400

What happens when leaders take the time to improve performance.

Federal employees usually sign on with government agencies with the good-faith goal of serving the public. In return, the public wants and deserves high performance from civil servants. Yet both sides often feel frustrated by lack of focus and missed opportunities.

So how can citizens get what they pay for?

Creating a high-performing federal workforce that's able to achieve ever-increasing goals has been the subject of endless discussions, presidential initiatives and acts of Congress. President Bush attacked the issue with his President's Management Agenda, and increased the pressure by authorizing the Office of Management and Budget to measure agency programs with the aim of improving them every year.

But will agencies respond to these goals? What would have to change to make performance truly important?

For starters, the president would spend his most valuable commodity-time-working to achieve higher performance in the executive branch. For example, he could have quarterly Cabinet meetings to review agency results and share best practices. He would have to show by his actions how much he values not only policy creation-historically the focus of presidents and their appointees-but also implementation, or performance.

If appointees heard the president's message, they would work personally with career executives, managers, union leaders and employees to ensure clarity of mission; unite departments, Congress and beneficiaries in a common purpose; craft day-to-day values; specify program goals and link them with individual goals; and work systematically to improve overall performance.

Raising performance standards would not stop with political appointees. Many in the Senior Executive Service would spend more time leading and managing their workforce rather than serving as technical experts. Mid-level managers would focus on developing their staffs' knowledge and skills, engaging employees, and involving them in performance goals. Union leaders would work with executives and managers to address the business problems that inhibit performance. As a result, employees would understand their responsibilities and how they are evaluated.

If performance were important, then federal agencies would not rely on inefficient, hierarchical, control-focused organizational models. They would have flatter structures that foster the exchange of information, ideas and learning. The government workforce has changed during the past 50 years, from 70 percent clerical to 70 percent knowledge workers, but the executive branch has not revised its structures to maximize contributions of the knowledge workers it works so hard to hire.

If performance were important, then federal agencies would be investing time and money to increase the leadership capacity of managers. There is much talk about the need for training, but the talk must stop and investing must begin.

If performance were important, then union leaders and the employees they represent would be an integral part of improving operations. Their discussions would not be about who has the right to make a decision, or how fast a decision is made. Instead, their focus would be on the quality of that decision and whether it would increase agency performance.

The executive branch must produce more results for the public it serves. The question is whether the president, political appointees, career managers and union leaders will change their behavior to meet that end.

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The New World Appointee

Robert M. Tobias — Fri, 01 Dec 2000 00:00:00 -0500

It is time for the President to consider whether the people filling these important positions have the interest, expertise and experience to lead and manage an enterprise. Key political appointees must have proven ability and flexibility to recognize that managing in government is unique. It is time for the President to choose and evaluate key political appointees based on their ability to effectively implement the public policy they inherit or create.

Making Policies Work
The definition of "success" for political appointees has changed. The public wants the government to be more responsive and user-friendly. For example, citizens want 24/7 access to the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration and the Veterans Administration. They want information that is fast, accurate and delivered by friendly employees. Citizens do not want to play phone tag with several agencies to learn about government benefits and how to apply; they want a government that's efficient.

Congress has responded to such demands by passing the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act and other legislation that focuses on ensuring that public policy is implemented, and implemented efficiently. For example, Congress has ordered agencies to measure outcomes of agency activities, not the process. For regulatory agencies, this means measuring compliance with laws rather than the number of enforcement actions taken. Congress, for example, wants to know whether the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is making the workplace safer, not how many fines have been levied. Similarly, the IRS is struggling to increase the overall taxpayer compliance rate through education and enforcement activity, rather than just increasing collections.

Congress and the public have changed the definition of "success" for political appointees to include policy implementation. A political appointee whose strategy centers only around creating policy and ignores those responsible for implementing it-career executives, mid-level managers and employees and their unions-runs a high risk of failure.

Real Managers
Political appointees must have leadership and managerial skills, in addition to the traditional selection criteria, says Sen. George O. Voinovich, R-Ohio, chairman of the Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring and the District of Columbia. Voinovich's belief is rooted in his experience as governor of Ohio, where he worked to institute a performance-based government. Voinovich asked the General Accounting Office to create a list of leadership and management questions to ask of all political appointees. He wants to send a message to the new President that the Senate expects him to nominate individuals who have those skills. In an August report, GAO developed four categories of necessary skills:

Results-oriented decision-making.
Financial management.
Information and technology management.
Human capital management.

Political appointees must be able to create a shared vision that others will follow; define goals; develop strategic and annual operating plans; collaborate with employees, their unions, state governments and the technology community; respond to congressional oversight; and provide a customer focus.

The government has been slow to develop the systems needed to collect cost information, GAO says, and then use the data in developing annual and strategic operating plans. Political appointees must have the financial management skills needed to get agencies up to speed on performance-based, results-oriented decision-making.

GAO points out that "federal agencies have wasted billions of dollars in developing systems and processes that are not cost- effective, fail to deliver expected results and provide sub-optimal solutions to agencies' core mission and business needs." Political appointees must understand the role technology plays in implementing public services, how to evaluate whether an agency has the necessary technology, and how technology may support reengineered business processes.

Political appointees must understand that people are assets "whose value can be enhanced through investment," the GAO report says, adding that an agency's workforce must be aligned with its mission and goals. Political appointees are responsible for creating a performance culture based on strategic planning, leadership and talent.

These are well-known skills in high-performing companies in the private sector. But successful business executives do not automatically become successful political appointees. "I think businessmen make the worst appointees because they are used to command and control," E. Pendleton James, who was active in the transitions of Presidents Nixon and Reagan, said at a recent Heritage Foundation roundtable discussion. A political appointee who believes power must be accumulated and then exercised to implement public policy might change the boxes on the organizational chart, but would not create a performance-based culture. Successful appointees enlist their staffs in a vision of the present and future that satisfies customers and employees. Successful appointees collaborate with career executives, mid-level managers and employees through their labor unions. Persuasion, not force or threats of force, is used to create change.

Hail to the Chief
Selecting appointees with managerial skills is only the first step. The President must guide them to get policies implemented.

In 1993, a report by the National Performance Review recommended that the President develop performance agreements with the top 24 agency heads. Periodic reviews of the agreements and the appointees' performance would ensure communication and agreement on goals.

Unfortunately, the agreements were never developed. The President's Management Council was told in the 1993 report to "ensure that quality management principles are adopted, processes are reengineered and performance is assessed." The PMC, however, is no substitute for the President when it comes to leading Cabinet officers.

Policy implementation must improve if our new President's ambitious program is to become reality. He must select political appointees who have the interest and skills to meet the challenges. And the President must model the behavior he expects from political appointees by creating performance agreements with department heads and then by managing for success.

Management The Power of PartnershipsExpanding labor-management partnerships beyond the traditional issues.

Robert M. Tobias — Wed, 01 Nov 2000 00:00:00 -0500

In April, Shalala adopted a recommendation from the HHS partnership council to elect to negotiate the numbers, types and grades of employees assigned to any organization work project or tour of duty as well as the technology, methods and means of performing the work. Although management is not legally bound to bargain over these work issues under U.S. Code Title 5, Section 7106(b)(1), it may choose to bargain. "We know we can produce better results by working on the (b)(1) issues in partnership," HHS Deputy Secretary Kevin Thurm says about the agency's self-imposed obligation to bargain. "You make better decisions when you involve your employees. You operate more effectively. You have more satisfied employees."

HHS is the first department to elect to bargain on these work issues and to use a comprehensive dispute resolution process, created by the agency's partnership council. Although the council is large and its members represent a wide variety of interests, it was able to reach consensus on this precedent-setting agreement. The council includes Thurm and 11 high-level HHS representatives from each of the agency's operating divisions-the National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration, Office of the Secretary, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Health Resources and Services Administration, Administration for Children and Families, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Administration on Aging, Indian Health Service, Health Care Financing Administration and the Program Support Center. In addition, the council includes two representatives from the American Federation of Government Employees, two from the National Treasury Employees Union, two from the Laborers International Union of North America and one from the National Federation of Federal Employees.

The partnership council's support of the agreement is enthusiastic. "If we really want to accomplish our objectives, we have to come to grips with the 7106(b)(1) issues" because they are the most important issues to both management and the union, says FDA's representative, Robert Byrd, who is deputy commissioner of management and systems.

Robert Purcell, director of the Public Employee Department of LIUNA and a member of the HHS Partnership Council, believes better business decisions will be made because employees have a stake in the outcome. "Employees become invested in their agency," he says. "It is something they have an impact on."

Indeed, the goal of Clinton's 1993 executive order to establish partnership councils was "to identify problems and craft solutions to better serve the agency's customer and mission." The President said that in order to change federal agencies "into organizations capable of delivering the highest quality services to the American people," the following issues must be grist for the labor-management partnership council mill:

Agency strategic plans.
Annual operating plans.
Agency structures and proposed agency reorganization.
Changes in work processes.
The development and implementation of technology in the workplace.

The value of involving employees in determining critical work practices has been studied extensively in the private sector. Employees prefer to work in an environment in which they can influence how their work is performed, says professor Paul Osterman of the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. This is true regardless of whether employees share in the profitability that comes from their involvement, he adds. Osterman's and other research shows that even in the absence of reward sharing, employee involvement has a powerful effect on an employer's bottom line. Employees who are involved are more productive and generate greater customer satisfaction.

Involving Employees

In the spirit of Clinton's executive order, the HHS agreement directs unions and operating divisions to establish a collaborative process that includes decisions by consensus and interest-based bargaining to resolve a broad range of agency business decisions, including Section 7106(b)(1) matters. "It ought be part of managerial expectations that we will do predecisional involvement, and we should recognize and reward those [managers] who do it well," Thurm says.

These partnership councils will include the highest-level management and union officials, those who are responsible for making and implementing business decisions. Historically, operating managers have been reluctant to involve unions in agency business matters. "It is often particularly difficult for managers whose identity is wrapped up in their authority to bargain on 7106(b)(1) matters," says Purcell of LIUNA. As a result, the labor-management relationship in many agencies outside HHS has been entrusted to labor-management specialists who have no impact on agency business decisions. Operations managers did not elicit employee and union ideas for change, and unions and employees felt impotent and marginalized. Some managers have been successfully negotiating (b)(1) issues but have been reluctant to acknowledge it. "We've been doing (b)(1) bargaining in many agencies outside HHS without naming it," says Kelley of NTEU. "We've been designing jobs, setting grades and determining the number of employees in each location. The agreement with HHS is important because it acknowledges what we have already been doing successfully."

Two of the eleven operating divisions had positive experiences negotiating Section 7106(b)(1) issues and helped convince their colleagues to adopt a departmentwide policy. Jim Corrigan, associate administrator for management and program support at the Health Resources and Service Administration, says managers in his organization feared unions would delay business decisions if managers agreed to bargain on Section 7106(b)(1) issues. "They have not been held hostage, experienced delay or suffered from outrageous union demands," Corrigan says. "People came to the table in good faith, reached agreement on important issues and achieved the desired results." Managers said they reached better decisions through partnership.

Similarly, Joe Carter, the representative of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the HHS Partnership Council, pointed out that after negotiating 7106(b)(1) matters, "we have a better understanding and make better decisions."

In addition, Thurm pointed out that the HHS Partnership Council's experience of working on difficult issues as a team led the council to take its historic step. "It was a natural progression for us to find a way to tackle (b)(1)," he says. However, he adds, a comprehensive training effort is needed to help overcome the newly created partnership councils' lack of shared history. "We must train the partnership councils concerning our new expectations and the interest-based problem-solving process. And we must provide them with ongoing facilitator support."

Crafting Compromise

Although CDC, HCFA and some agencies outside HHS have agreed to negotiate Section 7106(b)(1) matters in their partnership councils, none has agreed to the process that submits an impasse to a final, binding decision by the Federal Service Impasses Panel. The HHS agreement is a compromise. It allows, but does not require, third-party binding decisions, and it provides for a final decision outside the operating division by the HHS Partnership Council. "We wanted to recognize that no matter our intention, we would reach impasse," says Robert Byrd of FDA. "And if we did, the worst possible thing would be going outside our agency to a third party who didn't understand our interests. We wanted a process internally decided."

In the event an operating division partnership council is unable to reach agreement, both parties may agree to refer the unresolved dispute to an outside arbitrator for a final and binding decision. Or, either party may refer an unresolved dispute to an outside arbitrator for a nonbinding decision. If a dispute remains unresolved, it may be presented to the HHS Partnership Council for a final, binding decision.

Managers believe the HHS impasse resolution procedure will work. FDA's Byrd believes that "the tone that has been set is one of understanding and cooperation. . . The relationship is so valued, the impasse will be resolved." Thurm expects that few, if any, unresolved issues will be presented to the HHS Partnership Council "because there is experience at the operation-division level in creative problem solving," and operating division managers will be reluctant to allow peers to make decisions for them.

It was the fear that impasses would not be resolved by the HHS Partnership Council that led council member Brian DeWyngaert, assistant to AFGE President Bobby Harnage, to be the last person to agree to the plan. Unions believe it is necessary to have Section 7106(b)(1) impasses resolved by the Federal Service Impasses Panel or other binding third-party arbitrators to fully realize the potential of 7106(b)(1) bargaining. Without a binding third-party decision enforceable through the unfair labor practice process, unions fear their proposals may be "talked to death" and never implemented, regardless of the intrinsic value of the proposal.

In explaining his reluctance, DeWyngaert says, "We could have argued for another year or more in an attempt to craft an agreement, but we decided to take a shot at a modified impasse-resolution process. Managers felt they didn't want to [expose] their inability to reach agreement before their colleagues, and I decided it was worth an experiment to see if it would work." He concludes that the HHS agreement "will be a good deal for taxpayers because it will give our people a larger voice in the important issues that have an impact on them and [employees] will have an opportunity to use their brains to solve problems."

The HHS agreement can be a model for agencies and unions. It requires bargaining on 7106(b)(1) issues and provides an internal dispute-resolution process. It guarantees the involvement of employees through their unions on important business decisions. The agreement will benefit HHS management, unions and the employees they represent, as well as taxpayers, by developing more productive employees who can better serve taxpayers.

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Oversight Needs Overhaul

Robert M. Tobias — Tue, 01 Aug 2000 00:00:00 -0400

letters@govexec.com

ould doubling the one-year budget cycle to two improve government efficiency? That question has won congressional and public attention for legislation long nurtured by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., to create a two-year cycle.

Supporters of biennial budgeting propose focusing on the budget in the first year of a cycle and on legislative oversight in the second. However, critics say the executive branch and Congress cannot accurately predict expenses and revenue three years in advance. They also say Congress isn't structured to conduct effective legislative oversight. A look at the current ways Congress conducts agency oversight shows that critics of biennial budgeting may be right.

Legislative Maze

Congress divides itself into committees that create laws and those that decide funding for federal agencies. Most agencies must deal with several committees, often leading to conflicting mandates.

Committees conduct oversight hearings to evaluate agencies on spending and compliance with congressional mandates. The committees try to determine whether the laws they created and the budgets they allocated are achieving the intended results.

Oversight hearings fall into at least four categories, which sometimes muddy the waters rather than clear them. And efforts to evaluate agency performance come from several different committees. The categories include:

Determining the need for new legislation.
Non-appropriating committees conduct oversight hearings in their jurisdiction to determine if new legislation is needed. For example, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade may hold hearings on whether to create a new tax on imported goods or use an existing tax to fund new computer hardware and software to aid the Customs Service in processing international trade. The stakeholders-the administration, brokers, importers, exporters and unions-all know which committee has jurisdiction and what to expect. The Trade Subcommittee regularly works together with stakeholders, so they know generally what direction the subcommittee will take.

Eliminating existing legislation.
Similarly, congressional oversight hearings to determine if certain laws should cease to exist originate with the committee that passed the law. Presidential hopeful Gov. George W. Bush, supporter of biennial budgets, says Congress should hold more hearings to determine which federal laws to eliminate, just as congressional committees did after the Republican "Contract With America" Congress was elected in 1994. Again, all the stakeholders know this dance. Those who support the existing law and those opposed to it swing into action using the traditional lobbying tools and tactics.

Ensuring executive branch execution.
Every congressional committee is interested in ensuring the executive branch carries out the laws or budgets it creates. Hearings about congressional intent multiply by the number of interested committees. Some oversight hearings are straightforward, such as those held by the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. For example, the Labor Department issued an opinion letter stating that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration safety rules apply to home offices. The subcommittee said the move to apply a new rule without using the formal rule-making process allowing those affected to respond was inconsistent with congressional intent. The subcommittee with jurisdiction called the Labor Secretary to testify.

In contrast, a 1997 report to Congress by the National Commission on the Restructuring of the Internal Revenue Service found Congress lacked a coordinated focus when dealing with the IRS. The seven committees most responsible for IRS oversight-Ways and Means, Appropriations, and Government Reform and Oversight in the House, and Finance, Appropriations, Government Affairs, and the Joint Committee on Taxation in the Senate-focus on different issues that change from year to year, the report found. While the issues they address are important, the committees fail to coordinate on high-level and strategic matters. This non-integrated approach to oversight further blurs the IRS' ability to set a strategic direction and focus on priorities. The IRS is not unique. Often, committees with overlapping jurisdictions give agencies conflicting directions. Giving committees more time to conduct oversight hearings with a biennial budget will not solve that problem.

Evaluating agency efficiency.
Evaluating how efficiently an agency has implemented congressional policy is one of legislative overseers' most difficult jobs. No commonly accepted definition of agency efficiency exists. The public sector has no bottom line against which to measure success. In the absence of such a definition, Congress often adopts the "I'll know it when I see it" approach, scanning the agency horizon to expose waste and inefficiency.

But one Congress member's "waste" may be another's "efficiency." For example, some members of Congress direct the IRS to be more efficient by collecting more revenue and conducting more audits. Others believe efficiency means more service to taxpayers, while still others say the IRS should do both. Some legislators would seek efficiency by directing agencies to contract out all but essential services; others want to fire poor performers, hire and retain better people, pay higher salaries, provide more training, improve morale, reorganize, provide a mission and vision, develop new technology, or do all of the above.

All 535 members of Congress believe they are experts on agency efficiency and fixing problems. And often the fixes are contradictory. Giving them more time to conduct oversight hearings with a biennial budget cycle will not change this pattern.

No Magic Elixir

Efficient agency operations require better management, better structure, trained and motivated employees, and state-of-the-art technology. Recognizing that Congress can neither define efficiency nor impose it, legislators passed and the President enacted the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA). The law shifts the burden of defining and achieving efficiency to agencies, which must create five-year strategic plans and annual operating plans with "objective, quantifiable, and measurable" performance goals to aid "congressional policy-making, spending decisions and program oversight." But GPRA is only a first step, not a magic elixir.

Congress has discovered that performance management is messy. Goals are difficult to define and measure. Agencies do not have adequate accounting systems to measure costs. And congressional attention to agency results is inconsistent, giving agencies little incentive to make the tremendous effort required to comply with GPRA.

On March 31, 2000, every agency submitted a GPRA progress report to Congress. But committees with substantive jurisdiction or appropriations responsibility have not scheduled hearings to examine the operating results. Instead, Senate Governmental Affairs Chairman Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., announced he will grade the reports and exhorted "Congress to hold agencies accountable for those results." However, as the Commission to Restructure the IRS found, Congress cannot hold an agency accountable if many different committees are involved. Multiple committees can provide reactive, individual responses to agency actions, but not integrated, strategic oversight.

A Coordinated, Powerful Voice

To address this problem for the IRS, the 1998 IRS Restructuring and Reform Act reconfigured Congress' committee system. A joint congressional committee composed of three members (two majority and one minority) from each of the seven committees with IRS jurisdiction would conduct a joint review of the IRS strategic plan and budget. This committee would have a joint hearing at least once a year.

The oversight model Congress created to evaluate IRS efficiency is similar to a private-sector board of directors. Separate committees are combined to ensure a coordinated, strategic direction for the IRS. The combined committees have a more powerful voice, and the IRS has a greater ability to respond to congressional mandates. Such coordination offers a possible solution for the current problems that would prevent biennial budgeting from making congressional oversight more fruitful.

Without restructuring congressional oversight, biennial budgeting will not significantly improve agency efficiency. Though many in Congress see biennial budgeting as an opportunity to work more effectively with agencies on improving their operations, they can't pre- vail if Congress continues on its path of reactive investigations and short-term solutions.

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Giving Up the Good Fight

Robert M. Tobias — Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 -0500

letters@govexec.com

raditional labor-management relations amount to a zero-sum game: Employees gain only what the unions wrest from management's clenched hand. This adversarial approach has made federal unions indispensable.

In the federal government, unions' aggressive opposition to management and restrictions on management interference in union elections have paved the way for 80 percent of employees to vote for union representation. Unions represent only 9.4 percent of the private-sector workforce, as a result of manufacturing job cuts, service workers' inability to organize and aggressive employer efforts to defeat unions. In fact, the percentage of private-sector workers represented by unions has declined in the last 15 years. In contrast, representation in the federal workplace has steadily grown since President Kennedy initiated the labor-management program in 1962.

Although federal unions have grown and thrived in the adversarial arena, they need a new route to success in the 21st century. Antagonistic relationships are narrowly focused on fixing harm done in the past. Unions need a vision for the future: Create a workplace that boosts the job satisfaction of skilled workers.

Ill will between labor and management often develops during initial union organizing efforts. After all, organizers usually are responding to a call from a few dissatisfied employees. Unions often characterize such workplace complaints as the norm in order to expand their membership. They create a community that promises protection from management by becoming a counter-force to arbitrary behavior and unilateral decisions.

Since unions and management are competing for the allegiance of the same individuals, election campaigns are competitive and contentious. Managers often see these union efforts as a form of triangulation-an outside force breaking a personal bond of loyalty and mutual support within the agency. The rhetoric of a campaign often becomes personal, creating anger, distrust and a desire to get even. Managers fear losing decision-making control if a union campaign is successful.

The atmosphere of distrust continues during contract negotiations. Unions attempt to fulfill campaign promises, redress employee grievances and build cohesion among their members and potential members by fostering an "us vs. them" environment. Managers generally resist union contract proposals, which they believe will limit managerial flexibility and make achieving agency goals and objectives difficult.

In this sort of relationship, unions and management make no attempt to identify common interests or goals. They focus on correcting problems with little or no thought about increasing productivity and creating a workplace that satisfies employees and managers.

Bargaining for More

Traditional bargaining has generally focused on pay and benefits. More pay to buy a new car was regarded as compensation for a dull, dead-end job. But workers have changed. Workers not only want enough pay to enjoy their time off the job, they want satisfaction on the job. For example:

Since 1993, IRS employee surveys have shown that employees are most satisfied when their knowledge, skills and abilities are effectively utilized. Employees want challenging work.
Since 1994, the National Partnership Council's annual reports have said job satisfaction and productivity rise when employees are included in improving their work processes and procedures.
In 1996, the Labor Department concluded after a year-long study of state and local governments that including employees in designing changes to boost productivity leads to continuous improvement and employee satisfaction.

Employee involvement in creating new work processes, determining organizational strategies and solving workplace problems is impossible in a hostile labor-management environment. The traditional union focus on grievance processing touches only a small number of employees. In any one year, perhaps 5 percent of the workforce will file or process a grievance. If the union is spending 100 percent of its time on 5 percent of the workforce it could become irrelevant to the 95 percent that has no involvement in the grievance process.

After the Battle

A union at war with an employer cannot address the needs of the 95 percent. And this market is key to union survival and success. Although federal sector unions represent 80 percent of the eligible workforce, only about 30 percent of those employees actually become members. Low membership rates diminish union leaders' credibility with management. Lack of members also makes funding union programs such as newsletters, meetings, social events and training difficult. And without funds, union leaders can become disconnected from members, nonmembers and the labor community.

Federal unions have a history of success with arbitration, unfair labor practice charges and lawsuits. Some unions win 70 percent of arbitrations, compared with the private-sector average of 30 percent. Unions have won millions of dollars in back pay for overtime violations, injunctions against management actions, and judicial decisions that found legislation and regulations unconstitutional. The unions' use of adversarial systems has enforced employee rights and provided redress to those injured.

Providing employee protection is not the only union role. A community born and sustained by struggle often dies when the battle is over. Unless unions create non-crisis bonding experiences, such as working on labor-management teams to address workplace issues, they will become irrelevant.

Unions need to expand their role to include improving employee satisfaction. Doing so will create shared experiences that strengthen the labor community. And a union that focuses on the 95 percent of workers who've never dealt with a formal grievance will increase membership rates and become a vital organization. At the Customs Service, for example, Operation Brass Ring increased drug interdiction efforts by 60 percent. The operation, created by a joint union-management committee, guaranteed employee ideas would be solicited, evaluated and implemented. Employees recognized that it was the union that gave them a voice.

Crossing Paths

Many managers recognize they don't have all the solutions to workplace problems nor all the knowledge, skills and abilities to increase agency productivity and public satisfaction. They recognize that adequately trained employees who are given the authority to exercise discretion are much more productive.

The interests of unions and managers overlap. Managers cannot engage employees if unions are constantly sowing seeds of distrust, publicizing "bad" management decisions, and blocking needed change in agency operations. Similarly, unions cannot improve employee satisfaction if managers insist on addressing only those matters that are negotiable. Both sides need collaborative problem-solving methods to achieve their goals.

It is difficult for union leaders, or any leaders, to change their role. A new vision should include not only the traditional role of protecting employees, but also:

Improving employee satisfaction.
Developing an organizational structure that fosters communication up, down and across the bargaining unit.
Honing the political and leadership skills needed to lead significant change efforts.

The labor-management relationship cannot be transformed without changing the management role as well. To improve employee satisfaction, political appointees and senior executives must include union leaders and workers in strategic planning, implement changes in work processes and the workplace, and develop new technology.

Spending the time and energy to create and sustain a collaborative relationship is much more difficult than keeping the union at arm's length. But the potential to managers is huge. A less adversarial relationship means lower costs (fewer grievances, arbitrations, unfair labor practices and lawsuits) and greater savings (increased productivity and employee and customer satisfaction).

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Survey Provides Map to Better Service

Robert M. Tobias — Tue, 01 Feb 2000 00:00:00 -0500

o one looking for a job in customer service would say to a prospective employer, "I could do the job as well as a federal employee," unless he wanted to be the butt of a joke. But now it seems federal employees are having the last laugh.

In fact, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), the gold standard of statistical measurement for the quality of goods and services in the private sector, reported in December that customer satisfaction was almost equal to the evaluation of nonfederal services. In a survey that measured 30 customer segments in 29 federal agencies, the overall federal sector index was 68.6 on a 100-point scale and the overall private-sector index was 72.1.

The ACSI has measured customer satisfaction with private-sector products and services since 1994. The index is based on a quarterly survey conducted by the National Research Center at the University of Michigan Business School in partnership with Arthur Andersen and the American Society for Quality. The private-sector survey applies to 170 companies representing about 35 percent of the gross national product. The results are widely reported, and companies use them for competitive advantage. Now ACSI's yardstick applies to the federal sector.

The news is good for many government agencies. Six of the 30 agencies scored 80 points or more. Parents on Head Start policy advisory committees gave the Health and Human Services Department's Administration for Children and Families (ACF) the highest score-87. Purchasers of coins rated the U.S. Mint at 86. Participants in the Women, Infants and Children program scored the Agriculture Department's Food and Nutrition Service at 86. Recipients of Social Security benefits rated SSA at 82. Sixty percent of those surveyed said they were more satisfied with government agencies than they were two years ago.

For federal workers, the news is even better because agency efforts to improve customer satisfaction are bound to buoy employee satisfaction.

But the news is mixed for Congress. The index allows lawmakers to compare performance among agencies and with the private sector, but it also could put pressure on them to provide funding to improve agency services.

A New Standard

The heart of Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review initiative was to improve the public trust in government by improving agency service to the public. To achieve this, President Clinton urged agencies to set customer service standards, survey customers and develop customer service improvement plans. The goal has been to provide best-in-class service to taxpayers. The ACSI data show some agencies are in that category and give us a standard by which to compare the 29 agencies that touch 90 percent of the public with similar private companies.

The scores are remarkable considering the agencies' regulatory functions-and even policing functions at organizations such as the Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Internal Revenue Service-which can drag down customer satisfaction ratings. No private company-hotels, for example-consciously denies service to save itself for future use. Yet the National Park Service is required to turn away customers when parks are overcrowded to save the parks for future generations. Serving the public interest, rather than an individual interest, is not required or even expected of a private firm. In spite of that additional burden, government agencies are competitive with the private sector in their ability to deliver quality service.

Surprisingly, the overall private-sector score has fallen 3.4 percent to 72.1 since the first ACSI survey in 1994. In contrast, government customers were more satisfied compared with two years ago.

Survey respondents seemed surprised by the good service they receive from government agencies. In 27 of the 30 customer segments, service exceeded the low expectations created by prolonged media- and political-bashing of federal employees. In fact, those who have had actual experiences with government services rated them significantly higher than what they expected.

The survey first asked people what level of service they expected to get and then asked what they perceived they actually got. While customers rated their expectations of Head Start at 71, their actual experience with the program was much better than expected, netting the agency a 91 for perceived quality. Respondents' expected service rating for INS was a low 61, but the agency scored 75 on perceived quality, a rating that included questions about waiting time, understanding the agency's mission, and courtesy and professionalism. International travelers expected little from INS, but rated the quality of service above the private-sector average.

Statistics that agencies collect internally on quality of service often are dismissed as self-serving and insufficient to compare with other agencies or the private sector. Through the ACSI data, government agencies now have an independent verification of the quality of public service they provide.

Motivating Employees

On a 10-point scale, customers rated federal employees 8.3 on professionalism, 8.5 on courtesy, 8 on accessibility, 7.9 on helpfulness and 7 on usefulness, exploding the myth that they are unwilling and unable to deliver quality service.

Customer satisfaction and higher productivity are mirrored in employee satisfaction. Employees who are ill-trained, badly motivated or incompetently led cannot provide good service. Therefore, to raise customer satisfaction ratings, agencies must create a work environment that boosts employee satisfaction.

Until now, it has been hard to prove that employee satisfaction increases productivity and customer satisfaction. Whipsawed by their inability to prove results and the pressure to cut costs, many agencies have simply thrown up their hands and done little or nothing to improve employee satisfaction.

Employees know the quality of service they are providing to the public, according to Benjamin Schneider, professor of organizational psychology at the University of Maryland. Schneider was the first person to prove a statistical linkage between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction in his seminal work in 1980. He surveyed bank customers and employees from several branch banks, and in branches where employees said they provided good customer service, customers agreed with that assessment. Customers similarly confirmed they were receiving bad customer service in branches where employees indicated they knew they were failing to do a good job. This statistical linkage shows that employees know the level of service they provide and are a valuable resource for suggestions on improving customer service.

In 1992, the IRS proved the connection between employee satisfaction and increased productivity. Five organizational development specialists studied 11 IRS customer call sites in a two-year program to improve job satisfaction, productivity and quality of work. The intervention emphasized employee surveys, a response to the survey data, team building, improved group dynamics, and prompt problem solving. Employees and managers at these sites received training and assistance in process facilitation. Other customer call sites received no assistance and served as the control group.

After two years, statistics showed significant increases in job satisfaction, including employee support, management support, technical training, and consistency of policies and procedures. The participating sites increased their productivity by 7.7 percent compared to 1.5 percent at the sites receiving no assistance. At the end of the two-year period the four sites that had been in the program for the full 24 months improved productivity by 14.4 percent. The longer call sites were in the program, the larger the productivity increase.

Sears Model

In 1992, Sears asked the developers of the ACSI survey to link their customer satisfaction model to job satisfaction. ACSI created a model that allows Sears managers to go beyond intuition and untested assumptions to identify the specific actions that influence financial performance with a statistical certainty.

No longer did Sears have to guess how to influence employee satisfaction. The company tested a variety of potential factors that might influence employee satisfaction. Of the 70 potential elements, 10 had the greatest effect:

Type of work assigned
Amount of work assigned
Sense of accomplishment
Pride in the job
Physical working conditions
Supervisory treatment
Hope for the future of Sears
Sears making the changes necessary to
compete
An understandable business strategy
An understandable connection between the employee's work and business success

An article in the January 1998 Harvard Business Review on the Sears model reported that a 5-point improvement in employee attitudes will drive a 1.3-point improvement in customer satisfaction, which will drive a 0.5 percent improvement in revenue growth. The Sears model could be developed at every federal agency. Every federal manager could know with a statistical certainty what actions must be taken to increase job satisfaction and therefore customer satisfaction. If agencies plan to do more than collect data and give lip service to improved service, they must improve employee satisfaction.

Finding Fixes

Congress members complain that agencies provide poor customer service, but now they can figure out how to fix it. Congressional authorizing, appropriating and oversight committees now have a measurement tool they never had before. The ACSI data show that government agencies have work to do, but not as much as the myth of non-service predicted.

The ACSI data allow agencies to separate dissatisfaction with the policy created by Congress from dissatisfaction with the way policy is delivered. Agencies often take the blame for congressionally created policy. IRS, Customs, INS, SSA and others are often criticized for doing the wrong thing, but those agencies say their hands are tied by statute.

Now, for the first time, a viable measure based on independent data allows Congress to hold agency chiefs' feet to the fire. The ACSI numbers tell Congress whether agencies have made the right judgments and taken the correct actions to improve customer service. Combined with the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act, which mandates the creation of annual goals, the ACSI data will allow Congress to evaluate whether goals have been achieved and, if not, why.

Similarly, agencies that take the time and energy to implement a Sears model can hold Congress' feet to the fire. They, too, have data to show Congress how acquiring problem-solving skills, training managers and changing laws can improve service. For the first time we have the map to improving customer satisfaction.

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Realizing Reform

Robert M. Tobias — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 -0500

n 1993, Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review called for reform of the civil service laws to give agency heads more discretion to hire, fire, pay and evaluate employees. But in the seven years since, there has been no agreement on the scope or the substance of comprehensive civil service reform. The year 2000, though, may bring an alignment of the sun, moon and stars-Congress, a new presidential administration and other stakeholders-to forge a civil service reform package on which all can agree.

There are several reasons why the long-dormant idea of civil service reform may be flickering back to life: the assurance of a new presidential administration after the fall's elections, rampant dissatisfaction with the government's current pay comparability system, and agencies' inability to hire desired employees in a tight labor market. But can the parties satisfactorily resolve the conflicts that have derailed all efforts at reform since the landmark Civil Service Reform Act of 1978?

The problems with the civil service system start with the hiring and compensation processes. Agency heads are complaining, as they did before the 1990 Federal Employee Pay Comparability Act (FEPCA) was enacted, that the government no longer can attract employees with specialized skills. Employees in the information technology, research, science and engineering fields are difficult, if not impossible, to hire and retain.

Six years of downsizing have masked the growing disparity between the pay of entry-level jobs in the private sector and those in the federal government. Reentering the marketplace, federal agencies are finding it extremely difficult to recruit the kind of high-caliber new employees who once sought federal jobs. Now that agencies finally have the funds to hire replacements, they find that good applicants are scarce and difficult to hire.

When agencies do find good candidates, they complain about how long the hiring process takes. They want more flexibility in the personnel system to compete in a shrinking applicant market. But whether they'll get it depends on several key factors.

A New Climate

A new administration will almost certainly have to reexamine the federal pay-setting process. Unless the next President lets Congress set federal employee pay, as it has for the past two years, he will be required to declare an "economic emergency" to avoid granting the pay increase required by FEPCA-currently calculated at 13 percent for Jan. 1, 2001. No new administration will want to be in the position of trying to declare an "economic emergency" if projected budget surpluses continue to grow, or to rely on Congress to get it off this embarrassing hook. And no new administration will want to grant federal employees a 13 percent pay increase.

If the process of setting annual pay rates is opened for discussion, the question of giving agency heads more discretion to set pay and create their own personnel systems will come into play. Several agencies, including the IRS and the Federal Aviation Administration, have already won such authority. Others are actively seeking it. Last year, for example, Congress passed legislation that would overhaul the Patent and Trademark Office and give its top officials much more latitude in setting compensation.

The political climate for civil service reform may be changing. Al Gore, Bill Bradley and George W. Bush are all campaigning on promises to make government work better, not abolish its functions. As columnist E. J. Dionne recently noted in The Washington Post, "The new competition is over who will use government more effectively to solve problems." It appears that all of the top presidential candidates will seek new alternatives to better deliver government services to the public. That may well cause them to embrace reform proposals that would make the federal government's personnel system more responsive to the needs of agencies.

Even if that happens, however, it won't be easy for interested parties to agree on exactly what a reform package should include. The Clinton administration, agency heads, employee unions, managers associations and members of Congress all have their own ideas on how to define "reform" when it comes to managing the bureaucracy. Any one of the parties can potentially block civil service reform
legislation.

Over the past seven years, agencies and unions have had some success engaging in labor-management partnerships to resolve problems in the civil service system. Such partnerships may provide the basis for a new collaborative process to reach agreement on a civil service reform package. But partnerships are no guarantee of success.

For example, a signed partnership agreement between the American Federation of Government Employees and the General Services Administration failed to prevent a major dispute when GSA decided earlier this year to close eight Federal Supply Service warehouses. The move could have thrown some 2,000 employees out of their jobs. After an independent arbitrator ruled that GSA must reverse its decision and negotiate with the union over the warehouses' fate, GSA chief David Barram agreed to get input from AFGE. But as of mid-November, he continued to insist that the final decision would be his.

A collaborative approach to reaching consensus on reform can create a synergy among the parties that yields a solution no one has considered before. But divisions between the groups are large, and trust is in short supply.

View From the Top

Since long before the National Performance Review, politically appointed federal officials have complained about the "one size fits all" federal personnel system. They argue that they need more discretion to hire the right people at the right time if they are to fulfill their agency missions. Civil service reform was born in large part from the cacophony of their complaints.

Historically, Office of Personnel Management officials, who oversee the personnel system, responded to complaints about the system by simply throwing up their hands and saying, "We're just administering the laws Congress passed." But OPM responded aggressively to the NPR initiative by eliminating vast portions of the Federal Personnel Manual and turning responsibility for many personnel actions over to managers. Agencies were allowed to create their own promotion processes, develop pass/fail performance evaluation systems, and grant employees bonuses of up to $10,000. In addition, agencies were delegated authority to offer 25 percent pay differentials to individuals and 10 percent differentials to uniquely qualified groups of employees who would be likely to leave the federal government.

Such administrative fixes, however, did not streamline the hiring process, allow agencies to create tailored classification systems or set pay based on broad-based agency needs. Such changes require legislation, and it is here that the effort has foundered for a variety of reasons.

Rules Rule

Congress has historically viewed the federal government as a single employer, enacting merit principles in law that apply to all of its employees: fair and open competition for federal jobs; equitable treatment in all aspects of personnel management; equal pay for equal work; retention of employees based on their performance; effective training for employees; and protection for civil servants from partisan political activity, arbitrary actions and reprisal for lawful disclosure of information. Congress also enacted governmentwide legislation on pay, benefits and personnel policies to ensure that the merit principles were applied uniformly.

In the interest of fairness, the rules-based civil service system does not allow for variances from agency to agency. Allowing agencies more authority to hire, fire, promote, pay and manage employees would require legislation. In such legislation, Congress would have to change its evaluation of agencies' performance from whether they followed the merit principles as defined by OPM to whether they created and applied a merit-based system that helped achieve agency goals. Agencies, rather than OPM, would be the interpreter and applier of the merit principles.

Many stakeholders in the civil service system have opposed changes in the laws, rules and regulations created to implement the merit principles because they fear that allowing agency leaders a broader range of judgment will inevitably lead to at least some arbitrary or impartial decisions.

Unions, for example, have resisted supporting a civil service reform package in recent years. The harsh attacks on federal employees after the GOP won control of Congress in 1994 forced unions into a protective mode. Union officials decided that staying out of the line of fire in the legislative arena as much as possible was the best policy to avoid harm. Putting civil service reform in play meant risking unwanted changes in the collective bargaining statute, Merit Systems Protection Board protections, or levels of pay and benefits.

Unions were also afraid that any discretion given to agency heads would not be subject to collective bargaining, weakening unions' ability to represent members potentially harmed by the exercise of the discretion.

Some union leaders were excited by the idea of participating in implementing new personnel flexibilities and pay-setting authority, but no top union official was willing to run the risk that agency heads would unilaterally exercise the new discretion.

At the same time, federal managers and executives associations have focused on increasing pay, preserving benefits, making it easier to discharge poor performers and resisting any incursion by unions on the exercise of existing agency head discretion. Like the unions, they have focused primarily on preserving the status quo and avoiding congressional cuts in pay and benefits.

Finding Freedom

The Clinton administration, on the other hand, has been actively seeking to allow agencies wide discretion to create personnel systems through the creation of performance-based organizations (PBOs). Under the PBO concept, federal operations are given freedom from strict government personnel and procurement regulations in return for meeting tough performance standards.

The PBO concept raises several questions. The Clinton administration has been divided over how much discretion chief executives of PBOs should have to set salaries above General Schedule rates and to replace the current merit-based network of hiring, pay and personnel policies. Should unions be allowed to negotiate over the exercise of any additional agency head discretion? Is the PBO model appropriate for a vast number of federal agencies?

Agencies that believe they are underfunded fear that giving agency executives more discretion-not to mention higher compensation themselves-would put rich and poor agencies in competition with one another. Agencies that receive less funding fear they will not be able to compete for the best talent against their better-funded brethren elsewhere in the government.

Agencies that do receive higher funding levels and are in the congressional spotlight, such as the FAA and the IRS, want the widest possible discretion to attract the people they need to overhaul their operations.

Finally, agency heads are divided over whether it will be possible to fully utilize the flexibilities embodied in the PBO concept if their discretion is subject to negotiation with unions. Depending on where you sit, union involvement is either critical to agencies' ultimate success or a hindrance to effective management in the absence of centralized oversight.

On the Hill

Despite their differences, both unions and agency executives have shown an interest in working together on civil service reform. But they'll need help from Congress, and that will require clearing several jurisdictional and oversight hurdles.

Establishing the federal employee pay-setting process, defining benefits, reviewing issues of general management and ensuring adherence to the merit principles are the responsibility of the House Government Reform Committee and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. These two panels would have only supporting roles if each agency head were given broad authority to create pay and personnel systems. In such a situation, each agency's specific oversight committee would become responsible for determining if such discretion was exercised in a way that accomplished the agency goals more effectively. Like all committees in Congress, the Government Reform and Governmental Affairs panels have resisted giving up any jurisdiction.

In 1998, when the House Ways and Means Committee proposed paying up to 40 IRS managers salaries that could rise as high as that of the Vice President, the Government Reform Committee asserted its jurisdiction over the issue and requested the opportunity to hold hearings and manage that portion of the IRS reform legislation. Ways and Means, the IRS' authorizing committee, agreed to negotiate with representatives of Government Reform, but refused to cede any jurisdiction.

This fight made clear the tensions between committees like Ways and Means and the Senate Finance Committee, which have special expertise and an interest in solving individual agencies' problems, and the Government Reform and Governmental Affairs panels, which have general responsibility and want governmentwide rules, not individual agency aberrations.

The IRS experience shows that it's not just unions that have a vested interest in opposing broad-based civil service reform. At the same time, the conditions for collaboration among all interested parties to reach agreement on a reform package have rarely been better. The abolish-government mentality is fading, while at the same time agencies are under ever-increasing pressure to streamline operations and position themselves to compete for workers in the tightest job market in recent memory. Besides, what better time to take on the job of creating a new framework for the bureaucracy than at the dawn of a new millennium?

Robert M. Tobias is a distinguished practitioner in residence and director of the Institute for the Study of Policy Implementation at American University in Washington. He was president of the National Treasury Employees Union from 1983 to 1999.

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Labor Relations Require Nurturing

Robert M. Tobias — Wed, 01 Dec 1999 00:00:00 -0500

anaging a labor-management relationship requires the same preparation, planning, goal setting, monitoring and accountability as any other agency operation. Top-level political appointees and senior executives must actively nurture the relationship in order to achieve the employee participation needed to accomplish agency objectives. Passive management yields passive results at best and, at worst, an agency at war with its employees.

Political appointees and senior executives fail to actively manage labor management relationships for many reasons. They may be focused on formulating agency policy rather than implementing it, responding to Congress, or managing external agency stakeholders. Although the competing demands on executives' time are many, the price of inattention is almost always a lost opportunity to accomplish agency objectives.

A labor-management relationship can be filled with distrust or it can serve as the vehicle for engaging employees in accomplishing agency goals while generating satisfaction in the workplace. Because 80 percent of eligible federal employees have voted to be represented by unions, the labor-management relationship is synonymous with the employee-management relationship.

While only 35 percent of those employees are members, unions are obligated to speak for all the employees they represent. And management is obligated to speak to employees through the union. Some political appointees and senior executives ignore this simple truth. They believe they can delegate a hostile union-management relationship to chaos controllers in the agency personnel division while maintaining "good" relations with employees.

The ability of union leaders to enhance or impede agency goals should not be ignored. Some of them enjoy more popular support than others, and some workplaces have more union members than others. But union leaders have the legal right to insist that every agency initiative be negotiated and can block initiatives indefinitely. When bypassed, union leaders also can generate a lack of trust in agency officials.

If their goal is to maximize employee productivity, executives must foster the labor-management relationship with the same level of energy, interest and time they devote to the appropriations process. This is especially true in the federal sector, given its history of fiercely adversarial labor relations. An expert interviewed by the General Accounting Office in a 1991 report commented, "Never have so many people and agencies spent so much time, blood, sweat and tears on so little." The failure to produce tangible results despite significant effort has fueled disappointment, cynicism and the perpetuation of adversarial labor-management relations.

Personnel officials cannot create a common vision in an organized workplace. And relying solely on the labor-management statute to fix a dysfunctional relationship cannot work. Executives must lead the effort to repair relations with unions.

The federal labor relations statute focuses on the mechanics of that relationship, such as:

The agency must bargain with the union and create a collective bargaining agreement.
The union must be notified in advance of any contemplated changes in working conditions, and the changes may not be implemented until bargaining is completed.
Disputes over employee discipline or the application of the collective bargaining agreement must go to binding arbitration.
But a labor-management relationship limited to creating employee rights and safety, is not a fully evolved relationship between employees, their elected representatives, and managers.

More With Less

Agency goals are achieved by implementing policy, which is becoming ever more difficult as Congress expands agency missions, the public and press become more vocal and demanding, and funds for discretionary spending decrease. The heart of effective management is creating more efficient work processes, giving more discretion to more accountable managers, and energizing employees.

Traditionally, Congress has exercised limited review of agency management. But a renewed interest in how agencies are managed has released a stream of legislation:

The 1991 Chief Financial Officers Act ordered agencies to adopt modern accounting standards and practices that could be independently audited.
The 1993 Federal Financial Management Improvement Act directed agencies to use the financial information to improve management practices.
The 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) ordered agencies to articulate measurable goals and to submit them with annual budget requests.
The 1994 Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act and the 1996 Federal Acquisition Reform Act sought to improve federal procurement by giving agency heads more responsibility for saving money by removing bureaucratic barriers to efficient technology purchases.
The 1996 Information Technology Management Reform Act, known as the Clinger-Cohen Act, gives agency heads more discretion while mandating the creation of new processes to evaluate agency technology needs.

The Clinton administration has tried to stimulate more effective management by decentralizing personnel policies and giving managers more discretion and responsibility. Before these initiatives, critics complained that agency personnel authority was lodged in the Office of Personnel Management and disassociated from agency missions. With the virtual elimination of the Federal Personnel Manual, OPM has delegated personnel authority to agency heads. In addition, the Office of Management and Budget no longer imposes staffing ceilings. Although OMB continues to fight with agencies over appropriate funding, it gives agency heads more discretion to allocate resources as needed.

Changing Course

President Clinton recognizes that solutions to workplace problems rest with managers overseeing the work and employees doing the work. The President believes that for management discretion to be effective, all employees must be involved and the labor-management relationship must change from adversarial to collaborative. "The involvement of federal government employees and their union representatives is essential to achieving the National Performance Review's government reform objectives," Clinton said in an October executive order. "Only by changing the nature of federal labor management relations so that managers, employees and employees' elected union representatives serve as partners will it be possible to design and implement the comprehensive changes necessary to reform government."

Creating a collaborative labor-management relationship focused on improved agency operations and employee and public satisfaction requires active management, but it won't be easy. Political appointees change rapidly, making it difficult to create and institutionalize a labor-management relationship. New political appointees are often interested in changing the focus and direction of the agency, which tends to disrupt the momentum created by prior appointees.

Hierarchical management structures leave little authority for decision-making below the top and a great reluctance by those at the top to create a seat at the table for an employee representative. Coming up with a new labor relationship, in which all parties have a stake, is challenging.

Union leaders also must overcome obstacles to improved relations with management. It is difficult to change from focusing on short-term tangible actions, such as grievances and unfair labor practice complaints, to long-term systematic improvements, even though they would make the work of employees more productive and enjoyable.

The history of union-management relationships makes it difficult for union leaders to trust management representatives to check their guns at the door. Unions fear being perceived as "in bed with management." Extended meetings with managers, the lack of quick results and toning down of rhetoric all can lead a union leader's constituents to believe the worst.

Both expect that a collaborative labor-management relationship should result in outcomes to their liking. For example, managers believe that if they share information, union leaders should understand and accept their decisions. And union leaders believe that if managers truly listen, they will understand and agree--thereby eliminating the need for grievances.

In spite of the history and the obstacles, collaborative relationships have had a positive impact on the bottom line at many agencies. Reducing the number of grievances, unfair labor practice charges and days spent in traditional bargaining saves money. So does increased productivity.

The National Partnership Council has documented extensive savings in its annual reports. The most detailed analysis to date was conducted by Booz-Allen and Hamilton for the Customs Service to audit its collaborative effort with the National Treasury Employees Union. Booz-Allen found that for every dollar Customs invested in its partnership effort, it received a return of $1.25. A private-sector company couldn't turn down a 25 percent return on investment nor should any agency.

Robert M. Tobias, distinguished practitioner in residence and director of the Institute for the Study of Policy Implementation at American University, was president of the National Treasury Employees Union from 1983 to 1999.

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