HHS seeks a new generation of leaders

Faced with the retirement of possibly half of his workforce over the next four years, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson is borrowing an idea from business to ensure that his department has strong and capable leaders for the future.

Thompson has launched a new program called "Emerging Leaders" that will take outstanding graduates from universities and put them through a two-year management internship program in various sectors of the vast department. Then, if they perform well and become permanent employees, they can move up the bureaucratic pay scale and management track faster than normal.

In the program's initial year, out of an applicant pool of 8,000, Thompson has selected 62 recent university graduates with bachelor's or master's degrees to participate. The recruits begin their internships this month, and the program has sparked interest from several other Cabinet secretaries, according to Thompson. (His Cabinet colleagues also want to get their hands on the list of 7,938 applicants who didn't make the cut at HHS.)

The program is designed to attract "exceptional individuals into public service in a variety of occupations within HHS," Thompson said in a July 15 speech at the Excellence in Government conference. "The positive response to this program, as evidenced by the thousands of applications received, clearly shows that young people are interested in pursuing careers in public service," he added later in a statement.

"Young" is the key word here. The whole reason for launching the program is to find replacements for the many department employees-particularly scientists and researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health-who are aging and approaching retirement.

"We're looking at a pretty serious retirement situation of our scientists," said William Pierce, deputy assistant secretary for public affairs for Thompson. At "NIH and CDC, there are a lot of retirements staring us in the face. This is an attempt to recruit people to replace those folks."

The problem is that more than half of the department's 64,343 employees (56 percent) are eligible for retirement from now through fiscal year 2006. Nearly 32 percent are eligible for regular retirement, and another 24 percent are eligible for early retirement.

In contrast, through fiscal year 2001 the numbers were smaller, although still significant: A total of 29 percent of department employees were eligible to retire-14 percent qualified for regular retirement, and 15 percent for early retirement.

Many of the employees looking to retire soon were hired before 1984, when federal government retirement benefits were generous. These workers are eligible to retire at age 55, and some may retire earlier, if they don't mind accepting something short of a full pension.

For people who entered the federal government before 1984, retirement benefits are calculated using a formula that is based on the annual earnings from the three most lucrative years of their career. In most cases, it doesn't pay to keep working when the retirement benefits are so rich. In some cases, employees retire, begin receiving their benefits, and then come back to work for the department as contractors.

The retirement package is different for people who joined the federal government in 1984 and afterwards. Indeed, the benefits for those employees are more comparable to those of private-sector benefit plans. Post-1984 workers do, however, get some Social Security benefits, unlike their colleagues who were hired earlier.

Aside from the economic benefits, scientists have another reason to take the retirement option. Although as federal employees they can earn some royalties for their research, they can earn larger royalties in the private sector-and a greater sense of ownership in their discoveries as well.

Of Thompson's 62 recruits for Health and Human Services, eight are scientists, and 17 have training in public health matters. NIH will get the most recruits, with about 14 slated to end up there. The CDC will get about six, and the Food and Drug Administration about five. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will also get about six of the trainees.

Each of Thompson's young recruits will be hired at the GS-7 or GS-9 pay grades, which in the Washington area amounts to roughly $31,000 or $38,000 a year, respectively. They will begin with six to eight weeks of training that includes project management, leadership, and "visionary" skills.

Although each recruit is hired by a particular office or agency within HHS, all of them will spend their first year rotating among different parts of the department, guided by an individual mentor along the way. In their second year, recruits will begin to work full-time for the office or agency that hired them.

After two years, the department may permanently hire the recruits, raising them to a pay grade as high as GS-12, where they could earn $50,000 a year to start. But there's no guarantee. Retention beyond two years will depend on performance.