Helping Employees Learn How To Stay Employed

EXECUTIVE MEMO

Helping Employees Learn How To Stay Employed

he witches' brew of layoffs, furloughs, shutdowns and funding uncertainty has federal workers stewing about how to stay employed.

Not to worry.

By the last day in February, all agencies were to have begun offering "individual employee empowerment" aid to soon-to-be-jobless staffers. In addition, agencies were supposed to give their own displaced staffers first dibs on new job openings.

People holding reduction-in-force (RIF) notices will get time off during the workday to work on their resumes, assess their skills and get career counseling. As a further nudge toward empowerment, people targeted for RIFs no longer will be enrolled in the Interagency Placement Program for automatic job referrals across government. Now employees are expected to show their initiative by getting out there and finding and applying for federal jobs on their own. The Office of Personnel Management was slated to dump the placement program Feb. 29.

Just like other federal job hunters, displaced civil servants must seek out vacancies by phone at OPM service centers, via computer modem on OPM's federal employment opportunities electronic bulletin board, and by using touch-screen computers in federal offices and elsewhere.

Having gotten out of the job referral business, OPM is getting empowered, too. This year, it will begin charging agencies an estimated $1.80 per employee to list job openings on the employment information database. OPM announced the change Jan. 8, reminding agencies inclined to balk that the 6.5 million job calls OPM handles each year could be going to their personnel offices instead.

For those agencies who are looking to stock up supplies for their career transition assistance programs, Government Executive and FPMI Communications have teamed up to create a new book, Career Transition: A Guide for Federal Employees in a Time of Turmoil. The book teaches workers how to identify and capitalize on their skills and talents, hunt for jobs in an era of downsizing, make the leap into the private sector, and craft winning resumes for government and private employers. Copies are available for $10.95 plus $4 shipping. To order, call (205) 539-1850, fax a request to (205) 539-0911, or write to FPMI Communications, 707 Fiber St., Huntsville, Ala., 35801-1850.