Women’s group broadens outreach efforts in federal hiring
FEW and Food Safety and Inspection Service pair up to recruit and train women.
The Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service has signed an agreement with Federally Employed Women to enlist the advocacy group's help in recruiting qualified women to the agency.
"We're now going to have an opportunity for people to go further to advance their careers," said Sue Webster, FEW president. As part of the agreement, FSIS donated $10,000 to FEW's Collegiate Scholarship Fund.
That donation indicates FSIS' willingness to provide resources for all women interested in the field of food safety and inspection in addition to its own recruitment agenda. FEW and FSIS are collaborating on everything from attracting more women to relevant career fields to designing more aggressive recruitment programs for FSIS, and developing a range of training and staffing initiatives to increase the number of women with credentials that would make them eligible for promotion within the agency.
FSIS has designated its civil rights division to coordinate its efforts with FEW, which will include building partnerships with women's organizations, posting job openings on FEW's Web site, running a booth and programs at FEW's national training conference, and providing speakers for FSIS events.
FSIS specifically would like to get more women into the Senior Executive Service and high-level General Schedule positions that are considered hiring pools for the SES. Diversity in the SES has been a major area of focus for Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill., who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Federal Workforce Subcommittee.
Webster said her predecessor, Rhoda Trent, had discussed ways to make such partnerships more productive and accountable.
"We said, 'We don't just want to sign a piece of paper, we don't want to sign it to make a good news story, we want this to be a living document where we both benefit from it,' " Webster said. "I think an important piece of this one with FSIS is we put in a clause that talks about memorandum of understanding management, it establishes a team, and we're going to track and analyze the progress we're getting from the MOU."
A successful collaboration could provide a model for other agreements FEW is negotiating or has under way, including an existing project with the Veterans Affairs Department and pending agreements with the National Guard Bureau and Naval Sea Systems Command.
FEW also is planning a joint meeting in October with other diversity advocacy groups to try to strengthen their collaborative efforts as well. Federally Employed Women is one of a number of groups that supported Davis' legislation to create an office within the Office of Personnel Management to administer programs for and to collect data about SES diversity and require agencies to formalize their plans in this area.