Tag: Chief Human Resources Officer

News, Training

Finally, a New Emphasis on Training

by Jeff Neal

Both the Washington Post’s Joe Davidson and Federal News Radio‘s Jason Miller reported on March 3 that the Obama Administration will include increased attention to employee training needs in the President’s proposed 2015 budget. The reports are based upon comments made by OPM Director Katherine Archuleta at the National Treasury Employees Union legislative conference last week. Federal News Radio reports Director Archuleta said “The President’s budget proposal will include measures to improve federal employee training and support an exchange of training ideas across government, part of the conversation that [NTEU President] Colleen [Kelley] and other labor representatives are going to be having in the Labor Management Council. We need to learn from one another about what works. We need to be able to talk about our successes.”

It’s about time. For far too long Federal agencies have looked to the training budget as one of the first places to cut (after travel) when budgets are tight.  Training cuts are among the most shortsighted of the budget cutting options. They trade small savings today for a lack of capability tomorrow. Although such cuts are typically justified by claims that they are to protect dollars devoted to the mission, the result is that employees do not have current training on crucial mission skills. The renewed emphasis on training in the 2015 budget is a good sign that the dark times for employee training may be coming to an end. I was also pleased to see Director Archuleta’s focus on sharing information regarding learning about what works.

“What works” is sometimes difficult to define other than through anecdotal evidence. One key shortcoming in many training programs is evaluation of their effectiveness. Real training evaluation goes far beyond simply asking class attendees if they liked the training or asking managers if they think their employees did better after training. Done properly, training evaluation can help agencies determine whether employee skills, customer experiences and mission outcomes are improved by specific training. If more training programs were accompanied by proper evaluations, we would learn far more about “what works” and what does not. That would lead to far better use of training dollars and better outcomes.

One area where we have a good idea of “what works” is leader development. Other than core mission skills, leader development is one of the best investments in training dollars. Money spent on leader development is leveraged by the effects leaders have on the people they lead. With many of the bad results evidenced by the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey being directly or indirectly caused by the quality of supervision, the amount of goodness that can result from effective leader development programs is tremendous. Given that, and the fact that even with more dollars training budgets will be tight, how can agencies make certain they spend their dollars wisely?

Recently my ICF International colleague Ethan Sanders and I discussed the issue and the results of a study Ethan, our colleagues Lisa Gabel, Kate Harker and students from Penn State conducted for ICF and the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) on the subject. The report of that research, “The Impact of Leader Development Programs,” looks at the most effective methods of linking leader development programs to organizational impact measures. The study focused on three specific research questions:

  1. What are the best examples of organizations that are able to measure the impact of leadership development programs?
  2. What are the specific techniques and the required context that these organizations need to link leadership development content to organizational metrics?
  3. Can these best practices be transplanted into other organizations, thereby allowing them to assess and improve the outcomes of their leadership development programs?

Following interviews with an expert panel (including Chief Learning Officers), conducting a literature review, doing “best case” interviews and administering two surveys, the research resulted in several key findings.

  • It is possible to effectively (and efficiently) link the outcomes of leadership development to organizational success measures. It is exceedingly rare to find organizations that do it well and it definitely takes some practice to do it well.
  • Best Case organizations who do evaluation well, report it taking far fewer resources (time, people, money) than those who speculate about the difficulty of implementing a robust evaluation systems.
  • Organizations that already have a culture around measurement (i.e., measuring the effectiveness of programs, service, success, etc..) have a much easier time standing-up a training evaluation system for leadership development.
  • There are a lot of techniques out there (some more qualitative in nature, some more quantitative) that can work for different organizations, but you have to select ones that fit your organization. The study identified 29 techniques.
  • Best Case organizations have baseline data, a formal evaluation plan in place, and use more advanced types of measurement approaches such as control groups and time-series approaches.
  • ROI measurement is still very low in the profession.
The good news from the report and literature review is that it is clear that training programs in general can benefit from evaluations of their effectiveness. Training evaluation is not only less resource intensive than many people believe, but there are also many effective techniques that can be used and tailored to fit the culture, mission and requirements of the organization. If agencies become more committed to training evaluation, the Federal government will gain far more knowledge about effectiveness of programs, ways to get better results with fewer dollars, and the real mission benefits of training. That knowledge can serve as the basis for the business case for increased investment in training and the improved results it can produce.
News

How 20th Century Reform Became 21st Century Headaches

by Jeff Neal2 Comments on How 20th Century Reform Became 21st Century Headaches

This is the second of a series of posts on the history and future of the civil service. The first, addressing the Pendleton Act and Theodore Roosevelt’s role in civil service reform is here.

Although it is 130 years old, the Pendleton Act is still a relevant foundation for the civil service.  The difficulty the system experiences in meeting today’s requirements is not because of the age of the system or lack of reform.  In fact, many of the problems the Civil Service currently faces are an outgrowth of one of the largest reform efforts of the mid-20th century – the Classification Act of 1949. The Classification Act consolidated multiple classification systems into one “General Schedule.” President Harry Truman issued a lengthy signing statement outlining the benefits of the new system. The Classification Act made sense and was real reform in 1949, but changes in the workforce and the nature of work make it increasingly unsuited for a 21st century workforce. Let’s take a look at it through the lens of President Truman’s signing statement.

“This act completely revises and brings up to date the salary structure for nearly half the civilian jobs of the Government–that is, nearly all of the jobs in the executive branch except those in the postal service and those paid on an hourly basis which are covered by other legislation.”  The General Schedule is no longer current. When it was established, more than half of Federal employees were GS-5 and below. Because so many lower graded jobs have been automated or outsourced, employees today are grouped at the higher end of the scale. This legislation makes a number of significant improvements in the pay structure of the Government. It greatly simplifies the salary system by reducing the number of pay grades from 41 to 28, and at the same time, corrects inequities among the different grades which were created by piecemeal legislation over a period of years. It authorizes longevity step-increases above the maximum scheduled grade rate for employees with long, faithful, and efficient service. The 21st century job market is far less stable than that of 1949. Employees change jobs more frequently and are more geographically mobile. A system where many of the pay increases are based on longevity rather than accomplishments presents problems that were not anticipated in post-war America. Back then, the idea of a life-long job was the norm.

The act also adds three new grades at the top of the pay schedule, which will permit a limited number of the top career positions to be paid up to a maximum of $14,000. As a result of this action, it will be possible to increase the salaries of some top career positions whose incumbents have been paid the same salary as many of their subordinates. The three new grades are now known as the Senior Executive Service. SES members often make less than their subordinates, and SES pay increases based on performance are so small that they are virtually meaningless. It will also make it possible for the Government to compete more effectively with higher-paying private employment for the services of outstanding people, and to offer a greater incentive to able young men and women considering whether to enter public service as a career. Federal entry-level salaries are adequate or generous for some occupations, but many lines of work are so competitive that the government struggles to recruit and retain talent. It is getting harder to attract high performers to the SES because the risks often outweigh the job satisfaction and benefits.

The new Classification Act also improves Federal personnel administration by decentralizing to the departments and agencies the responsibility for fixing the pay rate for each position, except those in the top three grades. This will eliminate one source of delay in appointing qualified personnel. The Classification Act may have helped at the time, but today’s hiring process is too complicated, too slow, and too unresponsive to changing labor market conditions. At the same time, it will increase the responsibility of the departments and agencies for meeting their own position classification problems. These responsibilities must be carefully exercised. Job classification in the 1950s and 1960s was a rigid and inflexible process. Some HR offices treated classification standards as though they were holy documents and would not let employees or managers read them. As a result, grade creep was contained (although at the expense of flexibility). Today, a classifier is a rare breed. Classification standards are available to anyone with an Internet connection. The authority to classify positions has been delegated to managers in many agencies, and grade levels are often not consistent with the classification standards. Grade creep is pervasive and has aggravated the grade compression at the top grades. The Civil Service Commission, in carrying out its responsibilities for maintaining the consistency of salaries on a Government-wide basis, must also exercise its authority for prescribing standards and reviewing and inspecting the operations and decisions under the act to assure that its provisions are judiciously administered by all alike. The Office of Personnel Management (successor to the Civili Service Commission) still writes classification standards. The process takes several years and requires coordination with many stakeholders. As a result, some classification standards are out of date, and others that should be developed in response to the realities of the labor market, simply do not exist. Cuts to OPM’s budget have limited its ability to address new requirements and effectively provide oversight of the classification process.

The management improvement provisions of the act further assure economy and efficiency by requiring the department and agency heads to review their operations on a systematic and continuing basis. This provision recognizes the importance of improving the management of Government operations which was emphasized so strongly by the Hoover Commission and which is the purpose of the program provided for by a recent Executive order establishing the Advisory Committee on Management Improvement. Interest in improving management of government operations has waxed and waned, but it would be difficult to argue that many people today truly have an interest in getting into the nuts-and-bolts of government. A few excellent organizations, such as the National Academy of Public Administration, the Partnership for Public Service, and the Volcker Alliance, are actively engaged in “good government” activities, but the national interest the Hoover Commission generated is just not there today. Furthermore, it provides for the reward of those persons or groups of persons who have done an exceptional job in promoting economy and efficiency in the Government’s work. Bonuses for SES members and employees have been reduced or eliminated, Presidential Rank Awards suspended, and legislation is moving in the House of Representatives to limit bonuses for employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs. In many agencies, if employee bonuses are awarded they are a few hundred dollars each. It would be hard to argue there is a lot of political support for substantial rewards for people who promote economy and efficiency in government.

The Classification Act is 64 years old. The rigidly structured pay and job classification processes it created were well-suited to the challenges of the post-war world. They provided stability, consistency, and a means of making it easier for citizens to build careers in public service. Unfortunately, the civil service system has not kept up with the labor market in which it competes. It is unresponsive to the market, challenging to administer, and pretends that it provides a high degree of precision in classification and pay setting. It does not really do that, and the job classification process is a mess. Because job classification drives hiring and pay, those are a mess too. Experiments in pay-for-performance have had mixed results at best, although the Department of Defense National Security Personnel System and the Homeland Security MaxHR programs were destroyed more by their attempts to eviscerate collective bargaining than their classification, performance and pay provisions.

The civil service regulations, policies and practices that have evolved over the years to implement the merit system have produced application processes that seem designed to test how desperately an applicant wants government employment, a job classification system that, when it isn’t being ignored, is hated by managers, employees and HR officials alike, and a promotion system that federal managers, employees, unions and HR officials loathe and distrust.  The result is a Civil Service system that struggles to meet the challenges it faces today.  As the Federal government became increasingly complex, little provision has been made for the highly educated and trained workforce necessary to do much of the work.   The one-size-fits-all model might have worked for the government of the 1950s, but it does not work for the government of today.

There are many options for updating civil service to make it more responsive and effective. Future posts in this series will address aspects of the civil service system that must be changed in order to be competitive in today’s labor market and in the future, including more flexible position classification, pay reform, effective performance management, and simplification of the hiring process.