[Senate Hearing 114-52]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-52
21ST CENTURY IDEAS FOR THE 20TH CENTURY FEDERAL CIVIL SERVICE
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HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
REGULATORY AFFAIRS AND FEDERAL MANAGEMENT
of the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 20, 2015
__________
Available via http://www.fdsys.gov
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs
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Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin, Chairman
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri
RAND PAUL, Kentucky JON TESTER, Montana
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota
KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
JONI ERNST, Iowa GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
BEN SASSE, Nebraska
Keith B. Ashdown, Staff Director
Gabrielle A. Batkin, Minority Staff Director
John P. Kilvington, Minority Deputy Staff Director
Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
Lauren Corcoran, Hearing Clerk
SUBCOMMITTEE ON REGULATORY AFFAIRS AND FEDERAL MANAGEMENT
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma, Chairman
JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio JON TESTER, Montana
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
JONI ERNST, Iowa GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
BEN SASSE, Nebraska
John Cuaderess, Staff Director
Eric Bursch, Minority Staff Director
Rachel Nitsche, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statement:
Page
Senator Lankford............................................. 1
Senator Heitkamp............................................. 2
Senator Ernst................................................ 11
WITNESSES
Wednesday May 20, 2015
Yvonne D. Jones, Director, Strategic Issues, U.S. Government
Accountability Office.......................................... 5
Patricia J. Niehaus, National President, Federal Managers
Association.................................................... 6
Hon. Dan G. Blair, President and Chief Executive Officer,
National Academy of Public Administration; Chairman, Postal
Regulatory Commission (2006-2009); and Deputy Director, Office
of Personnel Management (2002-2006)............................ 8
J. David Cox, Sr., National President, American Federation of
Government Employees, AFL-CIO.................................. 10
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Blair, Hon. Dan G.:
Testimony.................................................... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 85
Cox, J. David:
Testimony.................................................... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 96
Jones, Yvonne D.:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 29
Niehaus, Patricia J.:
Testimony.................................................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 70
APPENDIX
Statements submitted for the Record:
Senior Executives Association................................ 109
Professional Managers Association............................ 122
National Treasury Employees Union............................ 130
National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association.... 137
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record:
Ms. Jones.................................................... 141
Ms. Niehaus.................................................. 153
Mr. Blair.................................................... 161
Mr. Cox...................................................... 168
21ST CENTURY IDEAS FOR THE 20TH CENTURY FEDERAL CIVIL SERVICE
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2015
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Regulatory,
Affairs and Federal Management,
of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. James
Lankford, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Lankford, Ernst, Heitkamp, Booker, and
Peters.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD
Senator Lankford. Good morning. This is the Subcommittee's
first hearing on the Federal workforce. Today we are going to
explore the policies guiding today's Federal civil service, and
I appreciate our witnesses being here. I will take some time
and introduce them in just a moment. Let me set some context.
The State of the Federal workforce is expansive. The
Federal Government currently employs 2,663,000--and a few
additional odds and ends coming in and out--in the Executive
Branch as civilians. Ensuring that agencies have a process in
place to efficiently recruit, retain, compensate, train, and,
if necessary, dismiss problem Federal employees is a difficult
but essential task. And as the Subcommittee with oversight on
Federal management, this task falls to us.
But before we discuss these matters, I would like to take a
moment to thank our Federal employees for their dedicated
service. We have a tremendous number of very dedicated patriots
that serve all over the country, and I am honored to be able to
serve with them. For individuals that step up and say one thing
or another about Federal employees, I can tell you, I have met
a lot, and it is a great group of people.
I am reminded that 20 years ago in Oklahoma City the Murrah
Federal Building was bombed, and we lost many Federal employees
there. The people that went to work that day serving their
country put their lives on the line. For those of us in
Oklahoma and for all of us on this dais, we understand, and we
understand well, that we are very grateful to people who choose
to serve their country through Federal service.
It is also true that lately a few bad apples in our Federal
workforce have made the news. That is a shame. And for those
individuals, we understand well they do not represent what
happens in the bulk of the Federal workforce. These stories
represent the importance of congressional oversight, though,
both as to the incidents themselves as well as the management
policies that underlie them. But as they also tend to cast a
shadow over the good work that individuals across the Federal
Government accomplish each day for our Nation, we want to try
to correct and do what we can to be able to minimize that.
Senator Heitkamp and I are deeply appreciative of the work
of Federal employee. We are honored for their dedication. We
are sponsoring a resolution recognizing the first week of May
as Public Service Recognition Week, and we are joined by many
of our colleagues on this Committee. We would like to extend
our thanks again today.
The issues we will discuss, which may be critical of the
way the Federal workforce operates today, are not indictments
on those actually in the Federal workforce. In fact, I would
wager that many of them share the same concerns as we do as I
talk to many Federal employees that feel stuck and that their
voice is not being heard for ways to be able to improve the
system. So we hope to be able to provide a voice to many great
Federal employees that have many great ideas on how to improve
the process.
For example, some Federal employees may be upset that
misbehaving employees may be placed on paid administrative
leave, sometimes for a year or longer, pending a personnel
investigation. Or some Federal workers may be irritated that
because of the way in which many Federal agencies compensate
employees under the General Schedule (GS), they are doing twice
the work of a colleague but paid the same amount.
These are just a few concerns that Federal employees have
brought to our attention. The stakes are high, and the
responsibility of Congress is clear. Because we rely on Federal
employees to run our government, it is also important that we
work together.
It is time we think critically about many of the policies
that currently govern the Federal workforce so we can maintain
a talented pool of employees in the years and decades ahead. I
look forward to discussing these issues with our members and
with the witnesses today because the future of the Federal
workforce depends on it. There is a lot of transition
happening. We have to navigate it well.
With that, I recognize our Ranking Member for her opening
statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HEITKAMP
Senator Heitkamp. Thank you, Chairman Lankford. Today marks
the Subcommittee's first hearing examining the Federal
workforce issues. I think that this is such a critical topic,
and I am passionate about making sure that the workforce of
tomorrow is the Federal workforce that can meet the needs of
the constituency groups and can also make us proud as we serve
in the context of public service.
Since taking office in January 2013, I have been very
engaged in this issue because North Dakota, as you know, is
experiencing an energy boom, and that has created a real crisis
within our Federal workforce. The great irony of all of this is
that people, I think, who used to say there are too many
Federal workers, had a lot of criticism about Federal workers
in general, now realize that when there are not enough people
to do permitting in the Bakken at the Bureau of Land Management
(BLM) and there are not enough grassland managers to actually
approve plans for those lease holders, not having Federal
workers creates a real economic challenge.
And so as a result, we have been very engaged with the
Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to try and get salary
adjustments for workers. As a result of that work, I have
become very intimately involved in the salary structure,
probably more than any other Member, but I am proud to say that
working with OPM, we have been able to guarantee salary
increases for almost 500 Federal employees in North Dakota.
Perhaps my most pressing concern, however, is why we are
not retaining Millennials who come to work for the Federal
Government. You can see that the average period of time--or the
median period of time that Millennials serve in the Federal
workforce is actually under 4 years. I doubt that if you did a
study 20 or 30 years ago, when I would have fit in that
category, that would have been the result.
And so when you couple statistics like that with the fact
that nearly 30 percent of the entire Federal workforce will be
retirement eligible in 2019, you can see we face some serious
challenges in staffing the important work of the Federal
Government.
So today I want to focus on not only what we can do better
to recruit young folks, but what we need to do to retain them.
As someone who used to run a large agency, I spent a lot of
time on retention because the effort and the dollars in
training tell you that if you have a good employee, the one
thing that you definitely want to make sure that you keep is a
good employee.
It is no secret why they are discouraged when you look at
sequestration, pay freezes, furloughs, as well as the
government shutdown in 2013. That did not exactly add to the
morale of the Federal workforce.
But there are other reasons why young people are leaving
and perhaps more difficult to get at, which is when you look at
OPM's survey of Federal employees' viewpoints, only one in
three Millennials believed that creativity and innovation were
rewarded within their organizations, and only 34 percent of
them were satisfied with the opportunities for career
advancement.
So my goal this morning is to find out from you what we can
do within the Federal workforce to do these retentions better.
How can we improve the speed of the hiring process? How can we
address the inability of the Federal workforce to compete with
the private sector pay? How do we bridge the gap between human
resources (HR) departments of agencies and line managers? And
how do we improve supervisor training and ultimately employee
morale? These are just a few of the areas I would like to
explore, and I look forward to hearing the witnesses' testimony
and to the regular dialogue that we have on this Subcommittee
thanks to the structure that Chairman Lankford has put
together.
But I want to close by just saying this is a critical
issue. There is not a corporation in America, there is not an
organization in America, when you say, ``What makes you
great?'' that does not say, ``Our people.'' And so if we are
not doing what we need to do to retain the best and brightest
in public service, then we need to know about it, and we need
to fix it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Lankford. Thank you.
At this time we will proceed with testimony from our
witnesses. Let me introduce the four witnesses. I will
introduce all four of you. Then we will swear you in, and then
we will begin your testimony.
Yvonne Jones is the Director in Strategic Issues of the
U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), where she manages
teams analyzing Federal Government human capital issues. Prior
to joining the Strategic Issues team, she was the Director in
the GAO Financial Markets and Community Investment team.
Patricia Niehaus is the national president for the Federal
Managers Association (FMA). Ms. Niehaus has been the national
president since 2010 and also serves as an active member in the
National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations. She is
an active Federal employee with over 30 years of service and is
now the civilian personnel officer at Travis Air Force Base in
California.
Dan Blair is the President and the Chief Executive Officer
(CEO) of the National Academy of Public Administration. From
2006 to 2009, he served as the Chairman of the Postal
Regulatory Commission (PRC); from 2009 to 2011, he served as a
Commissioner. Mr. Blair was the Deputy Director of the Office
of Personnel Management from 2002 to 2006, along with multiple
other responsibilities. Thank you.
Mr. David Cox is the national president of the American
Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). He worked for
Veterans Affairs (VA) from 1983 to 2006, when he became the
secretary-treasurer for the AFGE.
I would like to thank all the witnesses appearing before us
today, and I really appreciate your written testimony that you
have already submitted, as well as receiving your oral
testimony in just a moment.
It is the custom of the Subcommittee that all witnesses are
sworn in before you testify, so if you do not mind, I would ask
you to stand and raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm
that the testimony you are about to give before this
Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, so help you, God?
Ms. Jones. I do.
Ms. Niehaus. I do.
Mr. Blair. I do.
Mr. Cox. I do.
Senator Lankford. Thank you. You may be seated. Let the
record reflect that all witnesses answered in the affirmative.
We will be using a timing system today. I think everyone is
familiar with that. There will be a little clock in front of
you. That will count down to zero. We are giving everyone about
5 minutes, if you can be as close to that as possible, and then
we will have multiple rounds of questioning. It is the
tradition of this Committee that the first round of questions
will go 5 minutes for each person, and then we will open up a
second round, which will be open colloquy with no timing on it,
and that will allow us to interchange here on the Committee
dais as well as with you. So expect two rounds of questions,
and the second round will be more informal than the first, if
that is OK.
Ms. Jones, you are recognized first. Thank you.
TESTIMONY OF YVONNE D. JONES,\1\ DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC ISSUES,
U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Ms. Jones. Chairman Lankford, Ranking Member Heitkamp, and
Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to
discuss the State of the 21st Century Federal civil service and
what can be done to ensure a top-notch Federal workforce.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Jones appears in the Appendix on
page 29.
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Strategic human capital management plays a critical role in
maximizing the government's performance and assuring its
accountability to the Congress and to the Nation. But strategic
human capital management has been one of GAO's high-risk issues
since 2001.
Congress, the Office of Personnel Management, and some
agencies have addressed human capital challenges. For example,
in 2002, Congress created the Chief Human Capital Officer
(CHCO) position in 24 agencies and the Chief Human Capital
Officers Council (CHCOC). And Congress provided the agencies
with various authorities and flexibilities to manage the
Federal workforce, but more remains to be done. I will describe
five concerns about Federal workforce management.
First, the classification system. The General Schedule
classification system was designed to uphold the key principle
of equal pay for work of equal value, but the system is
experiencing difficulties. Its occupation descriptions are
considered too narrow to easily shift people between jobs, and
its pay rules make it harder for agencies to recruit and retain
valued employees. GAO concluded that we need a more modern and
effective classification system which retains merit at its
core, but which is more flexible.
Second, the Federal workforce has many critical skills gaps
like cybersecurity and contract specialists. The Federal
Government also needs to better identify future skills gaps. To
close these gaps and predict future shortages, the Office of
Personnel Management and agencies will need to collect and
analyze data to be used in agency and governmentwide workforce
planning.
Third, the Executive Branch agencies are managing their
workforces in an era of constrained budgets. Therefore, they
need to rethink how they do their own planning and how they
work with other agencies. We found that the Federal human
capital community is fragmented, with many actors executing
personnel policies in ways not helpful to governmentwide
workforce management. Our analysis showed that agencies have
many common human capital challenges, but they address them
alone. And we found that agency talent management tools lack
two ingredients: identifying skills in their current workforces
and moving people with needed skills to emerging or permanent
positions.
The fourth issue is strengthening assessment of employee
and senior executive performance. Adequately managing employee
performance is a longstanding governmentwide issue. Without
effective performance management, agencies risk losing the
skills of top talent and failing to correct poor performers.
But supervisors do not always have the skills to help staff
address performance issues.
Evaluating the performance of senior executives is also
important. By law, for senior executives to receive higher
levels of pay, their performance appraisal systems must make
meaningful distinctions based on an individual's performance
compared to other executives. Recently, we found that 85
percent of senior executive service (SES) ratings were bunched
in the top two ratings categories, raising questions about
whether adequate distinctions are being made between
executives.
And, fifth, retaining high-performing employees is critical
to Federal Government operation. To retain employees, the
Federal Government needs to strengthen worker engagement.
Preliminary observations from our ongoing work found that
governmentwide average levels of employee engagement declined
from 67 percent in 2011 to 63 percent in 2014. The decline in
the governmentwide average occurred because of drops in
engagement at three large agencies: Department of Defense
(DOD), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Veterans
Affairs. But the majority of Federal agencies sustained or
improved their engagement scores. Of 47 Federal agencies, 31
had steady scores, 3 increased their scores, and 13 had
declining scores. The large number of agencies that sustained
or increased engagement scores during challenging times
suggests that agencies can influence employee engagement levels
even in difficult circumstances.
In conclusion, greater progress will require continued
collaborative efforts between the Office of Personnel
Management, the Chief Human Capital Officers Council,
individual agencies, and continued congressional oversight.
Chairman Lankford, Ranking Member Heitkamp, and Members of
the Subcommittee, this completes my prepared statement, and I
am pleased to respond to any questions that you may have at
this time.
Senator Lankford. Thank you. Ms. Niehaus
TESTIMONY OF PATRICIA J. NIEHAUS,\1\ NATIONAL PRESIDENT,
FEDERAL MANAGERS ASSOCIATION
Ms. Niehaus. Chairman Lankford, Ranking Member Heitkamp,
and Members of the Subcommittee, I am the national president of
the Federal Managers Association and chief of civilian
personnel at Travis Air Force Base in California. Thank you for
allowing me to present FMA's views before you today. I am here
on my own time and of my own volition, and I do not speak for
the Air Force. I am here representing FMA's members.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Niehaus appears in the Appendix
on page 70.
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The Federal civil service no longer reflects the standards
today's job seekers expect. FMA supports changes that increase
flexibilities, accountability, and performance results. In my
written testimony, I address a number of challenges and FMA's
recommendations in these areas.
After the satisfaction of serving our country, two of the
most often cited attractions of civil service--retirement
benefits and job security--are seemingly under endless attack.
As FMA's national president, I hear how proud our members are
to serve our Nation. In Oklahoma, FMA has chapters at both
Tinker Air Force Base and McAlester Army Ammunition Plant. And
in North Dakota, thousands of people rely on Social Security
checks and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) returns. It is
discouraging to be constantly maligned and have our benefits
attacked. FMA members comment on how this affects morale, which
negatively impacts productivity, employee retention, and the
ability to complete congressionally mandated missions. FMA
urges Congress to avoid legislative efforts that would hurt
retention and morale.
FMA believes the General Schedule should be utilized as a
stepping stone to a more evolved system that focuses on pay for
performance and reflect the needs of the present Federal
workforce. Departments and agencies must have maximum
flexibility and the ability to compete with the private sector
to attract the best and the brightest men and women to answer
the call of public service.
The current system promotes a workforce based on longevity
rather than performance. The highest-performing employees
should be rewarded with the highest rates of pay; those
employees who fall below the curve in terms of overall
performance should not be rewarded at the same level.
Management should be a profession in the Federal Government
rather than an additional duty. Managers must have time to
manage instead of being technicians. First level supervisors
and managers need access to training programs that are
sufficiently funded. Investments must be made in training in
areas such as addressing poor-performing employees, enhancing
mentoring skills, and conducting accurate performance
appraisals in order to recognize problems early and deal with
them at the lowest possible level.
FMA calls for the introduction of legislation that requires
agencies to provide supervisors with interactive, instructor-
based training on management topics ranging from mentorship and
career development to hostile work environments and poor
performers within one year of promotion and ongoing training
once every 3 years thereafter. In addition, the measure should
include an accountability provision to establish competency
standards to ensure the training is effective.
Initial and supervisory probationary periods were intended
to be an extension of the hiring process. It is a time to
evaluate the employee or manager and determine whether they are
suited not just for the current position, but also for Federal
service. Some career fields are so complex that it takes more
than one year to properly train an entry-level employee.
Extending the probationary period to one year after completion
of the initial training would benefit the government and the
employees, allowing supervisors to make decisions based on the
employees' performance as fully trained employees and not just
guess at how an employee will perform after the training is
completed.
Too often pay comparisons between public and private
sectors miss the mark because they do not compare positions
with like positions. An accurate comparison cannot be made
between a registered nurse at a VA hospital and someone
performing manual labor at a nursing home. It is essential that
any comparison and study of compensation ensure that skill
levels, experience, education, and job duties are truly
comparable.
FMA is grateful to the Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee for unanimously supporting the Wounded
Warrior Federal Leave Act, which would provide sick leave up
front for our newly hired disabled veterans. We are proud to
have originated this initiative, and we look forward to having
it passed and signed into law.
The Federal civil service should be the model employer that
others emulate. We should be such an attractive employer that
young people are lining up to compete for positions as their
first choice. This hearing is an important step toward
determining what Congress should do to restore the faith in the
men and women who make up the Federal workforce and ensure that
missions are met as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Thank you for the opportunity to present our views, and I
am happy to answer any questions you may have.
Senator Lankford. Thank you. Mr. Blair.
TESTIMONY OF THE HON. DAN G. BLAIR,\1\ PRESIDENT AND CHIEF
EXECUTIVE OFFICER, NATIONAL ACADEMY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION;
CHAIRMAN, POSTAL REGULATORY COMMISSION (2006-2009); AND DEPUTY
DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT (2002-2006)
Mr. Blair. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Blair appears in the Appendix on
page 85.
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Before I begin, I would like to take a moment to introduce
three burgeoning potential public servants in the audience
today who are serving as Academy interns this summer. We have
Calvin Charles, Caroline Mihm--you may recognize the last name
because Chris Mihm is her father, who is a liaison from GAO to
this Subcommittee--and Robin Bleiweis. I would like to welcome
them here today.
Chairman Lankford, Ranking Member Heitkamp, and Members of
the Subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify
today. I serve as the President and CEO of the National Academy
of Public Administration, an independent, nonprofit,
nonpartisan organization chartered by Congress. Our
organization consists of over 800 Fellows--including former
Cabinet officers, Members of Congress, Governors, mayors, and
State legislators, as well as distinguished scholars, business
executives, and public administrators.
Today's civil service challenges have roots that stretch
back more than a quarter century. In 1989, the first Volcker
Commission highlighted many of those problems. While they have
morphed in form, the Federal Government's workforce challenges
have been identified many times over. Some can be addressed at
the administrative level; others will require bolder action,
buttressed by legislation.
First, let us talk about the Federal hiring process. This
has long exasperated Congress and multiple administrations.
Flexibilities exist in this area if agencies would just use
them.
I would not recommend that at this point, Congress enact
new legislation regarding hiring. Time to hire is important,
but a shortened timeframe may not yield the quality of hires an
agency needs. Time to hire is a critical component, though, of
the larger component of quality hires. OPM must provide strong
leadership, and agencies must focus leadership attention. It is
important to connect program and hiring managers with human
resources staff to make sure the position description and
vacancy announcements suit the hiring manager's needs.
You asked me to address issues surrounding Federal employee
accountability. We hear almost weekly about poor-performing
Federal employees and the reported inability to hold them
accountable. I have the greatest respect for civil servants,
and these reports are certainly not representative of the
workforce at large. Yet they poison the atmosphere and lead to
cynicism and distrust of the civil service and government.
The current appeals system was put in place as a reaction
to attempts to politicize the workforce in the Watergate era,
and it was premised on the concept of merit.
To increase accountability, especially at the SES level,
the Subcommittee could explore the greater use of term
appointments. Some agencies like the VA have received special
authorities. The question now is whether the Department will
use them.
Further, the Subcommittee may want to consider increasing
probationary periods for new senior executives and General
Schedule employees.
For General Schedule employees, a complex maze of appeals
exists. Employees can utilize the Merit Systems Protection
Board (MSPB), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(EEOC), and potentially a union grievance system. Modernizing
the appeals process consistent with the public interest,
constitutional requirements, and Supreme Court case law is a
complex task, but one worth engaging to restore the public's
trust in the civil service.
Federal employees themselves view the current system with
cynicism. Both a recent Vanderbilt University survey and the
2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey confirmed these views. A
recent MSPB study notes that 77,000 Federal employees were
fired over a 14-year period. Based on my interpretation of the
study, it seemed like the agency was promoting the fact that a
system is in place to remove poor performers and it works. But
if you run the math, removing 77,000 employees over a 14-year
period calculates to about 5,500 employees per year. With a
Federal civilian workforce of over 2 million people, the
percentage of employees relieved of their duties is paltry in
comparison.
One reason for such inaction is the need for increased
capacity from the Federal H.R. workforce to deal with the
complex civil service procedures. As personnel systems become
more decentralized, the need for increased H.R. capacity grows.
A larger question arises whether the landmark 1978 Civil
Service Reform Act is due for an overhaul. My written testimony
asks a number of questions, such as, do we need the complex
number of agencies that we have today handling civil service
issues? OPM, MSPB, Office of Special Counsel (OSC), and the
EEOC all have roles. Do we need a centralized personnel office?
If so, how should it be structured? And is OPM that entity?
Also, how do we address the General Schedule pay structure? And
can the OPM White Paper on Pay from 2002 serve as a guide?
I would suggest that any private sector entity operating
with a nearly 40-year-old personnel system and a nearly 70-
year-old pay system would likely be out of business today.
Many of the questions I have raised today lend themselves
to a thorough and comprehensive process of review. This is an
excellent issue to tee up for the upcoming transition in 2016
and 2017. Civil service reform is one area ripe for discussion.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my prepared statement, and I
would be pleased to answer any questions the Subcommittee may
have.
Senator Lankford. Thank you. Mr. Cox.
TESTIMONY OF J. DAVID COX, SR.,\1\ NATIONAL PRESIDENT, AMERICAN
FEDERATION OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES, AFL-CIO
Mr. Cox. Mr. Chairman, Senator Heitkamp, and Members of the
Subcommittee, on behalf of the more than 670,000 Federal
workers AFGE represents, thank you for the opportunity to
testify today on the modernization issues facing the Federal
workforce.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Cox appears in the Appendix on
page 96.
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Any discussion of modernizing the Federal Government must
begin with an understanding that the Federal workforce is
highly trained and educated, technologically literate, and
ready to meet the many challenges we face today. If we are
serious about ensuring that the Federal Government can address
the problems facing society, then, simply put, our elected
officials must stop attacking the Federal workforce.
Since 2011, Federal workers have sacrificed $159 billion in
cuts to their compensation, sometimes in the name of deficit
reduction and sometimes to pay for other priorities. President
Obama froze their pay for 3 years, followed by increases to
employees' pension contributions by 2.3 percent for those hired
in 2013 and 3.6 percent for those hired thereafter.
Chairman Lankford, right now at the Oklahoma City VA
Medical Center, they are hiring an occupational therapist with
a starting salary of around $45,000. That newly hired employee
will pay over $1,600 more per year than someone in the same
exact job in the same hospital hired prior to 2012 or before.
That is two mortgage payments and a few weeks of groceries.
Senator Heitkamp, at Grand Forks Air Force Base, they are
hiring a social worker at a starting salary of around $58,000 a
year. That new employee will pay $2,100 more per year than
someone in the exact same job hired prior to 2012 or before.
These cuts need to be repealed and full retirement benefits for
all Federal workers restored.
In addition to these retirement cuts, Federal employees
have also endured sequestration furloughs and a government
shutdown in 2013. I remind you of this sequence of events and
the cuts imposed on Federal employees not just because they are
unfair to them, but because they directly affect recruitment
and retention. What would make a medical researcher working on
a cure for cancer at the Muskogee VA Hospital or an electrician
who repairs complex weapons at Tinker Air Force Base choose
public service if their jobs were subject to salary cuts,
furloughs, and government shutdowns year in and year out?
To its great credit, the General Schedule prevents
discrimination based on gender, ethnic backgrounds, religion,
sexual orientation, or disability. Over the last few decades,
numerous flexibilities and updates have modernized and improved
the GS system. The most recent example of this is in the Bakken
region of North Dakota where Federal salaries were far outpaced
by private sector pay. We commend you, Senator Heitkamp, for
your tireless efforts to urge OPM and DOD to implement special
pay rates and other flexibilities to make Federal wages more
competitive with those in the private sector.
AFGE believes that a modern government must promote due
processes and constitutional rights. Federal employees are not
immune to termination, and the civil service rules exist to
promote the constitutional principles of due process and to
prevent the reestablishment of a Federal patronage system.
Finally, AFGE believes that a modern government must
promote employees' engagement and empowerment. A modern
workplace must value and implement transparency, fairness, and
accountability. The easiest way to achieve all these things is
by negotiating good and fair contracts to provide a meaningful
channel for workers to provide input and for managers to learn
from front-line workers. This creates a more nimble environment
for identifying and solving problems and getting the work done.
This concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman. I would be happy
to respond to any questions.
Senator Lankford. Thank you. Thank you to all of you for
your written and your oral testimony. The Ranking Member and I
will defer our time for questions. We are going to do ours at
the end, and we will recognize Senator Ernst to go first.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ERNST
Senator Ernst. Thank you very much to our panel. It is
great to have all of you here. I think this is a much needed
conversation as we look at our Federal employees and the
workforce. Great points made, David, on some of those issues.
And I often feel our military men and women are subject to the
same scrutiny.
Anyway, I would like to start with Ms. Jones. Thank you for
being here today. I appreciate it very much. You have made
reference to a set of eight recommendations that OPM should
take to ensure a more modern and effective classification
system, and I would like to touch on this, because for the last
few months I have been digging into an area in the acquisition
world across the Federal Government, specifically program and
project management, that seems to be struggling. And I think
part of that reason is due to gaps in the GS system as it
relates to the classification of program and project
management. And program and project management is the only
fundamental job component of the acquisition process that does
not have a distinct job series. And subsequently available
program and project management positions are funneled through
the general management positions or classifications where the
desired skill set and required experience is very different.
And, in fact, program and project management falls under
the series 0340, which is kind of a catch-all general
management listing, and I think OPM would agree with that
assessment. It is not conducive to finding qualified
individuals for this very particular role.
If you were to go to opm.gov and look at the qualifications
needed for program management, it actually says, ``There are no
individual occupational requirements for this series.''
As I have looked at this and analyzed the struggles we have
with the large Federal programs being over budget and off
schedule, it appears that these issues could begin to improve
if we had a better classification and listing of requirements
needed for program and project managers. And just one more
thing in this area. This lack of a credible listing has made it
challenging for outsiders to locate who and where program and
project managers are in the Federal Government.
So can you speak maybe to this issue a little bit? And I
realize you may not be familiar with this specific case for
project management, but I have a sense that it maybe is a
broader issue within the GS system. If you could just discuss
that a little bit, please.
Ms. Jones. Yes, I can speak to that. Our work has not
focused on those particular kinds of jobs, but it is, I think,
reflective of what we found in a more general sense, about
trying to fill critical skills gaps in the Federal Government--
because we did find that agencies and OPM sometimes have
trouble writing job descriptions that are reflective of the
work that needs to be done, and also changing those job
descriptions expeditiously. And so in a situation like that, it
may very well be hard for agencies to advertise positions or to
have job descriptions which allow them to advertise positions
so that they get the kind of applicants that they would want.
We do know that OPM and a number of the agencies are
working together to try to figure out not only how to define
position descriptions, but also to write the competencies that
underlie those descriptions, and they are trying to figure out
how to do it more quickly.
I hope that answers your question.
Senator Ernst. Yes, that is very helpful, and I do think
also with USAJobs as a resource site out there, it is very
difficult to navigate that as well for some of the best and
brightest that wish to apply for these types of Government
positions. It is a true struggle. If you could just speak to
that, please.
Ms. Jones. OK. We are aware of issues that have been
reported about USAJobs. We have not directly examined USAJobs
and how its operation may affect an applicant's ability to use
it. We have begun now a job on hiring in the Federal Government
which may look at that particular issue, but I cannot give you
more specifics right now.
Senator Ernst. OK. Well, I appreciate that. I think that is
something that we will look at in the future. Thank you very
much.
Senator Lankford. Senator Heitkamp.
Senator Heitkamp. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
A number of young people, who I am sure are here on a
close-up program or visiting Congress, are in the audience, and
I am tempted to ask them: How many of you want to be an IRS
auditor? None of them.
how many of you in the audience of the young people who are
here want to be a Federal employee? There are a couple.
And once you get there, you might not like it, and you
might leave before 4 years are up. Or you might like it, and
that is our job here, to try and figure out how we put the best
person in the job that fits them and will challenge them and
will give them the job satisfaction. I think the one thing that
we miss when we look at a lot of economic indicators, whether
it is retirement--and, sure, that matters--whether it is pay
raises and great supervision, but we have to do a better job, I
think, recruiting, training, and retaining the young people of
America, or we are not going to be moving forward. We are not
going to be the organization or the Government that we need to
be in order to address the concerns of the citizens.
And so I want to get at that issue, what you think the
primary barriers are of attracting and retaining these new
Millennials and what we should be doing right now in analyzing
the ones under 20 who have entered the Federal system and now
are transitioning out. And I want to start with you, Mr. Blair.
I think you have probably spent a lot of time looking at those
schedules into the future and saying, ``We have a crisis of
retirement without a qualified workforce coming behind it.''
What would you do if you were in Senator Lankford's and my
role here and the Committee's role?
Mr. Blair. Well, I would say, ``Do we have meaningful work
for these Millennials who are coming in?'' And I think the
answer for that is absolutely yes. I think that the mission is
absolutely critical, and that is what distinguishes the Federal
Government from other private sector employers.
Then I think we have to look at the workplace itself. What
is the course for advancement? How long do you have to stay in
grade before you have to stand for promotion? I think those are
issues. Am I going to be recognized for the work that I do? If
I am part of a team, if I carry the team, am I going to be
recognized or am I going to have to be lumped in with everyone
else?
I think those are critical issues, and I do not think our
systems today match that. In an effort for what was called
``internal equity,'' we basically treated most people the same,
and that is not--while it is an admirable goal, I think that in
today's environment we need to be able to have tools available
for us to recognize outstanding service. And those tools are
awkward in the Federal civil service today.
Senator Heitkamp. Mr. Cox, can you respond to that and
maybe offer some insight from the perspective of the people you
represent?
Mr. Cox. The first thing I would say is I believe it is
very important for Congress to get rid of sequestration because
that continues to loom over the top of everyone who works for
the Federal Government or has a future of wanting to work for
the Federal Government, because as long as that is there, it is
just a stumbling block for what the future may hold, whether
the agencies would be funded. So sequestration I think is the
number one problem.
But also, again, I would agree with my colleague here,
meaningful work, but, again, adequate pay, adequate training,
having the resources of that agency so that the person comes in
and feels supported in the agency. I went to work at the VA as
a registered nurse. Within the first week, all of a sudden I
realized I was the only registered nurse the first week on the
job on the floor working. That was not the best orientation or
the best environment to be had. You need more people there to
spend time to mentor, to orient folks, and it was not the fact
that they did not care. They did not have enough resources to
hire enough nurses or there were not enough nurses available to
be hired. So those types of things, having the resources to
fund the agencies is very important.
Senator Heitkamp. My time has expired. We have a pretty
free-flowing discussion period after this, and so we will get
out all your points.
Senator Lankford. We will. Thank you.
At the end of this conversation, we will work together to
try to create a product, whether that is a legislative product
or whether that is a series of letters to do as followup to try
to figure out where we are going to followup from here on the
ideas, both from what you have submitted written and orally. So
I do want you to continue to think about that, some of the work
product at the end of this.
Mr. Blair, let me ask a question that you had brought up as
well, and that is the issue of the transition. Every time there
is a Presidential transition, regardless of party, there is a
shift and a relook again. So I would be interested in an open
conversation about what things can we do as a Committee to help
the next President prepare for that transition, things that we
can put in place and say these issues need to be addressed when
that transition occurs.
Mr. Blair. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think what Senator
Ernst just raised was very important, this program
implementation, because we have seen failures of program
implementation across government for many years now, and that
is one of the focuses of the Academy's transition work. Last
week, we launched our Transition 2016 Initiative, and our focus
is going to be on program implementation to make sure that the
incoming Administration has before it the information it needs
to evaluate how programs are being implemented, what is
working, what is not working, and so they do not just throw the
baby out with the bath water by saying the past Administration
was bad, we are good, we do not have anything to do with it,
and we want to start again from scratch.
So I think program implementation is extraordinarily
important. I think that for the transition, civil service
reform, while I do not know if there could be broad bipartisan
agreement based upon the past decade of experience, but I think
there can be some tenets to look at. And I would not recommend
that we go forward with a baked cake for a new Administration,
but you can certainly tee up the issues to make it part of
their management agenda to determine how do we want to step
forward with these kinds of reforms. This Subcommittee is
poised and primed to do that.
Senator Lankford. Right. Well, that is what we are trying
to gather at this point--ideas. We have our own. We are trying
to gather other insight from other individuals as well.
Any other ideas that can come out? Obviously there is some
in your written testimony as well. Do others want to contribute
to basic ideas of if we are going to look at serious things to
be able to transition in a couple years, things that need to be
addressed when that transition comes?
Mr. Cox. Sir, I would think, trying to go back, the Federal
Employee Pay Comparability Act that goes back many years that
said that we would pay Federal employees in comparison to what
the private sector is being paid. It has never been
implemented. Each year, the President, Congress, someone
preempts the process. But I think trying to get Federal
employees paid in accordance with the private sector with
similar work that they are doing would be very important.
Senator Lankford. OK. Other ideas?
[No response.]
Let me transition to another thing. Then we will come back
to it. I want to talk a little bit about what Senator Heitkamp
was talking about, and that is recruiting. Does anyone know the
cost of recruiting right now? The private sector can look at it
and say if they are going to try to recruit someone new to
their company, they have a basic cost of what that is. Do we
have a good guesstimate of a cost of recruiting a new Federal
employee? You have not seen that? OK. We will do some chasing
and see if we can determine that and see not only retention but
cost and how that works.
Ms. Jones, you made a comment and through your study, as
you looked at the Employee Engagement Index that you created,
which you also referenced in both your written and your oral
testimony on it, 13 of 47 different agencies had declining
Employee Engagement Index scores, 3 of 47 had an increase, 31
of 47 were flat. Now, what I am interested in is, Can we get a
list of those different agencies so we can begin to compare?
You had mentioned the big 3 there in the decline, 3 of the 13
that had a decline: Department of Defense, Homeland Security,
and Veterans. Can you determine the why on those? Obviously, it
is a large number of employees, but it also had a significant
decline, but some of the 10 other entities.
Ms. Jones. In terms of the list of the entities, actually
what we were doing was reporting evidence from OPM's Employee
Engagement Index, so, yes, giving you the names of all the
agencies is certainly feasible.
What we know about what increases in employee engagement
based on the index is the relationship that the employee has
with his or her supervisor, the extent to which the employee is
getting--feels that the work that they are doing is important
and they can connect it with the mission of the agency, the
extent to which they feel that they are getting training and
developmental opportunities, whether they feel they have an
adequate work-life balance, whether there is an inclusive
environment in the agencies--all of those things contribute to
an employee feeling engaged.
I could supply you later with more detail about the three
large agencies and what the particular factors may have been.
Senator Lankford. OK. Let me do that. Let us just open this
up for open conversation. I will go ahead and transition this
into our second round here, and all of us can participate at
any point. But let me add to that. Why for Department of
Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans, what is your
perception? As GAO looks at this and the scoring that came in
from OPM, is there any single factor? You mentioned that, but
what is happening there that is not happening in other places
that Homeland Security, Defense, and VA are having issues with
supervision, having issues with engagement? What is driving
that?
Ms. Jones. OK. I would have to provide you later more
detailed information on those particular agencies. The Employee
Engagement Index aggregates information across 15 different
questions, so we would have to look at the disaggregation and
provide you with that detail, if you do not mind.
Senator Lankford. That would be helpful to us as we get a
chance to look at the workforce, because obviously we want to
look at why there is a decline in one area. And for the three
that had the increase, do you happen to recall the three that
had the increase in score, who they were? I did not see it in
your report.
Ms. Jones. The Department of Education was one. Yes, I do
not recall the other two at the moment.
Senator Lankford. Well, that would be helpful to us, to
get, I guess, both extremes there. The 13 that had the decline,
the 3 that had the increase, and try to figure out what is
happening in each of these agencies that can be information
shared. And I understand not every agency is the same and their
structures are not the same, nor are we trying to make them all
the same. It would be like trying to make all 50 States the
same. They are not. But there are some things that we can learn
from one and be able to share with the other, and that would be
helpful to us.
Ms. Jones. Certainly, we can provide you with that.
Senator Lankford. OK.
Senator Heitkamp. I want to just for a minute kind of talk
about morale, because it all begins there, in my opinion. I
think that you can, of course, look at the economics, but at
the end of the day--and being a mother of two Millennials, I
think that what they are looking for is job satisfaction. And,
I ask these young people, How many of you want to be an IRS
agent? They immediately have an idea. What does an IRS agent
do? And that would be a bad thing. People would not like me.
Right?
But if you ask them, How many of you want to help fund
cancer research in the Federal Government so that we can solve
childhood cancer problems? Or if we said--I just spent some
time yesterday with General Welsh, Chief of Staff of the Air
Force, and he said their recruitment policies, they were going
in the wrong direction. They needed to sell the Air Force. And
so, ``I am an American airman.'' You may have seen those
commercials. They are brilliant.
And so one of the things that we do not do in the workforce
is we do not connect these jobs and these categories that we
all talk about. You know, if you are an H.R. specialist, you
all talk about the classification, but we do not connect them
to the larger mission. And when people feel connected to the
larger mission, they tend to want to stay. They tend to want to
continue. When we did the Air Force base adjustments, OPM was
out, and I said, ``OK, of all you civilian employees, how many
of you are veterans?'' And over half of them stood up, because
they are still in the mission. They wanted to continue the
mission that they started when they put on a uniform.
And so one of the things that I think we get too
bureaucratic in a lot of ways in how we look at this, and we do
not connect our employees to the mission, to the goal of the
organization. And so I think it takes maybe some enlightened
leadership or some different thinking at the top of how you
think about the job that you are doing, not in terms of just
widgets and, counting chits, but you think about it in terms of
what does that do.
And I want to just close out by saying I gave a talk to the
American psychologists, and they were headed up to the Hill,
and behavioral health and mental health has had some real
challenges in terms of funding and parity, and they were pretty
low. And I said, ``When you go in to see your Senator or your
Congressman, why don't you just tell them''--``Do not tell them
you are a Ph.D. psychologist. Tell them you save families for a
living.'' You could visibly see, when I ran into them in the
hallways, their step was a little lighter, because all of a
sudden they had that image. ``That is what we do. We do not
counsel,'' all of the bureaucratic things. ``We save families.
That is our mission.'' And when you are connected kind of
emotionally to a mission, when you are connected spiritually to
a mission, you are going to stay with it even through some
tough times.
And so one of the things that I would want to put on the
table is: How do we sell the Federal service? How do we talk
about the jobs that so many of our great Federal employees do
and how that connects with the broader or brighter kind of
opportunity? And I would be curious if any of you see examples
of that and where it is good and where it is not good.
Mr. Blair. Senator, if I could begin, I think you hit the
nail on the head on this with leadership. It is up to the
department heads and agency heads to set the tone from the top
down as to the importance of the workforce. And if that is a
priority for them, if they are being held accountable for it,
they can hold their senior executives and managers and
supervisors, and it can cascade down through the system. So it
is leadership, it is accountability. It is also a question of
promoting the mission. Everyone within a department or agency
should know how their jobs feed into the success of the
organization. If they can point and say, ``Yes, what I am doing
is important because it leads to saving families,'' that gives
a sense of ownership.
Senator Heitkamp. Yes.
Mr. Blair. And so, again, these are issues for agency
leadership. I look at this as either internal factors such as
what can they do--what can be done within the agency or
department, but then there are also the external factors. And I
think that more needs to be done in promoting the service of
the public. And in this regard, I think there are several areas
to look into. The Presidential Rank Awards, we had that several
weeks ago. These are senior executives that are nominated, and
it goes through a process at OPM in which a select few, I think
about 50 this year--I cannot remember the exact number--
received Presidential Rank Awards. These are the highest awards
you can get for the Senior Executive Service.
I hope you have all heard of them, and if you have not,
that is a problem because that means that we are not
publicizing them enough. The President met with the award
winners for the first time in his Administration I think last
year, and I think that sends a very strong message. If you look
at the people who win these awards, it will blow your socks
off, because they are doing incredible things.
But it is just more than the SES. I will be participating
in a ceremony in a couple weeks at George Washington University
for the Flemming Awards, which recognize Federal employees who
are in mid-career, 3 to 15 years of service. Again, outstanding
employees.
The Partnership for Public Service does the Sammies Awards.
These types of external events bring attention, but we also
have to recognize that we need to do more to change the tone
and tenor of how we discuss our civil servants.
Senator Lankford. Let me just throw one thing in there as
well. You talk about good examples of engagement on this. Mr.
Cox had mentioned at one point Tinker Air Force Base. The
Federal workforce at Tinker Air Force Base, the civilians that
are there, have this incredible partnership with the men and
women in blue. They are not aircraft that fly in the Air Force
that have not gone through Tinker Air Force Base, and they
understand the mission, where they fit into the mission, but
they are also heard. So when there is a problem on the floor,
when you are doing maintenance, there is a method already where
they can communicate; and if any person on the floor has any
issue, they know who to go to, and it actually gets heard. And
it is very important. So that structure that is in place there,
it is the same type of thing at the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) in Oklahoma City where there is a great
relationship where people get heard in the process, and I think
it is very meaningful.
I want to mention one other thing, too, and I know we all
have different questions on this, but several of you mentioned
about lengthening the probation period. I was interested by
that in the conversation, and there were multiple different
ideas about the length of that probation period, how long it
should be, when it should start. I would be interested in just
a conversation about that and how we try to amalgamate some
ideas here.
Ms. Niehaus. One of the things that FMA has been looking at
for several years now is the fact that our members are
reporting to us that when they have to make a decision on
whether or not to retain a new employee, many of them are still
in training. We were talking at a government managers coalition
meeting with an FAA manager who said that they do not even see
some of their new employees until they have been in training
for 10 or 11 months. So the supervisor has not even met the
employee when they have to make that determination whether they
are going to keep them or not.
Senator Lankford. So your statement is the probation period
for them, that one year time period starts when they have only
really seen them for 2 months because it started earlier.
Ms. Niehaus. Yes. It starts on the day they are hired.
Senator Lankford. Right. So I am trying to identify. Your
recommendation is the one year probation period starts after
training begins and they are actually assigned to that spot,
where they actually work their way----
Ms. Niehaus. Yes. After they are trained and the initial
training is completed, then let them work our their
probationary period and show that they can do the job rather
than have a supervisor guess.
Senator Lankford. OK. Other ideas and thoughts?
Mr. Cox. I think the probationary period is not going to be
a one-size-fits-all. When you have someone who is an SES'er
that is responsible for large numbers of people, at a large
Federal installation, that is one thing. When you have a
housekeeping aide in a VA medical center, currently has a one
year probationary period, if you do not know that that
housekeeping aide is performing or not performing in one year,
then you have a much higher problem with the management level,
not the housekeeping aide. And registered nurses already have a
2 year probationary period in the VA.
TSA, the entire agency, is a 2-year probationary period.
TSA has probably the highest turnover of any government agency.
It also has a different pay system than the GS pay system. So I
do think looking at some things about TSA, their pay, their
probationary period, high turnover numbers, may be a benefit
also to give some insight. But I do not believe it is a one-
size-fits-all.
Senator Lankford. OK. Would your recommendation on the SES
be that it is a longer or shorter--and I would agree, by the
way. It does not to be a one-size-fits-all.
Mr. Cox. I think SES'ers would definitely have a longer
probationary period. As a registered nurse, I felt like a 2-
year period was a fair probationary period for me, that one
year maybe would have been too short of a period.
Senator Lankford. OK. Any other ideas on that specifically?
Ms. Jones.
Ms. Jones. On our work, we also found that some supervisors
felt that they did not have enough time to review the
employees' work, so we felt that the probationary period should
be extended for at least one full supervisory cycle after the
one year probation because the supervisors feel they do not
have adequate time to assess employees.
Senator Lankford. OK. Mr. Blair, do you have any other
comment?
Mr. Blair. Just one comment. We are talking about the
probationary periods because once an employee reaches the
conclusion of the probationary period, it then becomes so
difficult to separate them after that. So I do not think you
can necessarily consider the probationary period outside the
context of looking at what the appeals process would be as
well.
Senator Lankford. Right. I would agree, and we can have
that for an additional question in just a moment. At times and
in some agencies and some instances, it feels like once you
move past your probation, you just go tenure at the university.
Mr. Blair. Absolutely.
Senator Lankford. And it is tough to be able to shift from
there, so we will talk about that in a moment.
Joni, do you have a comment?
Senator Ernst. Yes. With that issue, something that has
been in the news so much, the VA, something near and dear to my
heart, caring for our veterans. Senator Heitkamp had said,
really understanding that mission that is out there, and as we
talk about recruiting some of those best and brightest to work
for us at the VA, understanding the challenge right now when
you have an agency where someone has not been held accountable
to our knowledge of some of the egregious misbehaviors within
the VA, it is hard for the VA to say, we help veterans, when
there have been a lot of instances where veterans have been let
down.
So there is a challenge there, and I do agree that, as you
stated, Mr. Blair, that from the top down an agency will take
on really the leadership or the personality of that leader. In
the VA, of course, we have seen a change there. But, again,
there is a lot of that reputation that has to be built back up
again. And we have to see accountability at the highest levels
and within that management structure. We really have not seen
that in this particular agency. Any comments on how we can do
better? What can we do better to make people accountable?
Mr. Blair. I think one of the tools that we do not have to
use for accountability is pay, because pay--performance
management systems and pay are--the link is tenuous at best. I
think another thing that needs to be done is, again, leadership
attention, as you mentioned earlier. I think the Secretary
needs--I would be interested to see how VA is recruiting right
now, and I would defer to Mr. Cox as a current VA employee--I
do not know if you are current or if you are former.
Mr. Cox. I am retired.
Mr. Blair. Retired, being employed, but I would like to
hear--I am not sure how they could--I would like to know how
well they can recruit right now given the current environment.
I know that Congress has addressed this in terms of the senior
executives with the VA, but I would like to see how the VA is
utilizing that system. Shortened timeframes and cutting appeal
rights in and of itself may be helpful, but you also have to
balance it against constitutional requirements and case law and
the opportunity to be heard.
Again, this does not help the Subcommittee's path anyway,
knowing these are the barriers that are out there. I keep on
coming back to it is the leadership and setting the leadership
tone from the top down and trying--and it is also a question of
change management. There had been a culture in VA that would
have allowed for this to happen, and determining how that
culture arose, what can be done, and how can you change that
culture is also terribly important. It cannot be changed
overnight, but that should be one of the top priorities for the
Secretary. Or it would be my recommendation that the Secretary
address.
Senator Ernst. Thank you, and I would agree. this was not
just one isolated case in one hospital, but it was in many
different locations across the United States that this
happened. So there had to be a higher level of responsibility
with some of these actions, and it would be interesting to find
out.
Senator Heitkamp. Actually, Senator Ernst, it was a reward
system gone awry, is what it was. So hit this mark, and so let
us rig the numbers so we hit the mark so we can get the award,
as opposed to actually digging down and finding out what is
happening. And so, I am not excusing anything, but I think
there was this system put in place that was a benchmark that
may have been impractical to begin with given the resources the
VA has, and then people took that opportunity to try and say we
are the best when they absolutely were not. They were the most
dishonest.
Senator Ernst. Right.
Senator Heitkamp. And so, that is one of the things that we
have to be very careful of, that when we set goals and
aspirational kind of benchmarks, that we do not create fraud in
achieving those marks.
I would like to get to an issue that, just as a
supervisor--and I think that it is one of the toughest things
to take a good lawyer or to take a good accountant, to take a
great nurse, and make them a supervisor. We just assume that
they are going to have those skills to basically supervise
people when, being a great nurse does not mean you can be a
great supervisor or being a very good attorney does not mean
you are going to be a good supervisor.
And I think as a result many times what you do is you have
people with an inability to motivate and an inability to
actually deal with internal problems. And one of the reasons in
my experience for dissatisfaction is when you have, 40 percent
of the employees doing 100 percent of the work, and they feel
devalued because there are a whole lot of people whose jobs
they are doing because they want to get the job done.
So how do we deal with that, Mr. Cox? How do we deal with
those people who really get taken advantage of in the system
because they are working hard, but they are working next to
someone who is not working hard?
Mr. Cox. No. 1, you are right, I think many agencies do not
spend enough time on supervisory training, working with new
supervisors, mentoring, developing them. We need people to do
the work so quickly that we do not spend the time adequately
giving them the skills to do the job well. And, again, trying
to motivate all employees to--do their fair share. There are
performance expectations for everyone in the system, and they
are expected to do that. If they are not performing properly,
there are provisions in current law to place employees on
performance improvement plans, and otherwise deal with poor
performers. Sometimes it is the fact that those employees were
not properly trained.
Senator Heitkamp. But it takes someone who is willing to
sit across the table and engage in conflict. And that is not an
easy thing for a lot of people. I know Ms. Niehaus has a lot to
say on this, I think.
Ms. Niehaus. And I think that if we have trained
supervisors, they are able to do that. If you have an untrained
supervisor or a minimally trained supervisor and they have an
employee who is not performing, they do not know how to go to
that employee. They do not know how to inspire that employee to
work better or to hold them accountable.
And if you also have a supervisor who is required to still
do their technical duties, if you have a supervisor that is
only giving 30 percent of their time to being a supervisor and
to managing their employees, they are not going to be able to
put the effort into mentoring and developing their employees to
enable them to perform at the acceptable level.
So I think that if we can educate our supervisors and our
managers and we can train them to be good supervisors and
managers instead of just promoting the best technician into a
supervisory role--and I think we need to have dual career paths
for our people. We need to have technician career paths, and we
need to have manager career paths, because a lot of our
technicians accept manager and supervisor jobs because it is a
higher rate of pay, but they do not want to do that type of
work. They love their technical jobs.
Senator Lankford. I saw that in your written testimony.
That is a very interesting point. They feel like they are
stuck, they have great skills, and we as leaders in the Federal
Government, we want them to stay in that because they
contributed a tremendous amount, but they are trapped. It seems
that the GS system allows them to continue to move up if they
supervise more people, and so they have to make that jump. And
so that to me is one of the areas that I saw where we have to
ask the question: Is this the right way to do this? Are there
other ideas you have seen or that others have seen for how do
we do this dual track, as you referenced it, where there is not
a compulsion--quite frankly, and twofold, one is that someone
has to feel like they have to go supervise more people to do
it, or that if I want to get a raise, I need to find some way
for my agency to get more people under me so I can supervise
more people and my pay goes up. So both of them are false
incentives.
Ms. Niehaus. I agree; they are. And I think if we have
maybe a senior technician position where they are a lead
technician, maybe mentoring people as opposed to trying to
manage and supervise, maybe that is the way to go. But I agree
that if you have to go into the management and supervisory
roles to increase your pay, whether you feel you are suited for
that or whether you really want to do that or not, I think it
does a disservice to our technicians and to our managers.
Senator Lankford. Mr. Blair.
Mr. Blair. Well, I think we have experienced that already,
don't we, through the China Lake demonstration projects and the
other demonstration projects that are out there. The current
General Schedule is not flexible enough for that.
Ms. Niehaus. No, it is not.
Mr. Blair. And that is not, to indict the General Schedule.
It is 70 years old. And, it represents the best thinking of
mid-20th century America. But we are fast approaching mid-21st
century America, and I think it is time for some different
things. Pay banding has long been an ``experiment'' in the
Federal Government that actually has produced results. I think
that----
Ms. Niehaus. For over 30 years.
Mr. Blair. And I think that more--I do not even think it is
time for demonstration. I think we need--or if there is going
to be demonstration, for instance, the demonstration project
authority we have now is awkward, bulky, and it was set up in
1978. It is limited to 5,000 people, all the notice and comment
that has to be involved. There are ways of streamlining it
while still giving employees adequate and meaningful input, but
also allowing an agency to move forward. Modernizing those
types of systems I think would go a long way.
Senator Lankford. So is your recommendation that an agency
as a whole would experiment with something new? How do you get
a demonstration to show----
Mr. Blair. I think you certainly----
Senator Lankford [continuing]. Before with TSA, we look
back at the numbers and such on it, but when you have these
dual tracks, it gives you the opportunity to be able to see it.
Is that a whole agency that does that or a whole new group of
people? How do you do that?
Mr. Blair. I think an agency or a component thereof, but
make sure that it is larger than a 5,000-person unit in order
to get good, demonstrable results. And I think that these are
easy solutions. Implementation is harder, but these are easy
solutions that have been out there for several years.
Senator Lankford. Ms. Jones, you were trying to get in on
this conversation.
Ms. Jones. Thank you, Senator Lankford. A couple of
observations.
It is true that supervisors sometimes do not have adequate
training in performance management, but sometimes they also
feel that they do not have the support of senior leadership,
and as many panelists have mentioned, the disciplinary process
can be very cumbersome. So at root, the performance management
system needs to be based on an understanding between agency
leadership and all of the stakeholders that the performance
management system is going to be applied to.
Yes, it is true that supervisors need to be trained, but
then once they are trained, what they need to do is to interact
with their staff on a continual basis, which means that they
can give feedback on a day-to-day basis that at midyear and at
the end of the performance cycle, they get more formal
feedback, but that also supervisors be trained to recognize
when an underperforming staff member is not doing what he or
she should do and to understand how to have conversations with
them. And the performance management system has to be flexible
enough so that, for example, if you need to have an out-of-
cycle performance rating so that a person understands the
degree to which they are not performing, that that can be done.
Senator Lankford. Can that be done now? Or that cannot be
done?
Ms. Jones. It can at certain agencies. We can do that at
GAO. I think it varies from agency to agency.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that the senior
leader positions already exist. In some agencies, for example,
at GAO, our chief economist, our chief actuary, they are senior
leaders, not SES. So, I guess agencies will decide themselves
what they need to do in terms of distinguishing between senior
leaders who are managers and senior leaders who are more
technically oriented.
Senator Heitkamp. Well, I think the real challenge here is
selecting the right supervision. And it has been my experience
that you want people who can deal with conflict, but you want
people who do not get drunk with power. And it is an
interesting kind of balance. And you want people who can
connect the employees to the mission.
I like telling the story, because he is a great friend of
mine, but I had a guy who worked for me who was the head of
sales tax when I was tax commissioner. He would come in at 5
o'clock every morning when no one else was there, and he would
get through his paperwork. And then at 8, when the employees
came in, he probably supervised about 40 employees. He would
walk desk to desk and ask people how they were. And when they
would tell him, ``I was late this morning because the kids were
not moving,'' he would say, ``You know how I am? I am
terrific.'' And by the end of the day, his whole division was
terrific, because he had reached out to them every day. And
when they did not perform, they did not want to disappoint him
because he had that relationship.
And it takes a special person who has many skill sets that
we do not always find in people who are proficient in their
occupation. And that is really the challenge: How do you make
the workforce rewarding and more fun? I am not saying, let us--
but someplace that is light-hearted, some place where people
feel a kinship or a friendship.
And one of the things we know, we are not going to get
Millennials to stay in the Federal workforce if we are overly
bureaucratic. It is the ABC of failure: arrogance, bureaucracy,
and complacency. And Millennials do not fit in that category.
They are not bureaucratic in how they look at things. They are
not complacent with the way things are. And they tend to be
more collaborative and less arrogant.
And so how do we avoid a system--I think it is Warren
Buffett who uses the ABCs. But how do we jump-start this?
Because we have a huge workforce, and moving this big ship to
something that is more flexible and more attractive to a new
workforce is going to be extraordinarily difficult. So some
ideas on how we can infect this whole system with maybe more
enthusiasm for what we do every day? And I should talk. I
complain all the time about what I do all day. But, Ms.
Niehaus, obviously, you have great experience where you work
and care a great deal about the job that you do, but I think
also experience this level of frustration.
Ms. Niehaus. Yes, and I see our workers, and a lot of our
workers at Travis Air Force Base are veterans. I mean, the
majority of our new hires are veterans, so they already
understand the importance of our mission. But I think we might
be able to do a better job with the new employees who are not
veterans and who have not already been through military service
of explaining what their role is in the mission. And I think
that if our supervisors are trained to orient employees that
way so that they know, ``OK, you are turning a wrench on this
aircraft and that aircraft goes and refuels other aircraft to
allow them to perform mission in a war zone,'' I think it makes
more impression than if somebody is just told, ``OK, go change
the tire on this airplane.'' But our supervisors need to be
trained in how to do that.
Senator Heitkamp. I think that is right. Ms. Jones.
Ms. Jones. I would just like to make one more point about
performance management. Our discussions have shown with
supervisors across agencies that even when someone is
performing poorly, that if it is possible to supervise them
appropriately, to explain to them why they are not doing their
work in a proper way, and to bring about an improvement in
their work so that they do not have to be dismissed, that is
actually a better result than dismissing someone. We have
talked about the cumbersome nature of dismissals, but the
agency has spent a lot of money recruiting the person, training
the person. The person has learned a great deal about their
work and the agency's work overall and how the Federal
Government operates. So if it is possible to have a more
positive outcome rather than a negative outcome, that would be
better.
Senator Lankford. Redemption is always better. I will take
that every time.
While you are dipping into that, there is one more big
issue that we have kind of skirted around, and it is the
termination process. We talked about the probation. We talked
about some of the hiring things. Everyone has mentioned at some
level, either in their written testimony or orally, something
about the termination process. There are several ideas that
were presented out there, but here are a couple things that I
heard when I read through the materials and heard some of the
oral testimony.
One was the administrative leave and the length of that,
the paid administrative leave and how long that is.
The other thing was a statement that went around the morale
issue, that individuals--and I have seen it. When there is an
individual that everyone knows is a problem in the middle of
the team, it hurts morale for the entire team. And everyone
gets frustrated by that, and everyone knows I am being paid the
same as that person is, but they are not doing their work, so
it brings down the whole team. But everyone also knows in the
Federal workforce it is incredibly difficult for someone to be
released. And so we all put up with it.
So how do we fix that where we can actually protect some
worker from a supervisor that may be an ogre that just wants to
release everybody? So we want to give them some kind of due
process to make sure we do not have a bad supervisor and that
is why we have a bad environment, but to also deal with the
employee that is just not cutting it at this point. So let us
talk through some of the basics of that real quick. Specific
ideas would be helpful. Mr. Blair.
Mr. Blair. Thank you. In my testimony, I outlined a couple
of ideas, and I do not have the magic bullet for this, but it
does seem to me----
Senator Lankford. We need it. [Laughter.]
Mr. Blair. Well, let us see if we can come up with
something. It is a maze right now. You have multiple bites at
the apple, and there are long policy justifications for the
current system. But the current system adds to the cynicism. So
I think we need to look at it afresh. This is something that I
think the expertise lies in OPM and MSPB.
Senator Lankford. Do they have the authorities right now
that they need to----
Mr. Blair. I do not think they have the authorities to
properly demonstrate it. I recommend a demonstration project or
demos, pilot projects of some kind. Even if that is not
feasibly, to come up with some recommendations on how--what
should be changed in legislation in order to make it
transparent accountable, but also give the public a sense
that--along with due process, but give the public the sense
that employees are being held accountable.
These are things that you cannot come up with in a day, but
you are starting this process at a very important time, and
these are things that as you said earlier, teed up for the
transition issue.
I would like to go back to the Academy. I have folks who
span the spectrum on different ways of doing these types of
things, and I would look forward to that opportunity to engage
them in some way and say, look I have members, a former
president of the National Treasury Employees Union is a Fellow.
One of my former board members was a political action director
for Mr. Cox's union as well and was their communications
director. I have agency heads. We span the spectrum. And a
panel of Fellows looking at something like that can thread the
needle. We have threaded the needle before for this Committee.
We did work for you all 2 years ago on the STOCK Act. Congress
looked at our report and adopted the recommendations. So I
would be interested in seeing how we could be engaged to come
back and bring together the best collective thinking in the
Academy on something like this, and we can do that on a timely
basis.
Senator Lankford. That would be helpful to us because,
again, this is an issue that hurts high-performing teams. This
is not just a matter of the Federal taxpayer paying someone who
is not pulling their weight. It is a matter of demoralizing a
whole team, a whole group of people, and I will be interested
to know when we read through for Defense, VA, and Homeland
Security if they are dealing with this or there are other
issues that are in the process of what is causing this lack of
employee engagement on this. But other ideas that this group
has on dealing with the termination process to make sure that
it is both fair but that it actually has a functioning process
rather than someone just saying, ``It is so hard to do it, I am
just not going to even try. I will just leave him there and
ignore him.''
Mr. Cox. I think part of the process is, again, what the
Senator said earlier. Many times people do not want to deal
with conflict. I have represented employees that have done
things that were wrong. The process went very timely. There was
an investigation done. The employee had due process. They
suffered the consequence, and they paid the price. And many of
them left the agency or either received some type of
disciplinary action. Frequently, managers want to put it off
and not deal with it. The provisions are there to move in a
very timely process. All of AFGE's contracts call for quick
action of investigation, tell employees they have done
something wrong, deal with them.
Also, with the forum issue, employees must choose to file
either through a negotiated grievance procedure, EEO, or MSPB.
I see them try to go in several different directions, and they
get kicked out and lose out because you just cannot, forum
shop. The laws are constructed such that you have to be in one
avenue and stay in that avenue. So there are procedures to deal
with that.
Senator Heitkamp. One of the complicating factors of these
is frequently a manager will figure out a way to get rid of
that employee and send them to another team. So they can poison
more than one group of people. I think we have to start with
training supervisors to deal with conflict, to try and take
corrective action, to put--do not have low expectations of
employees. That is one of the challenges you have, is you say
it is good enough, it is C work. Well, I need A-plus work, so
let us try and get A-plus work and make them part of the team.
And I think most people are redeemable. There are people who
are just bad actors and are not interested in putting in a fair
amount of work. But I think most people with the right kind of
supervision and with the right kind of training can be very
good employees, but yet they fail because they get in this
cycle of failure and get so demoralized that they are just
filling in space and time. And I think early capture of
problems--which is why the probationary period is so important.
Early capture of these problems I think is also part of--you
cannot just look at the termination process as just that
process of going through the steps of terminating employment.
You have to look at it as the whole supervision possibility
from the very beginning, and so I do not look at these as two
different pieces. I look at this as an overall management
challenge.
Senator Lankford. And even in your description there, Mr.
Cox, talking about all the different lanes that they could get
in through the process, when you deal with Chapter 43 or
Chapter 75 of the U.S. Code and that process and where they are
going to go and understanding this is performance related or
this is based on a specific action, and based on that action it
gets very complicated in the process. And what you were
describing as far as a quick process, if someone does something
that is really dumb, it becomes this large-scale action, event,
statement, explosion in work, what they are going to do with
their attitude, it becomes very clear. But if it is just low
performance and they have been trained, and they have been
trained, and they have been trained, and they are not coming
up, it is how do you help them, say OK, this is the wrong fit?
To go with the good to great philosophy, you are in the wrong
seat on the bus. We need to move you to a different seat on the
bus and see if that works better, and if that seat does not
work, we may need to move you off the bus. That is the
difficulty of the process on it.
So any other comments or ideas on this? Because this is one
of the difficult things we have to deal with.
Ms. Niehaus. Well, I think, as Senator Heitkamp said, not
only do we have to train our supervisors, we have to give them
time to supervise. You used an example of someone who came in
at 5 in the morning, and their employees come in at 8. Not
everyone can do that. Most of our supervisors have families,
and they have lives outside of the office or the duty section.
So we need to structure our supervisory positions so that they
have time to actually be supervisors and managers and not just
technicians working, with an additional duty on top of their
technical work.
Senator Lankford. OK. Ms. Jones.
Ms. Jones. I would say that it would be very important in
terms of the cost to the government of figuring out a way to
resolve these issues earlier. There are relatively few Federal
employees who stay on administrative leave for more than 30
days and relatively even fewer still who stay on for 6 months
or more than a year.
What we found in our prior work, though, is that this very
small number of employees, the cost of them staying on
administrative leave is much higher than their numbers would
imply. So figuring out a way--and performance-related issues
was one of the major reasons why they stayed on administrative
leave for a long time. So figuring out a way to deal with
situations earlier and much more expeditiously would be
helpful.
Senator Lankford. OK. I want this panel to know that we are
very interested in hearing the specific ideas because we want
to help in this process. We have some great Federal employees
that are out there that we like to put good team members around
them that are working at the same level that they are because
it builds morale and it, quite frankly, is better value for the
taxpayer, and it builds that enthusiasm and quality of work. So
this is one of those complicated issues that we have to resolve
in the days ahead, and I look forward to that conversation and
other ideas, and thanks again for your testimony on this.
I am going to go ahead and close the hearing down. Other
members that were not here, they will have 7 additional days to
be able to put a statement officially for the record, and we
will followup with questions for the record as well in the days
ahead.
I look forward to the ongoing conversation we will have
about trying to resolve this. Thanks again. This hearing is
closed.
[Whereupon, at 11:28 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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