MANAGING PEOPLE IN TOUGH TIMES – JUNE 2020

Congress established the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service in 2017 and charged it to “conduct a review of the military selective service process” and “consider methods to increase participation in” the public service. The commission published its final report, Inspired to Serve, in March 2020, concluding (with my edits to take the focus off exclusively federal workforce issues)

[C]ivil service personnel systems require urgent attention. The difficulties facing [agency staffing] are so severe that … strategic human capital management [was identified] as a “high risk” area in need of transformation if [government] is to work effectively and efficiently. Existing practices block younger Americans and workers with critical skills from entering public service and jeopardize the ability of … agencies to replenish their workforce in the face of a looming wave of retirements.
Modernizing the civil service is politically and technically difficult. The public service recommendations … address near-term, urgent problems and long-term, structural issues.

The commission’s recommendations for resolving these problems that are relevant to virtually every public employer are

• “Revamp hiring systems for students and recent graduates” to bring fresh thinking to government and increased energy in conducting government operations.
• “Develop and implement a new personnel system” to make government “competitive for current and future workforce needs.”
• “Address critical-skills challenges.”
• “Promote a high-performing personnel culture. Elevating and investing in the human resources function; developing agency workforce plans to hire, retain, and reskill qualified individuals; and empowering agencies to communicate with the public about their mission and to promote service will foster a culture in which agencies make full use of available personnel authorities.”

The focus on high performance is particularly important to agencies encumbered by a bureaucratic culture of compliance. That characterization, taken from a 2018 National Academy of Public Administration report subtitled Building a Public Service for the 21st Century, applies to a far-too-common situation where “meeting the requirements of the rules has become more important than delivering value to taxpayers.”

Although it is not emphasized in the commission report, the goals cannot be achieved without a proactive HR function respected by leaders and accepted by managers and employees.

The Pandemic Changed Government

The COVID 19 crisis raised the stakes and accelerated existing trends, making the commission’s recommendations more relevant and important than they were even three months ago. It is certain that the pandemic changed the public’s need for services and that it will be months before agencies can expect to return to anything close to normal. It is also certain that the changes in demand for public services has highlighted important organizational and workforce differences from agency to agency. If, as expected, the pandemic continues into late 2020 and beyond, staffing shortages are likely to become increasingly severe.

At a time when layoffs have redefined and increased individual workloads, working remotely has also changed the relationship between supervisors and their people. Close, over-the-shoulder supervision is no longer possible. With communications being intermittent, it makes sense to discuss and agree on what an employee is expected to accomplish. That sets the stage for increased autonomy and flexibility in work schedules, which is the definition of employee empowerment. It also makes performance metrics a valuable tool to enable supervisors to monitor progress.

In the private sector, this kind of working relationship is very common. Managers often are responsible for employees who sit miles away. They talk periodically but rely primarily on technology to stay informed.

In the new environment for government work, both managers and employees will require new skills. Managers who are accustomed to exerting over-the shoulder control will need to develop a different style. Many will not be successful without support.

The shift in focus toward results will change the government workplace culture from compliance to one more focused on performance. That transformation will be profoundly important and also seemingly very difficult for some. Normally, an organization’s culture is impervious to management dictates.

As I’m writing this, there is a real possibility that state and local government will not be fully reimbursed for unexpected pandemic expenditures and that depleted budgets will not support pre-pandemic staffing levels. Where that becomes the case, leaders will need to develop staffing priorities. It also may be necessary to limit recalls of laid-off workers to those who possess specialized or essential skills.

In other words, agencies may soon need to decide which jobs and employees are most important.,/p>

When staffing shortages occur in job families where the demand for talent exceeds supply, the only viable answer is to rethink the pay program and shift funds to increase salaries to compete for essential employees. Stated differently, rigid job hierarchies and traditional classification systems like the federal General Schedule are incompatible with what is unfolding with the COVID 19 crisis.

The private sector experienced something similar a few decades ago when world competition during the 1980s was followed by a recession in 1990 and prompted companies to reduce costs. Companies eliminated layers of management, which increased the span of control. Today, there are managers in business with direct reports in other countries; others “supervise” 20 or more employees who are essentially self-managed.

In that kind of work environment, goal-based performance management serves employers best. Throughout the year, managers and their people can discuss progress and possibly modify goals if something changes. At year’s end, it is somewhat easier to agree on an appropriate rating. This approach to performance management and compensation has effectively become universal practice in business, and it has laid the foundation for a culture where there is a broad commitment to achieving organizational goals.

That, of course, is supportive of the commission’s recommendations. If budget problems force public employers to reduce their workforce, shifting to goal-based management may be the best strategy going forward,

It was certainly the strategy implemented by the State of Tennessee to support its reform of the government workforce during the early 2010s. Significantly, Tennessee’s then-governor, Bill Haslam, and his cabinet officials made the reform a priority. Also, the state invested three years in preparing managers with training and coaching before linking employees’ performance ratings to salary increases.

The Pandemic and Staffing

The pandemic should open the door to addressing the first of the commission’s recommendations of revamping hiring systems for students and recent graduates. Early in the crisis, the federal government and the Trump administration announced new flexibilities to hire and onboard new workers during the national emergency. Reducing the ridiculous number of days many public employers need to select and bring on new hires should be a high priority.

Surveys show a very high percentage of millennials—upwards of 90 percent—want to use their skills for good. Here, the social impact of the crisis should resonate with purpose-driven people.

Another aspect of what the pandemic is likely to trigger is related to the millions of workers who have been laid off. Unemployment rates are expected to remain high for months. Many unemployed workers will, at some point, be forced to look for a job with a new employer. Through 2020 and beyond, public employers are likely to see an increase in job applications.

Those applications could present a dilemma, however. Vacancies can be filled, but there is a possibility that agencies could see high turnover after the economy rebounds because they did not meet the new employees’ expectations. For those who worked in the business world, the government work experience, pace, culture and career prospects will be different and, possibly, not satisfying.

Turnover is costly because money spent on recruiting, onboarding and training is lost. On the other hand, hires with private sector experience will bring fresh thinking and a can-do attitude that would benefit government. Hiring employees with experience outside the public sector would also contribute to and reinforce the need for culture change.

Last, targeting former private sector workers could prompt government agencies to revamp antiquated policies and systems. Recruitment, hiring and onboarding practices should be high on the list of processes to update, along with rigid wage and salary systems.

Redefining HR’s Role

The old Superman TV show regularly featured the dramatic statement “This looks like a job for Superman!” That is, no doubt. applicable here. But the transformation can be accomplished.

Tennessee and the two HR leaders who led its civil service reform initiative—HR Commissioner Rebecca Hunter and the state’s first chief learning officer, Trish “Doc” Holiday—confirmed what is possible in the public sector. The pandemic now provides a compelling reason to put on the red cape.

The crisis makes it imperative to manage government’s people assets more effectively. It also introduced new roles for HR specialists, including working with managers to strengthen relationships with remote workers, keeping those still on the job healthy, maintaining morale and, when layoffs become necessary, taking the lead in identifying the individuals who agencies can afford to lose. Experience makes it clear that certain jobs and their incumbents are far more important; that triggers a need to reconsider traditional civil service thinking.

When the end of the crisis is in sight, organizations and HR leaders will be expected to lead in identifying who returns, who needs reskilling and which organizations and reporting relationships need to be reconfigured. Strategies for recruiting and retaining essential talent should also be addressed.

IPMA-HR is on board with the need for change. Its HR20/20 Report highlights this key point: “It has been clear for some time that the Human Resources function can no longer afford to be purely transactional. Yet many public sector HR departments lack the support, exposure and resources to make the transition from transactional to transformational.”

The crisis also opens the door to an expanded and very different role. HR will, of course, continue to be responsible for maintaining personnel records and administering HR activities. The newer role involves advising executives and managers on personnel concerns and on improving people capabilities. The expanded role is central to elevating the HR function and improving performance, and fulfilling it requires a different skill set, different behaviors and updated goals.

The expanded role was first discussed in two Harvard Business Review articles titled “It’s Time to Split HR” and “People Before Strategy: A New Role for the CHRO.” The first argues for splitting HR into two units. The second, authored by three leading business consultants, argues that the CHRO should help the CEO with talent decisions, especially regarding key people, and should also advise managers on how to improve performance. HR’s administrative work would be reorganized as a shared services unit. That was essentially the strategy adopted by Rebecca Hunter and Tennessee.

The idea of splitting the HR function has been proposed for government, most recently when the Trump administration made plans to merge the administrative functions of the Office of Personnel Management with the work of the General Services Administration. OPM’s policymaking would then shift to the Office of Management and Budget. The moves have met sharp opposition from Democrats in Congress and federal employee unions.

A similar proposal was discussed at the United Nations in 2018, but no further action was taken. Both proposals were somewhat vague on how the changes would enhance HR’s value.

In the second of the Harvard Business Review articles, the authors discussed three activities they saw as being important to redefining HR’s role—predicting outcomes, diagnosing problems and prescribing actions on the people side that will add value to the organization. These activities are largely missing in public HR management.

HR offices have problems to address in the post-pandemic years. Heavy retirements are inevitable. Recruiting practices for young workers need to be reconsidered. Government salaries have fallen behind private sector levels, especially for knowledge jobs. The culture issue cannot be ignored. Clearly, there is work to be done.

What is perhaps most important is that agencies need to reconsider their underlying people management philosophy of managing employees as costs rather than assets and commit to policies and practices that are known to contribute to a positive work environment. In this regard, a new, expanded role for HR could have a profound impact on government.

While the pandemic opens the door to change, human resources/human capital executives will need to convince elected officials that their involvement will pay off in improved agency performance. HR executives will also have to convince line managers that they can help improve results.

In Tennessee, Hunter adopted the ideas that managers and employees are HR’s customers and their satisfaction is an important metric. That is the kind of organizational change which only comes with all the problems discussed in textbooks and which requires a multiyear commitment. But the payoff for those in public HR will be increased status, an expanded role for HR and the satisfaction of contributing to good government.