At a time when education costs are soaring and student debt is rising, there’s one institution of higher learning that’s tuition free for most students and is saving money – lots of it.
It’s the federal Chief Human Capital Officers‘ innovative cross-government HR University, which has saved more than $17.6 million in taxpayer dollars since it was launched last year, according to the Office of Personnel Management, the council’s partner in HRU. Keep reading →
A new report reflecting the views of 55 top human capital officers in the federal government suggests that the degree of difficulty for federal managers trying to hire and retain the talent government needs to operate today is perhaps higher than ever. Intensifying budget pressures could, however, be the spark needed to reform a stranglehold of antiquated federal hiring and pay practices.
The severity of federal human resources challenges is hard to understate. Keep reading →
Innovation seems to be this decade’s buzzword. It’s what “synergy” was to the 1990s, but what does it really mean?
Put simply, innovation is the process of improving, adapting or creating a product, system or service. According to federal employees, some agencies do it better than others. Keep reading →
The Office of Personnel Management took steps today to extend federal health insurance coverage eligibility to temporary firefighters and fire protection personnel working on wildland fires across the country.
OPM published an interim final regulation under the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) program, in response to direction from President Obama, that ensures federal firefighters and their families will have access to the same health insurance afforded to full time federal employees, according to a statement issued by OPM Director John Berry. Keep reading →
Turns out, paying back student loans can result in more and better candidates for job openings within the federal workforce and better retention and satisfaction once they’re hired.
As the No. 1 federal department in helping employees pay back their student loans, the Department of Defense cities the program designed for doing so as a major factor in recruiting and retaining civilian personnel. Keep reading →
Trying to measure the real return on investment for allowing federal employees to telework has inevitably involved a bit more art than science. Intuitively and anecdotally, it seems obvious that giving federal workers more flexibility to work remotely makes smart economic sense; and it goes a long way toward improving employee productivity and satisfaction too.
Yet after years of trying to implement telework policies in the federal government, it’s clear from the Office of Personnel Management‘s first comprehensive report to Congress on Telework, released July 6, that assembling reliable figures about telework implementation is still not an easy task. Keep reading →
Nearly 169,000 federal employees are teleworking at least one day a week but there is a long way to go before the government’s entire workforce of 2.1 million can join the office of the 21st century, OPM said in a report to Congress.
The 2012 Status of Telework in the Federal Government report to Congress, released on July 6, is the first comprehensive look at the government’s telework world and the emerging changes in a culture that once required federal employees to physically be in the office at all times. Keep reading →
When it comes to carrying out the work of the federal government, few initiatives have held greater promise or importance than the Senior Executive Service.
Commissioned by Congress more than three decades ago, the SES program was envisioned as a way to attract and develop an elite corps of America’s highest caliber executives and deploy them across the federal government to address both immediate and longer term management needs within federal agencies. Keep reading →
It used to be relatively easy for Greg Schaffer to carve out some time in his week to kayak or row and enjoy some time on the water. These days, however, most of his time is spent helping organizations navigate the choppy waters of cybersecurity.
As assistant secretary for cyber-security and communications at the Department of Homeland Security, Schaffer helps organizations safeguard and secure cyberspace at a time when cyberattacks are increasing and the use of new technology such as mobile devices is on the rise. Keep reading →
A new report released today by the Partnership for Public Service provides fresh perspective on the long standing failure of the federal government to take advantage of its Senior Executive Service and a cadre of more than 7,800 senior leaders many of whom find themselves trapped in the agencies they work for.
The report, “Mission-Driven Mobility,” outlines barriers that SES members face in being able to move from one agency to another, and even within agencies, as intended when the SES was created by Congress in 1978 as a way to spread the experience of senior executives to improve the broader management of government. Keep reading →