OPM's, Berry, the 'Energizer Bunny,' Moves on Improvements

His vigorous efforts to improve federal workforce practices led a meeting host to introduce Office of Personnel Director John Berry at a forum last week as the Energizer bunny.

But in a recent memo he wrote to agency chiefs, Berry sounds more like a modern-day Elliot Ness, a determined enforcer of personnel policies, setting deadlines to transfer those plans into practice.

Berry has created SWAT teams and wolf packs to push federal agencies to improve the government’s hiring process and better conditions for those already on the payroll.
In a June 18 memo to department and agency heads, he said that by Wednesday “each agency will establish a SWAT team” to map current hiring procedures, identify and analyze barriers to efficient hiring, and develop “streamlined and plain language job opportunity announcements.” In addition, Berry named high-level OPM managers as his “hiring wolf pack team lead” and “wellness wolf pack team lead” to be the point of contact for those initiatives.

Members of the SWAT teams will include agency managers and human resource professionals. To keep those teams cracking, Berry also will have OPM representatives on them. And to ensure that agencies do not shun the mission of the teams to a low priority sidetrack, Berry wants the team leaders to hold “a policy or core mission-related role in the agency.”

He set a Sept. 30 deadline for the SWAT teams to provide their agency’s leadership, OPM and the Office of Management and Budget an update of their work. By Dec. 15 the agencies are to develop “an action plan to tackle the barriers” to hiring and should have their plain language job announcements in full use for their top 10 positions.

The mention of OMB is significant because it shows the increased level of involvement by the White House in federal personnel matters. “It is unprecedented for human capital issues to have such a significant role in the overall President’s budget and performance plans,” Berry wrote.

If the past provides lessons, he may need the power of the presidency to make slow moving bureaucracies get with the plan. Many of them all but ignored the End-to-End Hiring Roadmap that the Bush administration unveiled in September.

Some agencies regarded the roadmap the way moonshiners regarded prohibition. “To date, there has been sporadic effort, at best, applied to making this initial first step in our overall hiring reform a reality,” OMB Director Peter Orszag scolded in a June 11 memo to department heads.

One item that should make federal job applicants happy is the “proactive notification” tool that was implemented June 20 on the USAJOBS.gov. This feature is designed to notify applicants of their status, using e-mail alerts, at four points in the hiring process --application received, applicant’s qualifications assessed, applicant referred to a selecting official (or not) and applicant selected (or not).

Berry said OPM is in the early stages of “creating centralized pools of top applicants for key mission-critical jobs across the Federal Government who can be interviewed by agencies and quickly hired.” These pools will allow an applicant with needed skills to apply to the central pool rather than to numerous agencies.

While improving the hiring process is critical, improving the satisfaction of current workers also is high priority for Berry. He instructed agencies to identify the 10 items where they scored the lowest on the 2008 Federal Human Capital Survey and any items where employee satisfaction dropped since the 2006 survey.

Agency leaders were told to meet with staff members and labor leaders “to help improve employee satisfaction in a meaningful and sustainable way.” To improve employee wellness, Berry also told agencies to inventory their current offerings, such as cafeteria, fitness and health facilities. Action plans to improve worker satisfaction and wellness facilities are due by Sept. 14.

“Studies show that, on average, happy and healthy employees are more productive and engaged in their work,” he told agency heads.

By Marcia Davis  |  June 30, 2009; 3:38 PM ET  | Category:  Office of Personnel Management
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