Human Resource Management Crisis in the Federal Public Service

Introduction: OPM's Record of Organizational Failure

At the national level, leadership in human resource management has been problematic—if not negative—in its effects. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 and related legislation established the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to provide leadership and innovative personnel programs for the federal establishment. Instead, in the first ten years after its creation, OPM established a record of missed opportunities, failed initiatives, and declining organizational effectiveness, as documented in comprehensive reports issued in 1989 by both the U.S. General Accounting Office and the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (Ingraham and Ban, 2008).

By any measure of performance against legislative intent, OPM has been largely an organizational failure in the conduct of its programs and the achievement of its goals. OPM did not become the primary management office for the president, as envisioned by its first director, Alan Campbell. It did not succeed in transforming public personnel management at the federal level into a modern system of human resource management. The regulatory and procedural barriers of the past continue to inhibit managerial action in the federal personnel system. The technical innovations of the Civil Service Reform Act have not made any significant contribution to the overall efficiency or effectiveness of government. Rather, it can be argued persuasively that those innovations, as implemented, actually detracted from the capacity of agencies to perform their appointed tasks (Lane, 2009).

Under the Reagan administration, OPM became an overtly political instrument of the conservative agenda—yet the Reagan objectives of controlling personnel costs and reducing governmental employment were not achieved. All trends continued upward: employment totals, payroll and benefits costs, and the average grade and salary of the federal public service all increased significantly after 1980. The political successes of OPM in instituting systems of partisan control had serious implications for organizational effectiveness. As an instrument of government, OPM saw its influence decline and its control over human resource policies diminish. Realistically, the most striking results of OPM's policies and actions were negative, rendering the personnel system and the public service increasingly marginal to the activities of government (Ingraham and Ban, 2008).

Throughout its history, OPM demonstrated either disinterest or inability in planning, developing, and implementing personnel programs to address human resource problems. When Constance Horner, then director of OPM, delivered the Hudson Institute report to Congress, she said it should "stimulate the sort of thought and conversation we will need to build support for significant changes in our personnel policy" (Newell, 2007), yet she was not prepared to propose any specific programs or administrative actions. Her primary reaction to the report was still another attack on "the over-centralized, overregulated, cumbersome, inflexible personnel procedures now in place" (The Washington Post, 1989). Similarly, when the National Commission on the Public Service released its report in the spring of 1989, OPM again offered no immediate public response.

Unquestionably, OPM did not provide the leadership vital to the effective solution of the problems of the public service (Wright, 2000). Instead, analytical assessments and proposals for improving the condition of the public service and its personnel system were generated largely by congressional committees, the General Accounting Office, individual federal agency initiatives, and public interest groups outside government—such as the National Academy of Public Administration, the National Commission on the Public Service, and the Twentieth Century Fund. From 1980 to 1988, there was a significant leadership vacuum at the administrative center of the federal human resource program in the Executive Branch. By 1989, OPM's leadership had begun to address important issues; however, the effectiveness of new initiatives remained unclear.

Few would dispute that this has been a troubled time for the public service and for the personnel system that serves it. Yet the situation is not without opportunities for positive development. Anti-government and anti-public service rhetoric has begun to subside. President Bush introduced a new tone of support and appreciation for the actual and potential contributions of federal employees in the early days of his administration, and the new director of OPM, Constance Newman, demonstrated sensitivity to the issues confronting the public personnel system (Wolf, 2005). Opportunities exist for rebuilding a human resource system capable of answering the demands of the future.

The Need for a New Approach in the Face of a Problematic Future

There are many approaches to the problems of the public service. Textbooks in personnel administration and human resource management provide detailed models for examining the processes of workforce planning, job analysis and design, recruitment, selection, training, performance appraisal, and labor relations. These technical methods define the specific aspects of personnel issues. From another perspective, management and organization studies focus on ways to achieve productivity in the workforce, including motivation, leadership, planning, and participation. Still other studies are issue-oriented and recommend specific actions appropriate from a particular vantage point to address public workforce shortcomings.

Clearly, nothing less than an approach that focuses on the critical dimensions of the public employment system will solve the potentially paralyzing problems of the public service. The only realistic hope for a solution lies in a comprehensive review of the public service and its place in democratic governance. This type of in-depth analysis will require more than the application of routine techniques of public personnel administration, and certainly more than a recitation of organizational behavior theory. Old formulas are not sufficient. The approach must integrate personnel functions, behavioral concepts, and organizational goals within a human resource management system that contributes to the creation and maintenance of an effective public service (Wright, 2000).

A new conceptual framework and four analytical lenses are employed here in an attempt to capture the major themes and dynamics underlying the contemporary crisis of the public service. The concepts of flow and competence are standard aspects of human resource management, encompassing the principal functions of attracting, training, promoting, assigning, and retaining employees. The areas of energy and commitment include concepts from organizational and political theory that address issues of motivation, performance, and identification with service to the community.

Flow focuses on the availability of sufficient numbers of people for the operation of government programs and agencies. The demographics of the American labor force in general, and of specific agency employees in particular, are key considerations in assuring that the public workforce is maintained at adequate levels. Characteristics of both external and internal labor markets, which provide the supply of available workers for public enterprise, must be considered alongside organizational demand (Newell, 2007).

The ebb and flow of public programs—their expansion and contraction at different points in agency life cycles—influences workforce supply issues. Demand for employees is conditioned by the availability of sufficient budget and positions and is documented through the administrative process of job analysis. An additional facet of the personnel flow lens is the influence on the available workforce of such factors as competitiveness of pay and benefits, attractiveness of working conditions, opportunities to perform meaningful work, and prospects for continuing advancement in the service. Career patterns, employment systems, and personnel policies are also addressed because of their direct influence on personnel flow. Finally, human resource planning is recognized as a necessary mechanism for the management of personnel flow (Ingraham and Ban, 2008).

Key Concepts: Personnel Flow, Competence, Energy, and Commitment

Required competencies in the public service fall into three major categories. First, technical competencies are the occupational skills and knowledge necessary for performing the specialized work of individual agencies. Second, program and agency competencies involve the traditions and well-developed technical and administrative characteristics of existing programs, which can only be learned through hands-on experience within the agencies. Finally, the public service must possess a governance competency in order to function within the processes of the constitutional system. Governance requires special skills, knowledge, and sensitivities to assure that agencies function as part of the national community.

Each of these areas of competence poses special problems for public agencies. Public organizations are required to maintain competencies that are constantly being eroded by internal conditions and external political and demographic forces. While overall federal policies and specific agency practices influence the development and utilization of human resource talent, conditions in the external labor market—relating to the basic skills of the working population—also contribute to problems of maintaining adequate levels of worker competence for the accomplishment of public programs.

An agency's effectiveness increases as employees are able to engage their work with energy and enthusiasm. While some organizations can evoke energetic effort, others seem to smother enthusiasm. Although most agencies recognize the necessity for an energetic workforce, not enough is generally known about how to influence this phenomenon. As a result, many strategies currently employed to motivate work effort actually have the effect of dampening personal energy (Wright, 2000).

Energy in the workforce begins with individuals. It is primarily a psychological force evoked from tensions occurring within individual workers, and between individuals and the organizational culture (Wolf, 2005). The developmental process of individual workers creates inner tensions. As workers address the tensions within themselves and with the organizational world, energy is evoked. Work groups are usually the setting in which individuals encounter situations, attempt to gain a degree of control over those situations, and work on their personal developmental issues. Through this process, energy is evoked and channeled either toward the work of the organization or toward other purposes.

Blockages in the release of energy occur when workers are unable to deal constructively with their inner tensions or with those arising from group and organizational forces. Organizational cultures act either as channels or as barriers to the release of human energy. Most cultures currently present in the federal service block the ability of workers to engage their workday with a satisfactory level of energy. However, these same cultures play a vital role in maintaining governance processes created by a complex democratic system. The challenge, then, is to create cultures and accompanying administrative processes that minimize energy blocks.

Public employees must be able to relate to agencies and their work in ways that transcend concerns for self-interest and narrow role requirements. Employees need relationships that tie them to immediate coworkers, to others in the governance processes, and to citizens whose lives are touched by their work (Wright, 2000). Commitment provides this critical linkage. It allows employees to view their work as more than a job offering financial security and social status in return for specific duties. The concept of commitment goes beyond viewing work as a vehicle for career success and individual achievement. Commitment encompasses relating to work as a form of vocation—engaging the workday because it connects employees to relationships and endeavors outside themselves and links them to the shared efforts of the community.

For the individual public servant, commitment begins with a mindful choice to engage life beyond the self—not only because of individual incentive, but because such behavior binds one to the collective efforts, expectations, and skills of the broader community. Commitment means that a person seeks to become fully engaged in the life of society. Community creates the context for commitment, uniting people in meaningful relationships and providing a context for intimacy and interpersonal involvement. Communities provide a place for individuals to interact as whole persons, and community requires participation, a history and continuity of memory, and a context for dialogue. Commitment in such a community recognizes individuality, but it "asks that persons first look to their duties and only then to claims of their rights" (Selznick, 1987).

The federal public service is potentially grounded in a number of communities. The constitutional aspect of the federal government provides the initial and most important framework for the national public service (Wright, 2000). On another level, the agencies where public servants are employed provide a more immediate and specific context for commitment. Agencies, as institutions of governance, provide a locus for policy subsystem communities and offer a more immediate place for the commitments of the public service (Ingraham and Ban, 2008).

The four lenses can be used to view, assess, and present alternatives, with the hope that their use will enhance focus on important facets of the problems and provide new power for understanding and considering possible actions. While the reviews presented here lead to specific recommendations and proposals, the more important message is that these lenses may be used by others—policymakers, managers, and various interested parties—to address the problems of public service (Newell, 2007). At any given time there are many possible solutions, and with each passing month the appropriateness of any one proposal fluctuates as situations change. The major purpose of this review is not to complete a specific analysis or present solutions, although both are included; the more significant intent is to present four important new approaches to understanding and distinguishing between action possibilities.

Conclusion: Baby-Boom Demographics and Organizational Effectiveness

From an organizational standpoint, the basic demographic problem of the baby boomers is centered in their impact on career structures, as members of that generation reach occupational maturity and find themselves faced with limited prospects for advancement. A career-plateau effect is the result of a combination of factors including the size of the baby-boom cohort, technological change, and substantial financial cutbacks in various governmental programs (Lane, 2009). These factors necessarily limit the opportunities for employees to move to higher-level positions in organizational hierarchies.