Investing in Federal Managers and Leaders
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The prompt for this round of the FEDforum is federal workforce goals in 2022. This week, hear from the Senior Executives Association (SEA).
The future of the federal workforce requires action today to strengthen the capabilities of federal managers and leaders. In 2022, the administration should focus on professionalizing leadership in the federal sector and incentivizing the next generation to seek these critical public service leadership roles. A responsive and agile federal workforce requires leaders skilled in managing their workforce through evolving and dynamic challenges. The skills that served leaders in the past are no longer the same. With a greater focus on federal leadership, a wide range of workforce objectives can be more attainable.
In 2018, SEA provided a Framework for Public Service Leadership as a Profession. This initiative acknowledged it is vital to professionalize the practice of leadership within the Federal government as a necessary step to restore public trust in government, which is at an all-time low. Unfortunately, investments in the capabilities of the current and next generation of federal career leaders have remained stagnant and public trust has continued to stall. The Administration should use the FY2023 budget pass back process to invest in training and hiring.
Too often, supervisory positions in the federal government are determined by technical expertise rather than leadership expertise. While leaders must undoubtedly have technical strengths, they must also be able to communicate their knowledge, motivate their teams, and manage competing priorities effectively. Put simply, they must be leaders just as much as they are experts, ideally more.
An overreliance on technical capabilities, coupled with a haphazard and inconsistent process for selecting leaders, leaves those in charge of managing the federal government without the skills, tools, and support to do their job effectively.
To solve this, SEA, the IBM Center for the Business of Government, and the University of Illinois-Chicago established an ad hoc task force to make recommendations for the Biden-Harris Administration to improve and support federal managers. The white paper offers a roadmap to build and support a Management Quality Improvement Learning Center in partnership with career federal manager, employees, and good government organizations. The Center would be the catalyst for this partnership to:
Define actionable assessment criteria as to what constitutes “good quality management in federal agencies;”
Develop and use a diagnostic tool or a set of diagnostic resources based on these criteria that federal managers can use to self-assess strengths and weaknesses of their organization to develop improvement strategies; and
Form and support a voluntary community of practice to share insights on successful practices to assess and improve management quality.
The Center would act as a hub for identifying the skills needed to improve management in the federal government and assist current managers in becoming true leaders. Further, through continuous evaluation and improvement, the Center could ensure that our leaders remain equipped to oversee their important missions.
The need for such a Center cannot be greater. Leaders across government recognize the need to cultivate modern government management skills and capabilities, but lack focused resources and solutions. Moreover, while they acknowledge the need to address such gaps, other issues like workforce safety and wellness have taken priority thru the pandemic.
The Biden-Harris Administration can take an important step toward realizing these goals now through the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) and the President’s budget submission to Congress. The PMA should be used to establish tangible goals and initiatives for improving the quality of management and leadership in the federal government. Still, Congress needs to realize the imperative nature of this task and adequately fund initiatives that improve management quality. Simply funding the government by October 1st to provide fiscal certainty for a full year would be an excellent starting point.
Unfortunately, an issue underpinning all federal management issues is compensation. Pay compression causes federal executives, and many GS employees, to be dramatically undercompensated. At times, lower-level managers can earn as much as SESers without the added responsibility and risks.
In a recent op-ed, SEA highlighted how pay reform is necessary to fill healthcare leadership vacancies at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). While executive responsibilities at the VA continue to rise, the VA chronically struggles to fill medical center director and regional director vacancies, with the pipeline of interested candidates continuing to dwindle. A primary reason for this being the disconnect between SES workload and pay – the risk/reward ratio is too poorly skewed.
“VA senior executives’ base compensation is capped at $203,000 with a floor of $135,000. Medical center directors in the private sector -- who do not need to endure constant scrutiny from members of Congress, rogue accountability boards, inspectors general, etc. -- earn average base salaries of $270,000-$323,000 per year, and far more for health system leadership roles. The private sector offers more money, without the federal employee headaches,” explains Jason Briefel, SEA Director of Policy and Outreach, and Andrew Vernon, former career employee at the VA for seven years who now serves as CEO of nonprofit Military Veterans of America and is a veteran of the U.S. Army.
The VA is just one example of systemic under compensation coupled with unachievable expectations resulting in strong leaders fleeing away from public service rather than toward it. Often, SEA hears stories of managers in the federal government who would rather stay at a GS-15 than undergo the grueling SES selection process only to receive insignificant pay and added stress. Worse, many promising leaders are leaving government service for the private sector, where they can make more and feel they may even have more impact on mission, as well.
The federal government cannot continue losing leaders. The Biden-Harris Administration must act now to both improve the quality of leaders and the incentives for joining leadership. SEA’s joint policy agenda on the SES, developed with the Partnership for Public Service and the Volcker Alliance offers 11 tangible ideas to begin with. We cannot continue to expect more of our federal workforce if we are not cultivating leaders to usher in the change and lead their mission for the American people.
The column from Senior Executives Association (SEA) is part of the FEDforum, an initiative to unite voices across the federal community. The FEDforum is a space for federal employee groups to share their organizations’ initiatives and activities with the FEDmanager audience.
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