New Competencies Released for Federal HR Positions

There’s a lot of focus on skills-based hiring and improving the federal government’s talent pipeline. See our FEDManager story on the federal government moving most federal IT jobs into skills-based hiring.

With all these changes in recruitment, workforce policy, and beyond, human resources (HR) professionals must stay ahead of the curve.

To help them do so, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) released new competencies for federal HR workers. The competencies are for GS-0201 series positions and will impact over 40,000 HR specialists.

OPM is also trying to get strategic human capital management off the Government Accountability Office (GAO) high-risk list, where it’s been since 2001.

Outgoing OPM Director Kiran Ahuja stated that HR is a high-risk area “in part because of the need to address current and emerging skills gaps that are undermining agencies’ abilities to meet their missions.”

The new competencies list also fulfills a milestone within the President’s Management Agenda to “build a modernized federal HR workforce able to provide credible, effective support to agencies” and focuses on getting the right HR staff in place to facilitate skills-based hiring.

Competencies

OPM relied on feedback from federal HR employees to come up with the competencies.

“The data collected from an environmental scan, focus groups and surveys painted a comprehensive picture of human resources management work across the federal government,” said Director Ahuja.

The competencies include general and technical HR competencies applicable to all HR managers, and specialized competencies for certain HR career paths:

·         Recruiting and Placement (ie, agency staffing policies, application processing)

·         Classification (classification appeals, job analysis)

·         Employee Relations (dispute resolution, disciplinary and adverse actions)

·         Labor Relations (collective bargaining, dispute resolution)

·         Performance Management (recognition and awards, work-life programs)

·         HR Development (employee development, learning evaluation)

·         Information Systems (data management, system maintenance)

·         Compensation (leave administration, pay administration)

·         Employee Benefits (employee benefits)

The competencies are broken down by grade and importance, but it’s up to agencies to put them into practice and get the best use out of them.

“Through job analysis, agencies must determine the applicability of these competencies to positions within your agency,” wrote Director Ahuja.