OPM Renews Effort to Diversify SES, Launches Toolkit to Encourage Women Candidates
There may be more opportunities for women to join the Senior Executive Service (SES) under a new program to increase diversity within all federal offices. Currently, women comprise 37 percent of the SES, a figure that has remained relatively stagnant for several years.
Last week, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) released a toolkit aimed at encouraging candidates to apply for leadership roles in support of the Equal Futures Partnership (EEP) and the Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (EO 14035). The toolkit provides resources for agencies intended to assist them in hosting sessions to facilitate interagency mentoring, collaboration, and other activities.
“This program promotes the advancement of women and men in the Senior Executive Service through interagency mentoring, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing sessions that are designed to increase employees’ interest in pursuing a career in the Senior Executive Service,” stated Director Ahuja in a memo, “Hosting programs such as EWIM help expand opportunities to increase diversity among federal senior leaders.”
The initiative stems from the Obama Administration’s 2014 program Executive Women in Motion (EWIM), which sought to recruit more women into government careers. Further, President Obama launched an executive order (EO 13714) in 2015 which directed federal agencies to take a vested interest in SES reform to expand leadership opportunities and make space for diverse senior executives.
In 2020, OPM published a five-year analysis of trends in the SES between 2014-2018. The data on appointments show minimal change in diversity of gender and ethnicity. Appointments of women saw an increase in the first few years of the analysis at a higher rate then men, however, this trend reverted in 2017 leading to a decrease in women in the SES. As for ethnicity and race, African American SES were on a slight upward trend until 2017 when they started to decline–the same can be said for Asian and Native American executives, however, SES numbers for these groups stabilized within 2018 while African American appointees continued to decline. During this time, male SES and non-Hispanic white executives minimally fluctuated.
In the September 2020 issue of Issues of Merit, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) reported “strikingly consistent” results that “African American and Hispanic employees were much more likely to agree that people of color were treated worse in terms of several actions, such as being subjected to higher standards and being passed over for supervisory positions.”
“The status quo for senior leader diversity in the federal government is simply untenable and unacceptable,” said Bob Corsi, President of the Senior Executives Association (SEA). “SEA commends OPM for releasing this toolkit and resources to interest more women in the Senior Executive Service. That said, the evidence suggests far more dedicated focus and effort is required to truly move the needle on senior leader diversity in the federal government, and that the existing strategies and programs are simply not working. SEA anxiously awaits details of the President’s Management Agenda to learn how this will be a priority, or if it will continue merely being a talking point.”
Corsi noted further that SEA and other executive and management associations continue to focus and collaborate around this topic, including in discussions with the administration.
Last year. SEA along with the African American Federal Executive Association (AAFEA), and Executive Women in Government (EWG) hosted a panel on the invisibility of inequity and actions to increase diversity. As FEDmanager previously reported, the event challenged leaders to remove barriers of inequality to forge the future of career service. In her keynote address, Ambassador Susan Rice spoke to her person experience in expanding opportunity gaps, noting not just the social burden of discrimination but the economic significance.
“We now have the chance to shape a recovery that charts a different course to indeed build back better. If we are to succeed, it is going to require that we come together and prove we are greater than the sum of our disparate parts,” Ambassador Rice concluded.
