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Weekly UpdatesPublic personnel management scholarship and practice increasingly focus on creative human resources management (HRM) strategies for attracting and retaining employees with special skills and institutional knowledge, particularly in light of impending retirements. (1) To help federal agencies in these efforts, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has relaxed some employment regulations and augmented agencies' tracking of attrition, retirements, and skills demands.
Some agencies face unique workforce demographic challenges, while others face shifts in missions or technologies. For example, in 1998, when Paul Barnes served as the associate commissioner for personnel for the Social Security Administration (SSA) in Washington, DC, he implemented an innovative program to rehire retirees to help train new hires in order to retain institutional knowledge and fill staffing needs. Also in 1998, Barnes said "OPM encouraged federal agencies to use two additional tools" to help recruit and retain information technology [IT] professionals to resolve Year 2000 conversion problems" (P. Barnes, telephone interview with author, December 19, 2003).
In a 2005 report for the IBM Center for the Business of Government titled The Blended Workforce: Maximizing Agency Agility through Nonstandard Work Arrangements, Thompson and Mastracci examined agencies throughout federal government, both in Washington and across the country, that have a mix of standard full-time full-year positions and nonstandard work arrangements. One of the key recommendations in the report is that agencies should implement "core-ring" workforce structures, where a core group of employees carry out mission-specific functions and another group of workers in nonstandard work arrangements (NSWAs) manage special projects and perform intermittent tasks and noncom functions.
Thompson and Mastracci noted that this idea was not new, writing, "In 1997, Donald Kettl, Patricia Ingraham, Ronald Sanders, and Connie Homer recommended that a similar 'core-ring' model be tried in government. The core-ring idea may have been ahead of its time in 1997. Political and other circumstances have changed sufficiently to warrant further exploration of this idea" (2005, 10). (2)
By 2005, however, federal agencies had experienced several changes that impacted their HR functions, including having greater exposure to business cycle fluctuations due to legislators' unwillingness to raise taxes, being under greater pressure from constituents to operate according to private sector efficiency principles, and facing greater competition from private sector employers for workers with unique skill sets. Federal government agencies, along with many employers throughout the economy, also had to respond to growing demands from employees to promote better work-life balance. For all of these reasons and more, public personnel management scholars and practitioners have taken a much closer look at creative HRM strategies.
A growing number of studies have examined federal personnel management approaches to fostering better work-life balance and addressing staffing shortfalls or skills needs through the use of NSWAs. Those studies have demonstrated the positive impact of creative HRM strategies on the ground. In this article, I build upon earlier research and test the effectiveness of NSWAs for attracting and retaining individuals with specific skills and institutional knowledge to federal government agencies, focusing particularly on IT professionals.
Leading up to Year 2000 computer conversions, IT skills were in great demand in the federal government. Using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) micro-level data from 1999 to 2002, I evaluate the effectiveness of flexible work schedules, competitive pay, and prospects for full-time employment and job security. The results from likelihood estimation indicate that competitive pay and prospects for job security and advancement increase the likelihood that IT professionals will work in the federal government more than do flexible work schedules. These findings have several implications for public personnel management practice and scholarship.
First, it may be that IT professionals do not have many options to alter their work schedules. Perhaps the workload is such that the opportunities for part-time or on-call work do not exist, or perhaps the market for IT skills is such that employers cannot find enough new people to allow incumbents to alter their schedules. If schedule inflexibility hinders a government agency's ability to maintain a highly skilled IT workforce, then managers might seek ways to restructure functions. Second, the findings from this study may provide inspiration for further research on how NSWAs impact other occupations or types of tasks across federal agencies and private sector organizations. Third, this research could b encourage public personnel administrators to continue exploring flexibilities in HRM practice in order to maintain a competitive and effective workforce.
Agency Approaches to NSWAs
Addressing Workflow, Screening Applicants, and Creating Family-Friendly Workplaces
Staffing flexibilities can be viewed from the perspectives of managers and of employees. Managers tend to see NSWAs as means to accomplish missions with the most efficient and effective staff structure possible, while employees tend to see NSWAs as ways to better meet their work and nonwork responsibilities. The perspectives are not mutually exclusive, however.
For their 2005 IBM report, Thompson and Mastracci interviewed several federal administrators about their staffing strategies. Government agencies make use of NSWA such as on-call and intermittent work, seasonal positions, part-time positions, arrangements with contract companies and temporary agencies, reemployed annuitant or student internship programs, job-sharing, and telework for a variety of reasons. The principal reasons include accommodating fluctuations in workflow, making workplaces family-friendly, and screening new workers.
Examples of on-call, intermittent, and seasonal positions include Internal Revenue Service tax return processors who are employed with the agency only during periods of high demand, Forest Service personnel who are on call to fight fires, and Park Service personnel who work only when a park is open during the summer.
Government agencies have made arrangements with contractors or temporary services to outsource janitorial, clerical, and even HRM functions. The SSA has arranged to rehire some of its retirees to train new employees and refine employee training materials, and former SSA commissioner Ken Apfel characterized his agency's retire-rehire program as a win-win strategy for both his agency and its employees.
The General Services Administration (GSA) makes extensive use of internship and work-study programs to groom college students for federal government careers. For the SSA, the need for alternative work arrangements will continue until at least the middle of the next decade, according to SSA Region W Commissioner Paul Barnes because, "in 1973, the SSA took over the administration of the SSI [Supplementary Security Income] program--a huge undertaking. And we hired large numbers of people, and that group now has right around 30 years of experience. Over the next 10 years, as this group approaches the 40-year maximum, the '1973 bulge' will work its way through the system" (P. Barnes, telephone interview with author, December 19, 2003).
Examples of job sharing and telework programs abound at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which was recognized as having among the best family-friendly HR policies in the federal government. The chief human capital officer at NASA headquarters, Vicky Novak, explained, "NASA provides benefits wherever we can.... We bend over backward to obtain the employees we want" (V. Novak, interview with the author, March 23, 2004).
Thompson and Mastracci identified three staffing strategy models from individual agencies' uses of NSWA--incremental, time-limited Employment, and contract. Agencies following the incremental model place NSWAs at the margins of their HRM plans. Some part-time work is found among clerical and administrative support positions, and, perhaps, some specific functions like janitorial services have been outsourced to private sector firms.
Agencies following the time-limited employment model have expanded their use of temporary and seasonal workers beyond a few administrative functions. The GSA, for example, has contracted out its HRM functions and screens new talent via student employment programs. NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, employs workers on a part-time basis in a variety of areas. According to the center's HR manager, Robyn Gordon, part-timers work "the engineering area or even the institutional areas, which would be like human resources procurement, or external affairs.... It just depends, because some employees may have a situation that dictates that they go to part time. More than likely, it was their desire. And so we made that position part time" (R. Gordon, telephone interview with author). (5)
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and some NASA facilities follow the contract model, under which nearly all workers are employed on a project-by-project basis.
Some agencies use a wide range of NSWAs. At the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to the department's chief human capital officer,
In some federal agencies, however, schedule flexibility and other perquisites to foster work-life balance are not enough. Some federal agencies must contend with the wage-setting labor market dynamics in the overall economy because the skilled employees they need are also sought by higher-paying private sector firms. A few agencies must move beyond incentive programs like providing day care centers or transit subsidies and tackle the public-private pay differential head on.
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