Researchers try to boil down human capital management

A group of academics wants to make a science out federal human capital management.

After two years of focus groups, data analysis and consultation with experts, The George Washington University's Center for Innovation in Public Service released a 76-page "Strategic Framework for Implementation of Human Capital Management in the Federal Government" in October, and is hosting a symposium on the results Dec. 12.

The scholars, whose work is sponsored by the consulting firm BearingPoint, aimed to help move federal agencies from being "people-averse" to "people-centric." Agencies also can fall in between these two levels of human capital maturity, the report said, by being "people-aware" or "people-aligned."

The report is intended for federal executives and agency chief human capital officers and boils workforce management down to charts, with fill-in slots, to diagnose and solve problems.

There are seven functions of human resources, according to the report: recruitment and hiring, retention, staff development, workforce planning, performance management, information sharing and personnel transaction support.

There are also three steps to human capital management: strategy, implementation and results. Within each of these are three to five mini-steps, such as "goals and objectives" or "organizational ability."

Put together, agency executives will find a dizzying array of factors to consider in their attempts "to increase the federal government as an employer of choice and to improve overall workforce productivity," the two primary human capital objectives, according to the center.

Proponents of personnel reform in government argue that employees need to move off the General Schedule to a performance-based pay and management system that is grounded in measurable results. Results would be shown in a performance matrix.

But the center's researchers found that human capital itself has no performance matrix.

"Human capital leaders and managers stressed for time recognize the strategic advantages of performance metrics, but they might not be familiar with developing and/or using them," the report stated. "Our … framework aims to reduce the pain of climbing the learning curve by providing performance metrics across each HCM component and implementation step."

The researchers used the implementation of pay-for-performance schemes as an example. Their findings were based on interviews with three agencies: the Government Accountability Office, the program executive office for Enterprise Information Systems in the Army and the Washington field office of the FBI.

The report diagnosed a range of problems in implementing pay for performance. For one, the vision, which is part of strategy, is off.

Agency supervisors need to lay out a vision, in the form of clear performance criteria, so employees know what they are aiming for. Right now, too many agencies struggle with "vague and irrelevant performance assessment criteria," the report said.

The center's solution? Hold off on pay reform.

"Despite the urgency expressed by political leaders for civil service pay reform, until perceptual and actual problems are addressed, conversion to pay for performance is ill advised," the report said. "At the vision and policy level, agency leaders must develop, in concert with the rank and file, sound performance management guidelines with leadership commitment to funding and other resource support."

Dr. Kathryn Newcomer was the principal investigator for the report. Deborah Trent, Brent Bushey, Charlene Johnson, Mike Davis and Allen Cermak made up the rest of the center's research team.