No Way Up

any thousands of baby boomers who joined the federal government years ago are now coming to realize that their dreams of continuing upward mobility will not come true. They, and younger feds on the management career ladder, are having to reconsider their career aspirations and the means of achieving them.

Thousands already have left the government, especially the Defense Department, as downsizing sweeps across the federal landscape. Others are considering leaving while buyout programs are in effect. But the majority will remain in federal service, and for them, the career prospects don't seem particularly bright.

Yet there is hope in the gloom. Career management in an era of downsizing and contraction of management ranks is a topic that's been hot in the private sector, and both individuals and agencies in government can benefit from lessons experts have learned.

The Defense Department has been shrinking for several years, but it was only 18 months ago that the dimensions of the forthcoming government-wide drawdown became apparent. That's when Vice President Gore's National Performance Review proposed a 12 percent cut in the civil service -- a proposal quickly enacted into law by Congress, which mandated a cut of 272,900 jobs by 1999. In September 1993, President Clinton ordered 50 percent cuts in agencies' headquarters and supervisory staffs, and the Office of Management and Budget told agencies to submit streamlining plans that would more than double current supervisor-to-employee ratios, from 1:7 to 1:15. The supervisory, managerial and executive positions in both line and staff functions targeted by the NPR are the very ones that have always provided the basis for the aspirations of the career workforce.

Thus the government was chopping rungs off the career ladder even before the November elections brought a Republican Congress to town. The ascendance of the Republicans on Capitol Hill, however, almost certainly will accelerate the downsizing trend begun by the NPR.

In the face of the new challenges to career growth and satisfaction- not to mention threats to whole agencies and programs -- alert leaders are beginning to work with employees to design alternative career models and the necessary supporting mechanisms.

One message they are delivering is that "career advancement will increasingly depend less on the passage of time in grade and more on conscious efforts to improve one's own human capital," says Diane Disney, deputy assistant secretary of defense for civilian personnel policy.

Agency managers who rightly "fear demoralization and loss of talented, experienced people who aspire to advance" should be taking steps to avoid such attrition, says Carson Eoyang, NASA's training and development director. He says compensation and incentive systems should be changed to recognize outstanding performance rather than the size of the organization one manages.

For example, he says, bonuses and awards could become a more prominent component of compensation, and training and educational opportunities could be tied more closely to performance.

In the Private Sector

The experiences of U.S. corporations, which have undergone significant downsizing and flattening for more than a decade, can shed light on the effects of these trends on careers as well as on the efficacy of attempted remedies.

The shrinking workforces of the 1980s and early 1990s brought not only substantial unemployment for white-collar workers, but the permanent disappearance of many of their jobs, including whole layers of management and supervision. From a demographic point of view, the timing could not have been worse.

"Just at the time when opportunities for promotions are slowing, the number of people who ordinarily would be moving into middle- and upper-management positions is increasing as the Baby Boom generation enters midcareer," observed Kenneth Brousseau, a West Coast management educator and consultant, at the end of the 1980s.

Brousseau and partner Michael Driver are pioneers in the study of alternate career concepts. In their research, they have discovered that not all employees prefer the traditional, "linear" career of upward movement through positions of higher authority. Many would opt for a "steady state" career in which their expertise is increasingly acknowledged, or a "spiral" career characterized by major shifts into new fields or occupations. That is, they would if such careers brought tangible and psychic rewards comparable to those typically bestowed for reaching higher management levels.

Driver and Brousseau work with organizations to help employees identify their career ideals and to develop practices that encourage and support non-linear career patterns, including the generous use of awards, bonuses, education, training, assignment preferences, work resources and other forms of recognition and compensation not dependent on achieving organizational rank. They also seek to give employees the information and encouragement they need in order to assume more responsibility for planning and managing their own careers.

While corporate reward systems are admittedly often more generous and less bound by law, regulation and procedure than those of the government, federal agencies have many of the tools needed to deal with reduced advancement opportunities in the form of bonus systems, educational opportunities and broadening assignments.

In her book Caught in the Middle: How to Survive and Thrive in Today's Management Squeeze (Prentice-Hall, 1992), New York-based consultant Lynda McDermott focuses on the plight of the corporate middle manager. Like Brousseau and Driver, she notes that many baby-boomer middle managers have recognized the slowdown in the progression of their careers and are looking for independence, control and "continuously challenging opportunities for initiating and making unique contributions," regardless of title or level. She also sees them wanting to balance work with other priorities like family and community. In place of the old implied "lifetime" contract of advancement for hard work, McDermott recommends that managers tell current and prospective employees, "Perform for us, and we'll provide you with experiences on and off the job that will enable you to maximize your contribution to us, along with maximizing your future employment options, should we decide or be forced to part ways."

Specifically, she says small units and teams should be empowered to set strategy and tactics within broad visions and values articulated from the top, and that compensation and bonus systems should be clearly tied to goal achievement, particularly to the success of one's team or organization. Some federal agencies have experimented with such "gain-sharing" programs, in which groups are rewarded financially for achievements such as cutting costs or generating revenue.

McDermott also suggests that employees undergo a series of lateral geographic and functional job rotations, because working in unfamiliar areas not only increases employees' skills and knowledge but provides job-enriching empowerment. Organizations should also provide continual development opportunities, including mentoring, team building and leadership seminars, McDermott says.

Silicon Valley colossus Intel Corp., struggling with a decline in business almost a decade ago, resisted the layoff trend by maximizing "redeployment" of personnel from slumping to still-flourishing areas of the company. CEO Andy Grove provided Intel people with such career services as skills-assessment centers, counseling and courses on career design.

In an article entitled "Moving Up Is Not the Only Option" in the March 1994 issue of Human Resources Management, Susan Sonnesyn Brooks says roughly one in ten mid-sized to large companies offers its employees "enrichment" opportunities. She says these fall into five broad categories:

• training and education;
• alternative monetary compensation (e.g., gain sharing, flexible fringe benefits);
• structural flexibility (e.g., flexible hours and work sites, job sharing, sabbaticals);
• communication (information sharing);
• recognition and awards.

Government's Response

Understandably, government leaders have been more concerned with trying to save jobs in this era of downsizing than with redesigning career progressions. At a November 1994 interagency conference coordinated by the Office of Personnel Management, human resources officials, managers and union representatives shared ideas and experiences on internal placement, outplacement and counseling for employees whose jobs are eliminated. Pursuant to a congressional mandate. OPM also solicited views on how to structure a government-wide priority-placement program for people whose jobs have been eliminated, akin to the "stopper lists" in use at the Defense Department. The 18,000 or so people on DoD's lists are to be given priority by defense agencies when filling vacancies.

But there is a growing realization that attention must be given to longer-range career development issues. OPM director James B. King has asked Carol Okin, director of OPM's Human Resources Development Group, to examine the problem of career planning under conditions of downsizing and flattening. Okin plans to use a recently reorganized interagency Human Resources Development Council, which she chairs, as a forum in which to discuss the issue.

OPM's Personnel Systems and Oversight Group, which conducts, coordinates and tracks human resources research, recently dedicated an issue of its Personnel Research Highlights to change-management research. It featured articles on organizational change, downsizing and redesigning, organizational reaction to hyperturbulence, and employee commitment following organizational change.

With central guidance barely emerging, some agencies have moved out on their own. Renelle Rae is director of the Environmental Protection Agency's training institute and co-chair of the Human Resources Development Council's Executive Committee. She recalls that EPA recognized in 1991 that the increasing use of project groups and temporary task teams "necessitated leadership training for many employees who did not have formal supervisory responsibilities."

The institute curriculum was revised to open up leadership development opportunities to employees beginning at the GS-4 level, with material covering leadership skills, motivation, professional image, self-marketing, self-presentation, career management and goal-setting. The agency thereby gained a head start in preparing for an era in which employees will increasingly strive for recognition and satisfaction through participation and leadership in short-term group projects and tasks rather that from attainment of supervisory or management positions.

EPA's "Curriculum of the '90s" features several employer-paid courses covering topics like self-directed career planning, career frustration and new roles and responsibilities. Its Team Learning Center offers resources for team-building and training, including personality-type assessment, facilitation, referral to consultants and course materials for individual use.

NASA, already experiencing selective promotion and hiring freezes at its headquarters, has been hiring Driver and Brousseau to speak in management education programs for several years. Training and development director Eoyang thinks their work on alternative career models can help people plan more realistically for non-linear careers and guide human resources planners in designing mechanisms that will make those careers sufficiently rewarding. One way to compensate for significantly fewer promotions and accompanying pay increases, he feels, is to award significantly greater sums of money for exceptional performance. He also offers a novel non-monetary proposal:

"The federal service should have a new title recognizing career success -- Master Civil Servant, a designation which would apply to all occupational fields, regardless of rank," he says. "The individual would receive a presidential commission, be entitled to specified perks and be called upon for advice as a 'national resource.'"

Today, only the handful of Senior Executives can realistically aspire to bonuses in the $ 10,000 to $ 20,000 range, while middle managers are fortunate to receive one-tenth that much in annual performance awards. Changes in regulations and appropriations practices, not to mention attitudes, would be necessary to reform the existing supplemental compensation system and make it more like those of corporations, which typically provide for a third or more of professional pay to be based on performance. Some of the savings from the pay and bonuses of eliminated management positions could enrich the pools for performance pay for the rest of the workforce.

At DoD, deputy assistant secretary Disney observes that "downsizing and stream lining are forcing us to abandon the myth that careers advance in lock-step vertical progression from entry level to Senior Executive Service. We are now recognizing that success in a rapidly changing world will require breadth as well as depth, adaptability as well as consistency and risk-taking as well as security and loyalty."

Building in part on pioneering demonstration projects of the 1980s in pay-banding and gain-sharing, Disney and her colleagues are working to make sure DoD's compensation, training and information systems support employees who broaden their knowledge and develop leadership skills. Last September, the department held a two-day conference to discuss the "fastest growing innovations in group-based incentive systems," which have already made it possible for members of successful groups to pocket more than $ 1,000 in a year. Open to line and process managers as well as union representatives and human resources specialists, the conference presented speakers on the benefits and techniques of gain sharing, including "nuts and belts" subjects like design, climate assessment, labor-management involvement, measurement/payout options and the impact of downsizing.

Disney is gratified at the response to the gain-sharing conference and to her call for other innovative approaches to career management. In her visits to Defense agencies, she solicits DoD employees' participation and even invites them to contact her by e-mail if they are reluctant to discuss an idea in front of a group.

The Defense Department has an especially pressing need for such ideas because opportunities for promotion are scarce in light of the long lists of people who have had their names included on the department's priority-placement lists.

What Employees Can Do

The writing is on the wall: Downsizing and thinning of management ranks are trends not likely to be reversed in this century, given budget realities and the political climate.

So agencies should use the time, information and resources available to plan for new career patterns that can both motivate and satisfy quality employees. This is a long-term challenge which should not be neglected in the essential short-term struggle to help displaced personnel find jobs.

A necessary ingredient of the planning will be helping employees develop the skills required to navigate today's workplace. Robert Barner, vice president of a Florida consulting firm, wrote in the September-October 1994 issue of The Futurist that people will need to become career "strategists" and learn "survival skills" like communicating, building and tapping into information networks to keep up with professional opportunities; developing "portable" rather than "contextual" knowledge and skills; and engaging in aggressive self-management of their careers.

Among steps Barner and other analysts advise employees to take:

• Think about what you'd like to do with your career(s) without necessarily limiting yourself to one occupation or employer.
• Plug yourself into as many human and electronic networks as you can to get information on opportunities and trends in your fields of interest.
• Participate in training and development activities that will broaden your skills and knowledge, particularly in areas that have many applications.
• Look for assignments to special projects and to new functional, occupational or geographic areas.
• Find a mentor whose experiences and values appeal to you.
• Think about the place of non-work activities in your life.

Career counselor Richard Koonce offers detailed advice in Career Power: 12 Winning Habits To Get You From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be (AMACOM, 1994). Koonce helps readers define what success would be for them, and then teaches them how to inventory, package and constantly upgrade their skills and knowledge in order to meet their goals. He recommends that employees work with their supervisors to create new jobs based on their skills and interests. Downsized organizations, which have to do as much or more work with fewer people, should be especially open to such unconventional initiatives. Koonce's approach emphasizes "shedding the docility of the old paternalistic employment relationship and taking charge of your career."

Better yet, however, employees at all levels should go beyond just taking charge of their own careers. If they hope to see the government respond creatively and effectively to the already-emerging pressures on careers, they should study what other employers have done and volunteer their time and ideas to help their agencies formulate new ways to develop, enrich, empower and reward those who make government a career. Their help should be welcomed. "The issue," says Lynda McDermott, is whether organizations -- with senior executives leading the way -- are willing to do what it takes to foster the shared leadership culture that our competitive marketplace requires."

THE CAREER LEXICON

Managers worrying about their careers, or their employees' job satisfaction, may find it useful to familiarize themselves with the latest in career concepts and practices:

Alternative or "non-linear" career patterns: Paths to career success and satisfaction based more on professional growth, self-improvement, stimulating interactions, short-term leadership opportunities and achievement-based monetary compensation than on advancement to higher-paying positions in an organization.

Career self-management: Exercising responsibility for determining career aspirations, gathering information on opportunities and requirements, developing necessary skills and establishing and maintaining contacts with potential employers and associates across organizational lines.

Enrichment: Offering employees opportunities to manage their time and work, develop their skills and knowledge, participate in and lead team projects, and earn compensation for achievements.

Flattening organizations: Eliminating layers in traditional agency hierarchies to shorten the lines between top managers and operating levels.

Gain-sharing: Distribution of financial rewards based on achievement of specific goals set for cost reduction, productivity improvement or other measurable gains for a set period of time, generally a quarter of a year.

Leadership development: Helping employees develop and refine skills in guiding and coordinating the work of others so they can take advantage of the increased opportunities for team leadership under new organizational and work patterns.

Portable skills and knowledge: Skills that make an employee valuable to multiple potential employers.