Reginald Wells

Social Security Administration
Reginald Wells
Deputy Commissioner for Human Resources,
Chief Human Capital Officer

Public service "is kind of in my genes," Reginald Wells told the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Federal Workforce and Agency Reorganization in 2003. "I happen to be a second-generation fed. My mother worked for the Internal Revenue Service for 45 years."

Wells arrived on the federal scene as the deputy commissioner of the Administration on Developmental Disabilities at the Health and Human Services Department in 1995 and moved to the Social Security Administration in 2002. With a doctorate in psychology, he had worked for 10 years in the District of Columbia's Department of Human Services and managed a long-term care and geriatrics facility in New Jersey.

Matching his mother's tenure might be out of reach, Wells told the subcommittee, but he plans to stay "for a career." Should he stick around beyond 2010, he likely will have to shepherd the agency through a human capital crisis caused by the retirement of baby boomers. Twenty-two percent of Social Security's employees are eligible for retirement. By 2009, that will rise to 40 percent, and 21 percent are expected to retire.

And while all agencies face the challenge of coping with an aging workforce, the trend will deal a double blow to Social Security. The national retirement wave will boost demand for the agency's programs just as its own employees are leaving the job.

To meet the challenge, the agency developed a Future Workforce Transition Plan and is using newly granted management flexibilities, such as early retirement for some workers, a strategy to minimize the potential for a mass exodus. Social Security also developed a recruiting campaign and created multiple career development programs in its headquarters and regions as well as a computer-based training system.