A new report includes calls for modernized federal recruitment and retention efforts

The National Academy of Public Administration unveiled its updated report on improving organizational health and performance of federal agencies this week, which included strategies for improving employee recruitment and retention efforts. 

The new report, released on Oct. 21, is a refreshed version of the governance nonprofit’s 2018 report, and now includes strategies from the central agency management level to the operational unit manager level on how to address good governance policies on a range of issues. 

Requested by the Office of Management and Budget in 2023, the new report reflects post-pandemic best practices for the federal government to improve its organizational health across areas like creating a supportive environment for employees, improving communication and engagement, fostering continuous learning and other tenets. 

“To build and reinvigorate the public service, this report contends that agencies must develop a strong internal culture with a focus on high performance to ensure that the public gets the services that it wants, needs and deserves,” said NAPA president and CEO Terry Gerton, in the report. “This report is intended to serve as a playbook, or how-to guide, for leaders and managers.”

And regarding the federal government’s ongoing challenge with recruitment and retention, the report points to a mixture of unified strategy with individually, tailor-made telework plans and better using existing tools. 

At the higher levels, NAPA calls on OMB, the Office of Personnel Management and the General Services Administration to use tools outlined in the joint OMB-OPM memo, “Improving the Federal Hiring Experience,” released in August.   

Some of those tools include crafting an enterprise-wide workforce strategy, facilitating cross-agency scalable hiring practices like pooled hiring, helping individual agencies with more government-wide recruitment, detailing employees to other agencies to promote collaboration and other plans.

To help improve retention, the report says OMB, GSA and OPM must remind agencies of the benefits afforded to them in designing their own flexible in-office work requirements. 

While calling for evidence-backed data to inform their return-to-office planning, agencies should be open to revising those plans to match what leaders are learning about the effectiveness of their organizations when it comes to personnel work arrangements.

Agency leaders, meanwhile, should work with their chief human capital officers to better target recruitment for needed positions, increase internship opportunities and utilized pooled hiring opportunities through shared applications and collaboration with other agencies and programs to facilitate the hiring process. 

The retain their talent, agency leaders should leverage pay incentives like merit increases and signing bonuses, use current guidance to craft hybrid or remote work options, provide educational advancement or student loan repayment opportunities or develop an agency-wide talent management strategy, perhaps even headed by chief talent management officer to coordinate those efforts. 

Some of the recruitment and retainment strategy tends to lean toward better utilizing and making agencies aware of existing tools, such pooled hiring. OPM updated USAJOBS in 2023 to make it easier for multiple agencies to find qualified candidates by sharing their requisite certifications through a tool called Talent Pools.

On Wednesday, the agency also launched two new programs to help make it easier for agencies to onboard paid interns into full-time.

Gerton said the report “highlights concrete strategies, and evidence-based practices along with resource links and case examples that can be used to continually assess and respond to evolving work environments in ways that will improve organizational health and performance.”