Intelligent Design

The employees of U.S. intelligence agencies have stressful jobs that range from handling state secrets to traveling overseas. Recognizing the toll this work can take on employees and their families, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has rolled out and expanded several work-life balance programs. The agency's collaborative approach to designing benefits could serve as a model for other federal agencies, said Ronald Sanders, chief human capital officer for ODNI.

"I've kind of been about the block, and what surprised me when I came to the intelligence community was the creativity the individual agencies had exercised to develop these [work-life] programs," said Sanders, who has worked in similar positions at the Office of Personnel Management and the Internal Revenue Service. "The not-so-good news was they'd done it in isolation."

When Sanders arrived at ODNI, he began examining the programs that individual intelligence agencies had designed on their own to see if they could be expanded successfully. Among the programs he discovered was a health plan at the CIA tailor-made for employees working overseas in difficult situations, a generous death benefit for families who lost a relative in the line of duty at the FBI, and an investment program for employees at the National Security Agency.

Sanders said the agencies were happy to extend some of those options to other employees in the intelligence community -- a move that made management sense since increasing the number of subscribers reduces insurance costs, as employees in less risky jobs subsidize the health expenses and death benefits of those who take greater risk in their positions.

To help families cope with the stress of having a relative on an assignment abroad, Sanders incorporated a pre-deployment training program for them that the CIA and NSA jointly developed into standard preparation for all members of the intelligence community.

Sanders also consults families when designing work-life balance programs. He and his staff meet frequently with the umbrella organization of the family advocacy groups from individual intelligence agencies to listen to their suggestions and to update them on programs in development. Those families aren't shy about giving feedback, Sanders said.

One problem the family groups identified involved the lack of information from the agency on work-life balance programs. So Sanders and his team started to give employees DVDs and CDs that explained those programs and could easily be transported home.

Sanders has looked outside the intelligence community for ideas as well. The State Department and NASA were the inspiration for an employee assistance fund, now administered for the intelligence community by the Federal Employee Education and Assistance Fund, which oversees a range of such programs for those workers in financial need.

In addition, there are programs that aim to help families with daily challenges as well as with emergencies. During the last year, Sanders' office has launched a program to help intelligence community families find suitable day care for their children, and ODNI pays for a subscription to a Web site that helps employees search for child care and jobs, and even provides them with menus to help with planning dinner.

Despite all the efforts to expand employees' benefits, Sanders said he has not been approached by other departments to share his experience. He said while his employees face unique challenges, his approach to building programs collaboratively and to encourage benefit-sharing could apply to any agency.

"I haven't found a [similar] situation anywhere else in government, at least to the degree we've done in the intelligence community," he said. "But there's nothing that stops them from doing that."