July 7, 2009 —Before the Fourth of July holiday, I attended an event sponsored by American University's Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation, a gift I get for being part of AU's Key Executive MPA program. There have been some programs that have had some link to HR professionals and Total Rewards, but this particular program was right down WorldatWork's alley. The audience was HR professionals working in the federal government. The question of the day was "What are the opportunities and challenges for Federal Human Resource Organizations in supporting President Obama's goal of Transforming the Federal Workforce?" and focused on ways to attract, motivate and retain a skilled workforce; challenges in implementing and championing work-life programs and practices; and finding ways to reward top performers based on reaching organizational goals, or "outcomes," and not "outputs" or checking off boxes.
The program featured two excellent speakers, both whose presentations were loosely based on the Office of Management and Budget's "Building a High-Performing Government." The first was Scott Gould, Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs. He emphasized the need to put people first and to invest heavily in training and developing the workforce, and cited sources linking investments in people to a better bottom line. The people to oversee this job, in Gould's opinion, are the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCOs). Because the job is daunting, Gould identified top skills he thought CHCOs should have:
Leadership;
Strategic planning experience and skill;
Customer focus that encompasses both people above and below on the organizational chart, and systems that are responsive to the public;
Skill in performance and data analysis;
Ability to translate performance review findings into action to improve organizational performance;
Ability to make the business case using data information and knowledge management;
Skill in process management.
Qualities he thinks CHCOs should possess are: being a problem solver, having the ability to collaborate with disparate groups, and having integrity that applies to people, money, and systems. He emphasized the need for CHCOs to treat people as investments as opposed to costs.
The second speaker was Kevin Mahoney, the Associate Director for Human Capital Leadership and Merit System Accountability at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). As the point person for Director John Berry's key human capital initiatives, Mahoney talked about the key role of HR professionals in implementing them. He noted that government used to be a beacon for getting things done - for example, sending a man to the moon - and stated there's no reason why the government can't be entrepreneurial.
Mahoney talked at length about OPM's efforts to initiate work-life programs and the keen interest Director Berry has in developing and implementing such programs to help the federal government become a "model workforce." He talked of the importance of HR professionals in helping the federal government execute the Administration's initiatives, and stated that "the future for HR in government is as bright as I've ever seen."
Manager of Breathing Assets seems like a title that might work and seems in line with "Human Capital" ... Seriously, though, Director Berry has said he doesn't like the term "Human Capital" and tends to use terms such as "people" when talking about the workforce. Go figure!
E James Brennan, III Senior Associate Member Since: 4/19/1979 Comments: 406
When I started, Industrial Relations people looked down on Employee Relations staff and Personnel people. The rivalry got heated as fans of Personnel fought the emerging trend to crassly classify people as "resources" to be exploited rather than as dignified valuable human beans. (That was a very volatile subject in The Day.) They lost, as Human Resources prevailed and expanded to overflow and consume Employee Relations, Labor Relations, Safety, Compensation & Benefits and frequently Training & Development, with an occasional island of anachronistic Industrial Relations here and there or sometimes simply swamped. Recently, there have been attempts to restore humanistic language, with the term "people" reoccurring as in VP People and Dir People, but that just doesn't resonate and doesn't seem to have sticking power. Talent Management appears as a concept but few use the tag as a title. However, replacing the tepid but positive term Resources with the coldly dispassionate Capital is the most semantically ominous trend I've seen... next thing you know we'll have a title of Manager of Breathing Assets or Director of Automomous Fungible Productivity Units or worse. We need a contest here tp predict the worst title for the future of the trade.... someone will eventually inherit it, anyway.
Seriously, though, Director Berry has said he doesn't like the term "Human Capital" and tends to use terms such as "people" when talking about the workforce. Go figure!
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