In 2018, OPM identified six priorities in areas that, when addressed, should spur productivity and organizational success and that align with and support the Administration’s initiatives to reshape the workforce and maximize employee performance as outlined in the memo issued April 12, 2017, Comprehensive Plan for Reforming the Federal Government and Reducing the Federal Civilian Workforce. For this iteration of the identified priorities, Chief Financial Officers Act agencies are asked to select two priorities that they will continue to support until the issuance of the next report in 2021.
Priorities in the Context of Workforce Reshaping
Agencies have been asked to take immediate action to achieve near-term workforce cost savings and identify long-term staffing plans. When planning and implementing workforce reshaping activities, it is critical to take steps to preserve institutional knowledge, keep organizations nimble enough to respond to evolving demands, and base workforce decisions on sound evidence. The first three priorities were designed to assist agencies with achieving these goals.
Conduct succession planning activities to retain and transfer institutional knowledge, as workforce reshaping efforts are undertaken.
Agencies should maintain a multi-faceted succession plan that is designed to capture the valuable knowledge and insights of current employees, convey captured knowledge to new and retained employees, and create and utilize a multi-generational pipeline.
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Adopt tools that allow employees to easily connect, communicate, and collaborate with one another regardless of geographic location.
For a geographically dispersed and agile workforce, communication and collaboration should be enabled by technology and fostered by leadership. Enterprise social networks, in particular, can help facilitate organizational fluidity and resilience, by enhancing communication among employees and organizations. Enterprise social networks also help in streamlining knowledge capture and access, while fostering innovation and collaboration.
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OPM will seek to acquire or develop enterprise technological solutions to assist the Federal human capital community with human capital analysis.
OPM will aim to provide tools for agencies that can fill gaps in current analytic capabilities to ultimately facilitate more informed and evidence-based planning and decision-making. This will complement agency reform plans, which call for better leveraging of technology to improve underlying business processes and the streamlining of mission support functions through efforts such as shared information technology (IT).
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Priorities to Help Maximize Employee Performance
Pursuant to the Comprehensive Plan for Reforming the Federal Government and Reducing the Federal Civilian Workforce memo, agencies are establishing plans to maximize employee performance, including a specific set of required actions designed to help address conduct issues and poor performance. As those plans are implemented, agencies should also engage in efforts that may assist productive employees with achieving even greater levels of performance. Therefore, to complement the formal performance management activities included in agency plans, the last three priorities focus on efforts in other workforce management areas that may further spur productivity and encourage and sustain high performance.
Provide employees with ample opportunities for continuous professional growth and skill development.
Training and development are a means to sustain high performance during workforce reshaping. When employees’ duties are modified through reassignment, relocation, or increased workloads, it is imperative that they receive the proper training and development to address new and augmented assignments and acclimate to new environments and modes of operation.
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Administer robust programs to appropriately recognize and reward employees who demonstrate high levels of performance and significantly contribute to achieving organizational goals.
Employee recognition programs encourage sustained excellence and productivity and help retain top talent, which becomes increasingly important as the workforce is streamlined. Recognizing high performers is highlighted in both the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) agency reform memo and OPM’s workforce reshaping guidance. It is a proactive and accountability-based practice that can help avoid performance problems and conduct issues.
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Encourage employees to engage in physical fitness activities during time spent commuting and being at work.
Increasingly, employers are engaged in helping employees become more active during work hours. People spend a large portion of their day at work, and there are various ways during this time that aspects of physical fitness can be incorporated. The workplace benefits that employee health can provide, especially in light of the relatively low investment costs, can be a valuable tool for organizations that are called upon to do more with less.
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