Federal human resources shops are slow to change

Government human resources offices need to make significant changes to the way they do business to provide greater value to the agencies they serve, according to a new report released by EquaTerra, a Texas-based consulting firm.

Comment on this article in The Forum.Only half of the 135 human resources professionals who work in federal, state and local governments interviewed by EquaTerra said they thought their organization's executives saw the HR department as a strategic asset. Sixty-one percent of the 315 private sector HR workers said they thought they were viewed as a strategic asset.

"For me that was a very telling self-assessment," said Glenn Davison, managing director of EquaTerra's public sector division. "There's a lot that needs to be done to achieve that enviable goal of being seen by the overall organization as adding significant value.... The overwhelming majority of HR organizations don't have a strategic plan of any sort. How do you get strategic if you don't have a strategic plan?"

Both public and private human resources professionals EquaTerra surveyed said the people working in their HR departments generally were good at their jobs, but respondents also expressed dissatisfaction with the information technology available to them. Despite that, many organizations are not moving quickly to address those weaknesses, in large part because of concerns about cost of new systems. Fifty-four percent of public-sector respondents told EquaTerra that a lack of resources was the most significant barrier to overall HR transformation.

Only 16 percent of public-sector respondents identified inability to build a strong business case for transformation as a barrier to implementing new technology and processes. Davidson said that was somewhat ironic, given that wide-ranging retirements in government make having strong human resources organizations more important than ever, and turnover in HR offices provide those agencies an opportunity to reassess their processes and technologies.

"You're losing skill sets as people retire who are operating legacy systems," Davidson said. "[Human resources leaders] are at least now beginning to look at what their options are."

EquaTerra's report said one critical, and underexplored, option would be to consider outsourcing more human resources functions, either to shared service centers within government or outside contractors. The report found that only 5.5 percent of public-sector respondents had outsourced a portion of their recruitment process, defined as the steps between posting a job listing and bringing an employee on board.

Onboarding has come under more scrutiny recently. In May, the Partnership for Public Service and Booz Allen Hamilton jointly released a report saying that the government had no consistent technical or cultural approach to bringing new employees into their organizations. In June, Monster Government Solutions launched a new product that would consolidate hiring and onboarding functions.

Davidson said efforts by outside nonprofits and companies were filling a creative void left by the Office of Personnel Management. The government's lines of business initiative were an important step in the right direction, he added, but OPM had to do more to encourage agencies to come up with innovative solutions to meet their specific needs.

"OPM should be just a wonderful resource that you can tap to determine best practices, best policies, best use of technology," Davidson said, "as opposed to necessarily serving as the HR cops, just enforcing certain policies and practices."