Photo By Christine Mitchell | Army leaders participate in the Civilian Showcase at AUSA Oct. 16 in Washington....... read more read more
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WASHINGTON – On the final day of the Association of the United States Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, Army leaders discussed the essential role Army Civilians play in the service’s growth and success, and how the service will drive forward initiatives in civilian talent management and retention.
“Our more than 260,000 Army Civilians make up an integral part of our force, providing expertise, stability and continuity that contributes to the war fighting effort at home and around the world,” said Dr. Agnes Schaefer, assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs, at the start of the session.
The Army Civilian Showcase shined a spotlight on the “Top Five Best Places to Work in the Army,” celebrating the installations and commands that have set the standard for employee satisfaction, leadership support and workplace culture.
Secretary of the Army Hon. Christine Wormuth recognized the top five commands during the showcase, themed “Army Civilian Innovations and Changes that Keep Army Top 10 Best Places to Work.” The top commands ranked first through fifth were U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command; U.S. Army North; U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command; Headquarters of the Department of the Army; and the U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center, respectively.
The Office of Personnel Management’s annual Best Places to Work in the Federal Government survey offers an assessment of how federal public servants view their jobs and workplaces, providing employee perspectives on leadership, pay, innovation, work-life balance, diversity and other issues.
Army leaders discussed on stage what their agencies are doing to improve civilian talent management and retention, sharing common threads in leveraging Direct Hire Authority to quicken hiring processes, the challenges of working through the USAJobs platform, and recognizing employee performance for retention.
“We have got to fix USAJobs,” Shaefer said. “We must also modernize our bureaucratic, slow hiring processes. We are framing out a major transformation of the hiring process…to streamline and speed it up, become more competitive with the private sector.”
There are initiatives already in place to combat the challenges of slow hiring. Christina Freese oversees personnel management for U.S. Army Materiel Command, one of the largest civilian organizations in the Army with over 95,000 civilians serving in all 50 states and 150 countries. AMC instituted a five-page resume pilot, recognizing that most federal resumes are simply too long to review in a timely matter.
“Resumes should be limited to five pages,” Freese said. “This is a best practice that empowers us to get through candidate lists and make selections more quickly. We’ve already seen a reduction in two weeks for hiring times – and we’ve been able to fill 5% more jobs at the same time.”
Direct Hire Authority is a hiring process granted by OPM, allowing federal agencies to directly recruit and fill vacancies when a critical hiring need or candidate shortage exists. U.S. Army Futures Command’s Chief Human Capital Officer, Hong Miller, said optimizing DHA helps to strategize recruiting, instead of just “posting and praying,” referring to USAJobs. It also allows creative ways to incentivize perspective hires.
“We now have the authority to give an 80-hour time-off incentive to new hires,” Miller said. “New civilians usually come in with zero leave on the books, and it takes a while to build that up. Having time off on the books is a meaningful aspect to a lot of potential hires.”
The leaders also discussed employee recognition and career progression programs as a key player in employee retention, noting that talent management is essential for transformative growth.
“We do make a concerted effort to look out for our people and their career progression,” Miller said. “In addition to the pay-for-performance system we’ve put in place, we have a robust employee recognition program. We also have a newly established Care Award that recognizes spouses and families making a difference in our communities.”
Part of being dedicated to talent management is encouraging employee career development. AMC has emphasized focus on how to develop employees at all levels with its Civilian Implementation Plan, which includes a Human Capital Modernization Plan to close skillset gaps in the Army’s Organic Industrial Base workforce. Those wage-grade employees are the industrial artists of the Army – welders, painters, machinists – and they have specialized skills that must modernize along with the facilities in which they work.
“It’s the first time they’ve felt the Army has cared about them as part of the civilian workforce,” Freese said. “We allow them to voluntarily opt into this talent management tool and identify what their career path looks like and what training is required for them to advance into other areas.”
Civilian recruitment efforts in the past calendar year included the first-ever Army Civilian marketing campaign which was released in May. The “Find Your Next Level” ads are estimated to have already reached over 260 million households, according to Schaefer. Also for the first time, the Army held two Total Army career fairs in Dallas and Houston, with representatives from the Total Force and various commands looking to broaden their applicant pools. These fairs highlight the extensive range of career opportunities across the Army. The effort will close the year with another career fair in Los Angeles in November.
Leaders encouraged the audience to consider their role in Army Civilian recruitment and talent management, and said the Army can transform if the civilian story is told, if teammates are challenged to influence change, and if they’re reminded that what they do every day is important to help the Army in times of both war and peace.
| Date Taken: | 10.16.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 10.21.2024 13:43 |
| Story ID: | 483576 |
| Location: | WASHINGTON, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 32 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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