Howard Risher
Workforce Management Consultant
Both Republicans and Democrats see it as a barrier to better government but for totally different reasons. It is central to the “compliance culture” that impedes better government. It still reflects the way work and workers were managed a century ago. It has not been modified, except for separating the Senior Executive Service and adding locality pay, since it was created in 1923.It’s more than ironic that in that era the head of the Bureau of Efficiency was prominent in the administration of the civil service system. The buzzword then was “scientific management.” Workers were expected to do what they were told, and managed as a cost. That is still true in smaller, owner-managed companies. Not surprisingly, Elon Musk is known for top-down control. Quotes attributed to him confirm a very negative view of the federal government: “Regulations are immortal.” “The bureaucracy is the problem.” Musk and his chainsaw created an us-vs-them distrust of management. The workforce was “traumatized,” to quote Max Stier, of the Partnership for Public Service.Now, the government is moving full-steam ahead with AI. It also threatens job security. What has not been addressed is that jobs will be changing rapidly and that is at odds with job classification. A year or two from now the GS system is likely to be unsupportable. AI is exacerbating the already poor employee morale. Employee costs are not the problem By any standard, the costs attributed to building a productive workforce are a small percentage – less than 5% – of what the government spends. The cost to raise GS salaries to market rates would be less than 1%.A related point highlights the political problem. No administration has been concerned with how much federal contractors pay their people. Added to that are the organizations receiving federal grants. Those organizations are not expected to defend how much they pay their staff. That’s true of the Federal Reserve System and the many independent agencies. There is an alternative management philosophy. That is employees should be managed not as costs but as valued assets. That emerged in the 1990s. It started a few years earlier with W. Edwards Deming’s book, Out of the Crisis, where he argued the problem was not workers, it was the system they work in. Over the decade Gallup first cited research showing engaged workers are more productive. Fortune's “Great Places to Work” lists first appeared. And research confirmed employees are managed differently in “High Performance Organizations.” Those companies have been high on lists of the best performers.It’s not coincidental that in the 1990s the Clinton-Gore National Performance Review (NPR) confirmed “empowered” federal workers are fully capable of significantly better performance. That initiative resulted in the deletion of over 350,000 jobs and savings in excess of a billion. In that context employees were committed to improving operations.But just before President Bush took office, the Heritage Foundation released the report, “Taking Charge of Federal Personnel.” It influenced the new administration to centralize management with OMB, returning day-to-day operational control to appointees. That effectively ended the brief recognition that employees are ready to play a role in improving performance. The Government Accountability Office, then led by David Walker, initiated reform in the late 1990s when budget cuts and staffing reductions forced a strategic restructuring. Walker is known to be a conservative but his reforms emphasized employee empowerment and deep employee involvement in the planning. GAO has been at or close to the top of the Partnerships’ Best Places to Work in the Federal Government Rankings for mid-size agencies since the list was created.Strategic human capital management has been consistently on GAO’s High Risk list since 2001. The Pay Agent’s Recommendations for the GS FrameworkIn December, the Pay Agent’s “Annual Report” stated it would not “approve of further additions to existing locality pay area boundaries or the creation of new locality pay areas at this time.” It was not like prior federal reports in that it was highly critical of the “antiquated” GS system. From the report:
