Human Resource Management

Executive Summary

In 1991, the Navy's Human Resources Office in Crystal City, Virginia,
processed enough forms to create a mountain of paper 3,100 feet in
height--or roughly six times as high as the Washington Monument.
Meanwhile, the Agriculture Department recently determined that the total
weight of the federal personnel laws, regulations, directives, case law,
and departmental guidance required to make human resource management
(HRM) decisions was 1,088 pounds.

But problems with Washington's personnel system, which affect 2.1
million non-Postal Service employees in the executive branch, go well
beyond paperwork. Indeed, the overly prescriptive system has a very real
impact on how government works--or doesn't. As John Sturdivant, national
president of the American Federation of Government Employees, told the
National Performance Review (NPR):

The Federal government's current personnel management "system" must be
candidly termed "management by regulation." In this regard, the Office
of Personnel Management micro-manages individual agencies from
Washington through the detail-intensive Federal Personnel Manual. . .
[A]gencies follow suit by issuing additional volumes of personnel
regulations that generally parrot, with even further limitations, their
parent agencies' dictates.(1)

The federal human resource administrative system contains major
impediments to efficient and effective management of the workforce.
It's a patchwork of rules and requirements that confound rather than
serve customer needs. It's process-driven; results are a by-product, not
a measure of accountability. At the day-to-day operating level, it's not
user-friendly--to managers, to employees and their representatives, or
to personnel specialists.

Recognition of the problems is not new. In 1983, a National Academy of
Public Administration (NAPA) panel observed, "The present personnel
management system is far too process oriented. It is much too rigid and
needs major change. . . . Process drives out substance."(2) Also, the
panel noted, "Management processes, centrally designed and dictated,
often become overly proceduralized.  . . . Personnel technicians rather
than line managers end up making personnel decisions, thus putting
further distance between the line managers and their personnel
responsibilities."(3)

These problems have compounded over time. Over the years, "anecdotal
mistakes prompted additional rules," the Office of Personnel Management
(OPM) wrote in 1988. The same document also noted that:

When the new rules led to new inequities, even more rules were added.
Over time . . . a maze of regulations and requirements was created,
hamstringing managers, doing little to convince employees that their
employer treats them fairly, and often impeding federal managers and
employees from achieving their missions and from giving the public a
high quality of service.(4)

Structure of the Existing System

The civil service revolves around merit system principles requiring that
positions be filled through fair and open competition, with the best
qualified candidate chosen without regard to political affiliation or
other non-merit factors, and protecting career workers from arbitrary
dismissal.

OPM's director, who serves as the President's personnel officer,
promulgates human resource policy directives that support, interpret, or
otherwise implement Title 5, United States Code; the Code of Federal
Regulations; miscellaneous executive orders; case law from various
adjudicative bodies, such as the Federal Labor Relations Authority
(FLRA); Civil Rights Acts; and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(EEOC) management directives.

Along with OPM, organizations with authority to regulate, direct, or
enforce human resource policy include the Merit Systems Protection Board
(MSPB), FLRA, EEOC, the Office of Special Counsel, the Justice and Labor
Departments, and the General Accounting Office. About 40,000 people help
administer the federal government's civilian human resource
administrative system.

"Most of the personnel laws we use today were written for a troubled
civil service of 1883," OPM Director James B. King explained in May
1993. "We must cut the cord to regulations that were right for their
time a century ago, but which hog-tie managers today. In their place, we
need systems and mentalities that, while still based in merit and
fairness, will let managers manage today and into the future."(5)

Though varying in size from a few dozen to several hundred thousand
employees, all executive branch agencies have internal structures for
administration of human resources. In each, directors of personnel and
directors of equal employment opportunity (EEO) advise and support the
agency head--developing policies and guidance, executing authorities
delegated to the agency, preparing required reports, acting for the
agency with external organizations such as OPM and EEOC, and generally
administering programs related to human resources. The personnel
directors are linked to OPM through membership on the Interagency
Advisory Group.

Supporting the personnel directors, headquarters personnel staffs
perform functions at the agency level akin to those that OPM performs
for the entire federal service. In large departments, personnel staffs
are also located at subordinate levels such as regions and bureaus.
Operating personnel offices and EEO staffs exist at the field or service
delivery levels, providing day-to-day advice to managers and employees
and processing personnel actions.

Problems with the Existing System

Today, the system's functional operating components present a burdensome
array of barriers and obstacles to effective HRM. Hiring is complex and
rule-bound; managers can't explain to applicants how to get federal
jobs. The classification and pay systems are inflexible. The performance
management system is not adequately linked to the organization's mission
and goals. The labor relations program is adversarial. The federal
workplace is not family-friendly, with its overly restrictive leave
practices and limited implementation of available programs. Diversity
programs are fragmented, and affirmative employment planning and
reporting processes are duplicative and resource-intensive. Agencies see
little value in the efforts of central guidance agencies to monitor and
control their activities.

At the operating personnel office level, processes for delivering human
resource services have remained largely unchanged for years, and
customers accept them as the norm. In a 1993 special study of federal
personnel offices, MSPB concluded, "Unfortunately, for a variety of
reasons, some of the functions assigned to personnel offices are too
often simply not done well or are of little relevance to line managers
in their focus on mission accomplishment."(6) Human resource
administration is forms driven, labor intensive, and time consuming.
Managers and personnelists alike labor under rules and procedures
requiring the meticulous handling of paper. With incomprehensible
procedural and regulatory requirements, managers shy away from learning
or accepting responsibility for HRM.

To what can we attribute this proliferation of external controls and
procedural constraints? In a forthcoming book, public administration
professor Patricia Ingraham observes:

In the pulling and hauling between the President and Congress . . .  the
permanent bureaucracy remains a target for control by both. The pattern
of control is similar in both cases: discretion for members of the
career service is to be limited whenever possible; control is to be
exerted through additional levels of political appointees or other staff
responsible to the President and/or Congress; and accountability will be
defined as responsiveness to those controls.(7)

The Need for Change

To understand the need for change, and the nature of changes required,
we must first understand the extent to which accountability has been
defined in terms of procedural controls. The 1983 NAPA panel found that
". . . accountability is divided and varies by functional areas within
personnel management in such a manner that everyone and no one is fully
accountable."(8)

In his 1993 study of the role of the federal inspectors general, Paul
Light concluded:

Despite experiments with performance incentives, such as merit pay, and
occasional investments in civil service reform, the definition of
accountability in government has remained relatively constant over the
past fifty years: limit bureaucratic discretion through compliance with
tightly drawn rules and regulations. . . .  [A]ccountability is seen as
the product of limits on bureaucratic discretion--limits that flow from
clear rules (commands), and the formal procedures, monitoring and
enforcement that make them stick (controls).(9)

Principles to Guide Change: A Vision for the Future

To reinvent HRM, we must redefine accountability in terms of results-
-and we must do so within the context of decentralization, deregulation,
simplicity, flexibility, and substantially increased delegations of
authority.

The recommendations in this report will create a system in which the
President, Congress and, through them, citizens will hold agency
managers accountable for mission accomplishment while adhering to
principles of merit, equity, and equal opportunity. NPR sees the
following assumptions as the basis for forming human resource management
policies in the federal government. In the future:

--- Federal executives and managers should be responsible for HRM and
accountable for their actions and the results of them.

--- Federal executives and managers should own HRM administrative
systems. That is, they should help design them, accept them in
principle, know how to make them work, and share confidence that they
help achieve desired results.

--- Federal executives and managers should receive advice and technical
assistance from staff advisors with expertise in administering HRM
administrative systems.

--- HRM staff advisors should be viewed as part of the management team,
not servants of management or the system's police.

--- The quality and effectiveness of HRM administrative support should
be measured by their contributions to achieving the agency's mission,
goals, and priorities.

--- Within a governmentwide legal framework, agencies should tailor HRM
administrative systems to meet unique needs that arise from their
organizational culture, consonant with fundamental principles of merit
and equity and without the volumes of regulations that stress process
rather than results.

--- Mistakes or failures to comply with regulations should not prompt
additional or more-stringent regulations; instead, individual managers
should be held administratively accountable for their actions.

--- Authority to make HRM decisions should be vested in line managers
and delegated to an agency's lowest practical level, including to
self-managed work teams operating in flattened organizational
structures.

--- Executives and managers should value the federal workforce; labor
and management are partners in carrying out each agency's mission.

Given these assumptions, NPR's vision in the human resource management
arena is one in which managers can adjust work and people to meet
mission demands in a cost-effective manner; create and maintain a
quality, diverse workforce; lead, develop, train, set high expectations
for, reward, and discipline employees; foster a quality work environment
that lets employees manage work and personal responsibilities; and
promote cooperative relationships with employees and unions. The ideal
system is free of political influence and embodies merit system
principles. "[A]gency executives and managers take primary
responsibility, and [are] held strictly accountable, for observance of
merit principles and the prevention of prohibited personnel actions; for
enforcing high standards of employee performance and conduct, and for
taking necessary actions when such standards are not met."(10)

Administrative systems for the management of human resources that
underpin this vision will be simple to use, easy to understand, self-
renewing, continuously improving, and cost-effective. NPR's
recommendations will help achieve the vision by:

--- creating a flexible and responsive hiring system,

--- reforming the classification system,

--- improving performance management systems,

--- targeting the objectives of employee training and development,

--- enhancing programs to provide family-friendly workplaces,

--- improving workplace due process,

--- focusing equal employment opportunity on achieving results,

--- eliminating excessive red tape, and

--- forming labor-management partnerships.

These recommendations require dramatic changes in the roles and
responsibilities of line managers and their HRM advisors, and in
labor-management relationships. Managers and supervisors will have more
latitude to exercise judgment in their actions affecting employees. This
latitude carries a large element of risk and concomitant accountability
for results. Managers must have access to quality, responsive advice,
and assistance from HRM professionals who truly understand the
organization's HRM needs.

Personnel offices must shift from reactive processors of paperwork to
responsive consultants and advisors. This shift requires personnelists
to view the manager as a customer with needs to anticipate and meet with
responsive service, including electronic support systems. This change in
roles and relationships must include a similar orientation toward the
workforce. Cooperative relationships with organized labor must be
established and maintained, with unions viewed as partners.

Endnotes

1. Letter from John N. Sturdivant, National President of the American
Federation of Government Employees, to NPR staff member Roy Tucker, May
1, 1993.

2. National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), Deregulation of
Government Management Project: Personnel Management (Washington, D.C.,
October 1983), p. i.

3. Ibid., p. 1. (Interim panel report.)

4. U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Simplifying the Federal
Manager's Job (Washington, D.C., 1988), Foreword. (Pamphlet.)

5. "OPM Takes Wrecking Ball to Personnel Structure," U.S. Office of
Personnel Management News (May 28, 1993).

6. U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, Federal Personnel Offices:  Time
for Change? (Washington, D.C., August 1993), p. ix.

7. Patricia Ingraham, The Foundation of Merit (Washington, D.C.:  Johns
Hopkins Press), p. 26. (Forthcoming.)

8. NAPA, p. 11.

9. Light, Paul, Monitoring Government: Inspectors General and the Search
for Accountability (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1993),
p. 12.

10. NAPA, p. 4.