It may not come as much of a surprise that federal workforce reforms can happen slowly — but that doesn’t mean things aren’t changing.

For Colleen Heller-Stein, executive director of the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council, the Pathways Program is a prominent example where changes have finally arrived, but only after years of hard work.

“There are, frankly, times when we can’t see that return on investment for a number of years,” Heller-Stein said at an Oct. 9 event hosted by software company Cornerstone. “There was a CHCO Council working group five or so years ago that really dug into Pathways regulations and provided some suggestions and recommendations for how Pathways might be adjusted to be even more beneficial to agencies. We finally, this year, saw some updates to those regulations.”

From the very first conversation to the finish line, finalizing those Pathways changes took at least five years to see the light of day. Much of that long-term work, according to Heller-Stein, was informed directly by human capital leaders on the CHCO Council. The council, which regularly brings together HR leaders across agencies, organizes itself into working groups to target key challenges that are facing the federal workforce. Then, the leaders collaborate to try to figure out how to move the needle on long-term federal workforce goals. CHCOs on the council can collectively choose when to stand up new working groups, or remove old ones.

“There is nothing that says there won’t be a new working group next year. It could be that midway through 2025, as a group is engaged in their work, they say, ‘We need to change a little bit, we need to adjust’ — and there’s a place for that,” Heller-Stein said. “We want to be flexible, to bend and go where the need is, and hopefully have the foresight to see where the need will be, so that we can get there ahead of time.”

Right now, the CHCO Council’s working groups focus on five key areas — human capital data, recruitment and outreach, employee engagement, elevating HR, and hybrid work — all of which are trying to address “evergreen” workforce challenges, while working in tandem with OPM.

“CHCOs have an opportunity to weigh in and be a part of the OPM strategic planning process,” she said. “Likewise, OPM regularly looks to the CHCO and deputy CHCO community for input to help shape OPM policy, make sure that we are being responsive to agencies’ needs and ideally getting ahead of agencies’ needs, so that we’re ready to respond when they need us.”

Employee engagement advice from CHCO Council

Employee engagement has been consistently top of mind for human capital leaders. The CHCO Council’s working group on employee engagement has been putting together — and plans to soon publish — more resources on how to foster better engagement in the workplace.

One of the council’s projects is a “toolkit” for the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS), focused on how agencies can implement changes based on employee feedback in OPM’s annual survey. The toolkit is expected to be published later this fall, with the hope that the recommendations will tie to the coming results of the 2024 FEVS. The toolkit will include not only engagement recommendations, but also strategies for action planning and better communication with employees.

“Agencies are bringing together and uplifting the practices that have been most useful in their agencies — proven ways to engage with employees,” Heller-Stein said. “We’re trying to enhance transparency, communication, accountability and action planning around this.”

Another resource CHCOs have been putting together is a forthcoming “blueprint” for agency leaders, focused on management strategies that can create positive impacts in the federal workplace.

“Senior leaders oftentimes may not be involved with frontline work every day, but they are really thinking about strategy and policy,” Heller-Stein told Federal News Network in an interview following the Oct. 9 event. “But it still really helps set the tone for the work that happens in an agency and the culture at an agency.”

CHCO Council aims to support HR workforce

Leaders on the CHCO Council have also been focused on the internal operations of human capital management, particularly on strategies for better training and developing the HR workforce governmentwide.

In September, for instance, an HR career pathing pilot at nine agencies wrapped up after months of work. The CHCO Council, which helped manage the pilot in partnership with OPM, is currently analyzing the results of that project, which focused on early and mid-career HR staff. Eventually, the goal is to use to pilot’s findings to refine career paths and opportunities for the federal HR workforce.

Additionally, there are plans in the works to launch an HR career growth portal this fall, as part of larger modernization efforts at OPM. The CHCO Council helped develop the portal by using survey feedback and input from more than 2,000 federal HR professionals in focus groups.

“It has been a really great project to understand what is happening in the community,” Heller-Stein said. “What we’re hearing from practitioners is [about] what kinds of tools they need, here they feel they need to develop [and] how OPM and senior HR leaders within their agencies can really support their growth and development to make sure that we have a strong cadre of HR professionals supporting us.”

Deepening the use of federal workforce data

Along with working groups focused on employee engagement and elevating HR, CHCOs over the last couple years have also worked with OPM to put together several data dashboards. The dashboards, which CHCOs in the human capital data working group helped to shape, are meant to help agency leadership, HR staff and the public understand various demographic trends in the federal workforce.

“The working group was really critical in providing agency insights regarding what OPM should include in those types of dashboards, what should be included in OPM’s final data strategy and important features and information to include in those products,” Heller-Stein said.

Several of OPM’s data dashboards now include, for example, detailed information and trends on hiring manager satisfaction, time-to-hire and the cyber workforce.

Heller-Stein said she hopes “agencies will use the dashboards to help shape the way they’re managing HR at their agency, trying to make it easier for them to understand where there might be roadblocks, and where things might be going.”

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