In his first year-and-a-half at the Office of Personnel Management, director John Berry has pursued the most aggressive work force reforms human resources officials have seen in years.

But a new survey finds chief human capital officers are worried their HR staffs aren't up to the task.

The report, released last week by the Partnership for Public Service and Grant Thornton, found growing resentment among CHCOs that OPM is dictating vast changes without providing the lower-level support agencies need to implement those changes.

Partnership President Max Stier said his organization's findings are alarming.

"Our federal government's human resource leaders have serious doubts that their HR employees — the very people who will be on the front lines implementing the needed reforms — have the right resources, training and support to get the job done," Stier said.

The report, "Closing the Gap: Seven Obstacles to a First-Class Federal Workforce," found that three out of five respondents feel their HR staffs don't have the skills that will be needed in the future, or had only moderate skills.

The government's roughly 25,000 HR specialists will have to take on more responsibilities as agencies try to overhaul their sluggish hiring processes.

Part of that overhaul — getting rid of lengthy knowledge, skills and abilities questionnaires and replacing them with more specialized assessment tools — is seen as an unfunded mandate placed on an HR work force that is already stretched thin.

"The pendulum is shifting to a more human touch in the assessment process, but to become more efficient, we have a smaller staff," one unnamed CHCO said in the report.

"How do we retool the people we have? We don't have people who are schooled in sophisticated assessments."

The survey also found that HR professionals who can advise managers and line supervisors about strategic staffing needs are in short supply.

And HR officials have forgotten how to establish and run training programs for their agencies, though some leaders feel the government is relearning those skills.

The report also said small agencies in particular are worried that OPM's reporting requirements will overwhelm their tiny HR staffs, which sometimes are as small as four or five people.

Small agencies are also far more likely to feel they don't have the resources to use hiring and retention bonuses and student loan repayments to attract talented candidates.

HR staffs are also hampered by a lack of training and modern information technology systems. Many HR offices either rely on outdated manual systems or have developed their own IT systems that can't communicate with one another.

Some survey respondents think OPM should take the lead in developing a governmentwide computer system to manage staffing.

Disconnect at OPM?

And the relationship between OPM and CHCOs is getting rockier. CHCOs say they respect Berry for his ideas and energy, and appreciate his commitment to solving long-standing problems such as hiring reform. But some feel there is a disconnect between what Berry says and what lower-ranking OPM staffers do, and the agency sometimes sends out mixed messages.

"We got authority to use the dual compensation waiver to hire annuitants, and then we got a memo saying that in this economy no one should have to use it," one CHCO said.

Some CHCOs say OPM's pace of new mandates is overwhelming and beyond what their staffs can handle.

"The overarching theme is that we don't have the resources," one CHCO said. "It becomes a question of, ‘What do you not want us to do?'Ÿ"

In an interview with Federal Times, Berry made no apologies for the pace of reforms he has pushed and said President Obama wants to see results.

"Frankly, if people can't adjust to that, that's not an option," Berry said. "At the end of the day, I'm going to hold people's feet to the fire."

CHCOs want OPM to do more to help them come up with solutions to their problems, and some feel OPM staffers don't support or understand what agency HR offices need.

"I made one suggestion to OPM and it was totally dismissed," one CHCO said. "That really turned me off."

Others think OPM is micromanaging HR decisions, and trying to push one-size-fits-all approaches to HR policies and regulations.

Hiring too complex

CHCOs also say that applying for a federal job has become so complex — partly due to merit principles requirements — that only existing federal employees can navigate the system.

This means that the government may be missing out on many talented people from the private sector.

"We only end up hiring people who are already familiar with the system," one person said in the report. "We end up just cannibalizing each other."

Some say the government needs to focus on results of merit principles — for example, are agencies hiring qualified employees and giving veterans the opportunities they deserve? — rather than following a prescribed process.

Department of Homeland Security CHCO Jeff Neal said at an Aug. 18 panel discussion in Washington that OPM appears to see its mission as supporting the systems it has built, instead of helping agencies find the employees they need. He said that in a recent discussion with OPM officials about his agency's recruitment difficulties, one official said, "The American people want to know that there is a merit system and that we're following merit system principles."

"My response is, no, the American people don't care about that," Neal said. "The American people care that airplanes don't fly into buildings, they care that the border is secure, and that drugs don't come across our border."

Neal said OPM needs to refocus its mission on assisting agencies.

Berry said he thinks the government can both uphold merit principles and quickly hire good employees.

"It's not a zero-sum game," Berry said. "There's a lot we can do to fix hiring, but I'm not going to compromise on [merit principles] at all."