The Defense Business Board, which advises Pentagon officials on management issues, said the Defense Department needs to pay its civilian workforce more and improve human resource operations to shore up hiring if it’s going to win the fight for talent at home and defend the country against enemies abroad.
The board, who members include Xerox Americas Chief Financial Officer Craig Albright and David Beitel, chief technology officer at Zillow Group, called for the formal creation of a corps of civilian “sourcers and recruiters” who will zero-in on talent issues for the department, including pay that has dulled the department’s competitive edge.
“For several years, economists and labor analysts have been sounding the alarm on an imminent ‘war for talent’ in response to a perfect storm of factors,” the board said in a report issued March 30. “The workforce is aging, and participation is declining at a time when the demand for workers has never been higher ... These changes have proven formidable for the private sector to overcome, but, for the DoD, they are just the tip of the iceberg.”
The Pentagon’s civilian workforce of more than 950,000 faces unprecedented challenges in helping keep America safe as private sector competition draws away many of the most talented people. The board’s report found that when compared to private-industry best practices for hiring and recruitment, the Pentagon achieved only 32% alignment.
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Congress, too, adds pressure as it advocates for trimming the defense budget and imposing reductions-in-force. The report touched on how pay lags and how the government struggles to recruit Generation Z to offset the 30% of federal workers who will become retirement eligible by 2024.
Taking a hard look at compensation
The Federal Salary Council, a group of three presidential appointees and representatives from five federal employee unions that advises the White House, has said that government pay lags the private sector by about 23%.
This has marred the department’s reputation as an employer. One talent acquisition employee said in the report that he did not see the DoD as a competitor for talent, citing pay as his reason.
Agencies and oversight bodies examined federal pay system and urged pay raises that would narrow the pay gap to the single digits and allow government to accommodate the rise of the highly skilled “knowledge worker.” No administration has been able to do that, which would cost an estimated $19 billion, according to the report.
Until that happens, the Pentagon should request that the President’s Pay Agent confer with it on civilian pay before it makes recommendations to the annual budget.
Defense Department officials can also think of compensation in terms of targeted pay incentives and benefits, like student-loan repayment, recruitment incentives for in-demand jobs, special pay systems and scholarships, such as the Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation program and the Defense Civilian Training Corps.
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DoD should also request that the Office of Personnel Management update all occupation codes to include emerging jobs, like artificial intelligence, and clean up the miscellaneous series. OPM has made little progress on this because of a lack of funding, according to the report.
Train up the HR workforce
Outside of pay reforms, the HR workforce also needs an infusion of resources, the report said.
It’s rare for offices within the department to have a central team dedicated full-time to recruiting, marketing and advertising for openings. Though there are 650 different kinds of occupations within DoD, not one is dedicated to talent recruitment. Most of that work falls on HR specialists who cannot focus their time to each stage of the recruitment process, the report said.
One HR professional interviewed in the report described the Pentagon’s recruiting program as “scattered.” The report also said that the system does not advertise its open positions well enough, creating a department that is full of “hidden jewel” programs that “its own employees have never heard of, let alone the public.”
In 2021, DoD created a job-search website, though the report noted as of February, the site only 150 followers on Twitter and less than four thousand views on its YouTube commercial. There are currently 10,100 vacancies advertised.
The department has also been given special hiring authorities by Congress since 2002 to expedite hiring for certain medical, cybersecurity, and STEM jobs, but “many HR professionals do not know how to execute [Direct Hiring Authority] and are terrified to use it.”
DoD has failed to reach its goal for DHA utilization each of the last three quarters, the report said.
To help, the board urged a legislative proposal that would create a professional certification program for HR employees, just like there are for accountants or financial managers. This would bring employees through classes on engagement, proper use of hiring authorities, special pay, social media and navigating USA Jobs.
The educational lapses that exist today come at the detriment of all functional communities — inadequate HR professional development is bad for all,” the report said.
Molly Weisner is a staff reporter for Federal Times where she covers labor, policy and contracting pertaining to the government workforce. She made previous stops at USA Today and McClatchy as a digital producer, and worked at The New York Times as a copy editor. Molly majored in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
