Browsing: HR Management

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said modernizing agency information technology systems and addressing the aging work force will be top priorities for him. He said during a teleconference earlier today: It is important to me that the USDA be also a place of a modern workforce and a modern workplace. We’ll be focusing on IT improvements, process improvements and an empowered and diverse workforce to make that happen.”

You’ve probably heard by now that the economy lost 524,000 jobs in December, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It was the 12th consecutive month of losses, and it brought 2008’s total job losses to a staggering 2.6 million — the most since 1945. But the employment picture for (most) federal employees isn’t so bleak. The federal government added 79,400 jobs in 2008. What’s remarkable is that, since 1999, the federal government added 182,700 jobs — so half of that growth came in just one year. And with the president-elect declaring yesterday that “only government”…

If you, like me, were off last week perfecting Grandma’s octopus recipe for one of the many holiday celebrations, here is a roundup of a few fascinating government reports that were released. Incase you missed it: The Government Accountability Office published an assessment of how the Homeland Security Department distributes grant dollars. It found that DHS’s three-step evaluation process that weighs the risk of terrorism and the effectiveness of the applicant’s proposals is a reasonable way to determine how to distribute funds. The Homeland Security Inspector General released a report about the acquisition work force at FEMA. While the agency has…

Anyone with a human resources background — or even a lick of common sense — will cringe as often as laugh at the boneheaded management tactics depicted on NBC’s The Office. But if you want to find out what HR people really think of Michael Scott’s … um … unique leadership style, check out the blog That’s What She Said. Every Friday, a former HR professional analyzes the management sins from the previous night’s episode and tabulates how much the fictional Dunder Mifflin paper company might have to pay if a fed-up employee filed a lawsuit. For example, the entry for the episode “Did…

The Partnership for Public Service released a report this morning containing advice for the next president from chief human capital officers. The Partnership surveyed 54 CHCOs, and their deputies, and solicited opinions on several topics: pay scales, telework, and the effectiveness of their HR staffs, to name a few. (The complete report, in PDF form, is here.) Two of the most interesting conclusions: First, a clear majority of the respondents favored eliminating the General Schedule pay scale; just 14 percent thought it should be retained: Second, more than half of the respondents view their human resources staffers largely as “transaction…

When I became an agent, I was one of seven Latinos, and there were 10,000 white male FBI agents. They said, ‘We don’t discriminate.’ I said, ‘There’s nobody to discriminate against.’ – Former FBI agent Bernardo Perez, on the challenges faced by the Bureau’s Hispanic employees in the 1960s. An Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report released this morning found the proportion of Hispanics in the federal work force has increased in recent years, but their representation still lags far behind the percentage of Hispanics in the national work force.

Do Hispanic people have enough chances to take federal jobs, and later advance into leadership positions? The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will consider that question, and what it might do to fix possible problems, at their meeting tomorrow morning in Washington. The EEOC’s Federal Hispanic Work Group will release its report on Hispanic federal employment, including hiring, retention and leadership development issues. Watch federaltimes.com for more information on what they found. And if you’re a federal employee of Hispanic descent, we’d like to hear from you in our comments section below. Are you given enough opportunities to develop into a leader? Are…

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