Federal Workforce: Talent Management Strategies to Help Agencies Better Compete in a Tight Labor Market

The federal workforce is critical to federal agencies ability to address the complex social, economic, and security challenges facing the country. However, the federal government faces long-standing challenges in strategically managing its workforce. We first added federal strategic human capital management to our list of high-risk government programs and operations in2001. Although Congress, OPM, and individual agencies have made improvements since then, federal human capital management remains a high-risk area because mission-critical skills gaps within the federal workforce pose a high risk to the nation. This testimony focuses on (1) key hiring and other human capital management challenges facing federal agencies, and(2) talent management strategies identified from GAOs prior work that agencies can use to be more attractive employers in a tight labor market. This testimony is based on GAOs large body of work on federal human capital management issued primarily between July 2014 and July 2019. To conduct these studies, GAO reviewed government-wide employment data and interviewed officials from OPM and subject matter specialists from thinktanks, academia, government employee unions, and other areas.