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Strategic Objective

MG01.03 Provide targeted learning and developmental opportunities for OPM’s employees

Strategic Objective

Increase in the percent of OPM employees reporting real opportunities to improve their skills within the organization (Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, item #1).

Lead Office: Diversity and Inclusion

Themes:

General Government

OPM.gov

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Overview
Progress Update

Overview

Developing an agency workforce plan that outlines OPM’s workforce needs for the medium to long term.
Conducting a skills gap analysis that identifies the skill requirements of the OPM workforce.
Aligning Learning Center and The Lab @ OPM’s offerings with OPM needs identified through the skill gap analysis.
Training OPM employees on the agency’s core values as well as problem-solving methods that support those values.
Instituting a formal experiential development program (e.g., Fellows, details, cross-organization project opportunities).
Supporting shadowing and mentoring

Progress Update

In FY 2015, OPM integrated a career mapping tool into the Learning Management System, which allows employees to understand the competencies and requirements for entry or advancement within various occupations and supports their career planning; supported employees by creating an OPM Mentoring program, providing mentoring orientation sessions and ultimately pairing 27 mentor and mentees; developed and delivered instructor-led courses in OPM's cross-cutting core competencies (problem solving, customer service, data analytics, and oral and written communications) to help ensure all employees are proficient in these core areas; developed a Lean Six Sigma process improvement certification framework that supports the dissemination of Lean Six Sigma techniques across functional operations; and launched the pilot of OPM Connect, a workforce agility project that allows employees to contribute to projects that may be outside of their normal duties, but which support Agency mission and embrace innovation.

Over the past few years, OPM has shifted its approach to learning and development from entirely decentralized to a more corporate approach. The agency continues to reevaluate and rebalance this function and the associated funding to ensure the workforce has the skills needed to accomplish the agency’s mission. Certain functions, such as internal training and development policy and management of the learning management system, are consistently centralized. With limited funds for training delivery, however, there is tension between the need for specific, technical skills in each organization, and the need for broader competencies, like customer service, that support agency-wide success. OPM’s senior leadership team will continue to work together to identify corporate learning priorities and determine the appropriate balance between corporate and decentralized learning priorities.

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Strategic Goals

Strategic Goal:

MG1 Diverse and Effective OPM workforce

Statement:

Increase the participation of employees, including groups that are under-represented within OPM, at all levels of the workforce.

Strategic Objectives

MG01.01 Deploy agile recruitment and outreach tactics to attract a diverse and talented workforce

Statement:

Increase applicant flow from groups that underrepresented within OPM and remove barriers where they exist

Description:

Further developing and implementing our approach to recruitment and outreach.
Identifying OPM’s unique value proposition as an employer to establish the “OPM Brand” (externally and internally)
Developing and implementing an approach to internal recruitment with a focus on agility (e.g., connecting talent to project-based work through a government-wide talent matching tool).
Leveraging technology and social media to create communities around specific mission areas.
Investing in application assessment tools and processes.
Identifying and addressing barriers to diversity.

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FY 14-15 Priority Goal: PG5 Promote Diversity and Inclusion

Statement:

OPM will support diversity and inclusion by aligning OPM business intelligence tools to help decision makers, like hiring managers and supervisors, analyze key workforce data including applicant flow, attrition/retention, and inclusion indicators. In so doing, decision makers can develop better outreach and recruitment methods; determine what factors contribute to the retention of a talented workforce; experience cost savings through decreased attrition; and create an inclusive work environment that empowers employees to contribute to their full potential. By September 30, 2015, 95 percent of OPM and 25 percent of government-wide hiring actions will occur following human resource and/or hiring manager’s use of a tool that reveals applicant flow data from prior recruitment efforts. This tool will assist human resource and/or hiring managers in planning their strategic recruitment efforts, resulting in measurable improvements in the recruitment and outreach to underrepresented communities and manager satisfaction with the quality of new hires.

Description:

OPM is responsible for the Government-wide Diversity and Inclusion effort focused on developing, driving, and monitoring strategies and initiatives designed to create a more diverse and inclusive Federal workforce. Executive Order 13583, “Establishing a Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce,” challenged the Federal Government with leading by example and attaining a diverse, qualified workforce that enables employees to contribute to their full potential. Similarly, Executive Order 13548, “Increasing Federal Employment of Individuals with Disabilities,” requires agencies to improve their efforts to employ Federal workers with disabilities and targeted disabilities through increased recruitment, hiring, and retention of these individuals.

In FY 2012, OPM issued the Government-wide Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan to provide direction to fifty-seven participating departments and agencies under the two subject Executive Orders. The three primary goals in the Plan included:

Workforce Diversity. Recruit from a diverse, qualified group of potential applicants to secure a high-performing workforce drawn from all segments of American society;
Workplace Inclusion. Cultivate a culture that encourages collaboration, flexibility, and fairness to enable individuals to contribute to their full potential and further retention; and
Sustainability. Develop structures and strategies to equip leaders with the ability to manage diversity, be accountable, measure results, refine approaches on the basis of such data, and institutionalize a culture of inclusion.

In support of the Diversity goal, OPM seeks to improve applicant flow reporting to enable human resources staff and hiring managers to determine whether recruitment efforts have been successful in drawing from all segments of society and to aid in developing future recruitment strategy. Applicant flow data has historically been collected on the basis of race, national origin, and sex, and beginning in 2014, it will be collected on the basis of disability. Historically, the data has been analyzed in an aggregate format; however, through the use of business intelligence tools, applicant flow data for individual hiring actions will be available for review at the hiring manager level after a vacancy has closed, creating incentive for increased hiring manager involvement in the recruitment process and greater opportunity for planning future recruitment efforts.

To further understand how to create an inclusive work environment where employees are fully engaged and productive, OPM and the Department of Veterans Affairs conducted factor analysis on the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and found that twenty questions cluster into five areas or behaviors (i.e., fair, open, cooperative, supportive, and empowering) that create inclusive work environments. Based on these five areas, OPM developed the “New IQ” (Inclusion Quotient) techniques and training to assist managers and supervisors in practicing behaviors that foster inclusion, an antecedent to employee engagement. OPM will also continue to focus on the life cycle of the Federal employee to ensure that the Federal workforce is able to hire and develop the best talent from all segments of society, with a focus on internal Diversity and Inclusion efforts to ensure that we serve as a model agency. Internal efforts will focus on the implementation of a data-driven, habit formation strategy that leverages first-line managers and supervisors to foster inclusion and engagement in the OPM workplace.

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MG01.02 Create a work environment where OPM employees are fully engaged and energized to put forth their best efforts and achieve OPM’s mission

Statement:

Increase the participation of employees, including groups that are under-represented within OPM, at all levels of the workforce.
Increase in OPM’s employee engagement index score (especially with respect to the supervisor subcomponent) and New Inclusion Quotient (New IQ)..

Description:

Launching a comprehensive approach to employee engagement.
Building leadership commitment and ownership of the engagement approach that incorporates:
- supervisory training¹,
- improved assessment and selection of supervisors,
- training in problem-framing and problem-solving methods that empower their teams to develop excellent solutions,
- ongoing support to supervisors and
- monitoring of supervisors’ progress using an accountability tool.
Increasing communication to employees and promoting inclusion by:
- identifying and using available communication vehicles, including THEO, USAJOBS, USAStaffing®, Retirement ServicesOnline, EmployeeExpress, and OPM.gov,
- Involving employees in design of programs, products and services through collaboration using the Innovation Lab and other internal resources,
- Reflecting OPM core values in communications to employees, including recognition of employees who exhibit core values,
- Involving employee labor/representative groups as vehicles to support the engagement approach.

1 Unless otherwise specified, training described in this plan will be delivered through a shared services model to achieve consistent standards of quality and optimize efficient use of limited resources.

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MG01.03 Provide targeted learning and developmental opportunities for OPM’s employees

Statement:

Increase in the percent of OPM employees reporting real opportunities to improve their skills within the organization (Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, item #1).

Description:

Developing an agency workforce plan that outlines OPM’s workforce needs for the medium to long term.
Conducting a skills gap analysis that identifies the skill requirements of the OPM workforce.
Aligning Learning Center and The Lab @ OPM’s offerings with OPM needs identified through the skill gap analysis.
Training OPM employees on the agency’s core values as well as problem-solving methods that support those values.
Instituting a formal experiential development program (e.g., Fellows, details, cross-organization project opportunities).
Supporting shadowing and mentoring practices and programs.
Defining career paths for OPM occupations.
Leveraging Employee Resource and Affinity Groups to help connect to employees at all levels of the organization.

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Agency Priority Goals

FY 14-15: PG5 Promote Diversity and Inclusion

Statement:

Description:

Workforce Diversity. Recruit from a diverse, qualified group of potential applicants to secure a high-performing workforce drawn from all segments of American society;
Workplace Inclusion. Cultivate a culture that encourages collaboration, flexibility, and fairness to enable individuals to contribute to their full potential and further retention; and
Sustainability. Develop structures and strategies to equip leaders with the ability to manage diversity, be accountable, measure results, refine approaches on the basis of such data, and institutionalize a culture of inclusion.

Learn More

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