Federal Workforce: Sustained Attention to Human Capital Leading Practices Can Help Improve Agency Performance

[Excerpt] A careful consideration of federal pay is an essential part of fiscal stewardship and is necessary to support the recruitment and retention of a talented, agile, and high-performing federal workforce. High-performing organizations have found that the life-cycle of human capital management activities—including workforce planning, recruitment, on-boarding, compensation, engagement, succession planning, and retirement programs—need to be aligned for the cost-effective achievement of an organization’s mission. However, despite some improvements, strategic human capital management—and more specifically, skills gaps in mission critical occupations—continues to be a GAO high-risk area. This testimony is based on a body of GAO work primarily issued between June 2012 and March 2017. It focuses on (1) lessons learned in creating a more market driven, results-oriented approach to federal pay, and (2) opportunities, in addition to pay and benefits, that OPM and agencies could use to be more competitive in the labor market and address skills gaps