Of 16 HUD program offices, 14 already have “identified at least one talent-related top risk to achieving HUD’s mission.” Image: Mark Van Scyoc/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffAn inspector general report has identified understaffing as one of the major management challenges for HUD, saying that “attrition and not hiring people quickly enough” have left the department below its authorized levels in recent years.
The current staff of about 7,700 is about 20 percent below the level of a decade ago, while its attrition rate has outpaced its hiring rate in most years during that time. While the department’s attrition for reasons other than retirement is below the government-wide average, “over half of HUD’s workforce is eligible for retirement within the next 5 years, posing a risk to staffing, succession planning, and knowledge transfer,” it said.
Of 16 HUD program offices, 14 already have “identified at least one talent-related top risk to achieving HUD’s mission.”
“A high attrition rate can impact employee morale, workload, and institutional knowledge, all of which can lead to inefficiencies. It costs money and administrative resources to fill vacancies and train new or existing employees. HUD has also indicated that staffing attrition due to retirement poses a risk to HUD’s cybersecurity capabilities,” it said.
Other areas of concern include “critical disaster mitigation posts, the institutional memory within its environmental programming, and specialized skills necessary to administer contracts critical to the functioning of the agency.”
It said the department has taken steps since an IG report on the hiring issue last year, including improving the time to hire and improving its capacity to project staffing needs and analyze its hiring efforts.
Meanwhile, “HUD is budgeting for a staffing increase of approximately 10 percent over the prior year, which does not include staffing ramp-ups that will be required to respond to pandemic and other disaster-related assistance.” However, it noted that while the department had planned to add 1,400 external hires in fiscal 2022, it achieved only 901.
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