The VA also seeks to revamp pay-setting practices, replacing the government-wide SES pay range with four separate bands—effectively going back to the multi-layered arrangement that applied to the SES in its early years. The highest level would top out at $235,000, about $50,000 above the current SES pay cap.
“Gifted leaders interested in executive level positions within VA’s health care, claims processing, memorial affairs, information technology, finance, human resources, legal, and other programs are often courted by private sector employers who can offer far more generous compensation packages,” it says–for example, directors of medical facilities in the private sector on average make about $100,000 more than the SES maximum.
It says VA is feeling “an alarming number of vacant leadership positions, a retirement tsunami on the very near horizon, and an increasingly difficult executive recruitment market.”
Nearly 30 percent of its current SES positions are vacant; the Veterans Health Administration lost 22 percent of its medical center directors and 23 percent of its network directors to retirement or resignation just within the last year; and nearly 70 percent of current execs are retirement-eligible or will be this year.
It adds that in 2015, the VA had to re-announce 37 executive vacancies “because the announcements attracted no qualified candidates the first time around.”