Department of Commerce, scientific laboratories including NIST, NOAA and NTIA in Boulder, Colorado. NIST has a small, specialized workforce with unique institutional knowledge that is difficult to replace. Image: EQRoy/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe “highly specialized” nature of its work has left the National Institutes of Science and Technology with additional recruiting and retention challenges, the GAO has said, but has taken only partial steps toward meeting those challenges.
With its disproportionately large—in comparison with the overall federal workforce—share of employees in science and technology related positions, the NIST “faces competition for a highly specialized pool of candidates and declining applications from a postdoctoral program that is a key recruitment pipeline,” the report said.
Other challenges include that the agency “has a small, specialized workforce with unique institutional knowledge that is difficult to replace in a timely manner”; that its “pay and other flexibilities are not competitive with private sector employers who, in some cases, may offer salaries up to three times higher”; and that it has “gender-related imbalances in career advancement and leadership roles, as well as an unwelcoming environment for women that may cause some to leave.”
It said that while the NIST for example makes use of recruitment and retention incentive payments, it does not track their effectiveness. Similarly, while it tracks retirement eligibility of its workforce, it has not put in a succession plan under guidance from its parent Commerce Department, GAO said.
It said the department agreed with recommendations to track the effectiveness of incentives, develop a succession planning framework, and develop a strategic workforce plan that ties together recruiting, succession and other personnel plans.
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