FEMA officials cited burnout and attrition, as well as rising disaster activity. Image: Bob Korn/Shutterstock.com
The GAO has called on FEMA to better assess the effectiveness of its hiring efforts, noting that the agency has been substantially understaffed in recent years, including by 35 percent in 2022, despite a number of hiring initiatives.
The agency uses different processes under various statutory authorities to hire employees by type, such as permanent full-time employees and temporary reservists, the report said, and also uses flexibilities to hire employees for critical positions and augments its workforce if a disaster or emergency exceeds its capacity, such as with local hires and contractors.
“FEMA officials attributed recent staffing gaps to multiple factors. These included additional responsibilities due to COVID-19 and managing the rising disaster activity during the year, which increased burnout and employee attrition,” it said.
GAO said that FEMA has initiated several efforts to address those gaps, including holding hiring events and turning to OPM, the Labor Department and contractors for help. However, “it is unclear if these efforts are effective. FEMA lacks documented plans and performance measures to monitor and evaluate its hiring progress within cadres (workforce groups) toward the larger disaster workforce goal.”
It said that management agreed with recommendations to document plans to monitor and evaluate the agency’s progress on hiring efforts to address staffing gaps and to develop performance measures that monitor and evaluate progress towards goals, including net growth targets for different categories of employees.
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