A May 11 presidential memo on hiring reform directs agencies to ensure that supervisors and managers are more involved in the hiring process and unions are saying that’s a good idea.
National Association of Government Employees president David Holway told the House federal workforce subcommittee at a hearing on hiring reform that "bringing operational managers and supervisors into the hiring process earlier and more fully is common sense change" that could bring about substantial improvement.
"Bringing in people who are more involved with and responsible for the services an agency provides will almost definitely lead to better and faster hiring decisions," he said.
The American Federation of Government Employees’s public policy director, Jacqueline Simon, concurred, saying her union believes "efforts to engage operational managers more in the hiring process will undoubtedly lead to better and faster hiring decisions."
The hiring reform memo calls for greater managerial involvement in workforce planning, recruitment and interviewing, and would also hold managers accountable for the quality of their hires as well as for supporting a successful transition into federal service.
Unions also contributed to a general consensus at the hearing that managerial training will be important to the overall success of the hiring reform initiatives outlined in the memo.
Holway told the committee that while doing away with the rule of three could streamline the hiring process by opening selection up to a larger pool of "well qualified" candidates, that managers would need to be properly trained on keeping that process fair and open.
NAGE plans to monitor managerial training programs as the hiring reforms are implemented, he said, also arguing that training should be reported on in order to correlate that with how fair and open agency hiring processes are perceived to be.
