Problems in HR Offices Cited

The government has somewhat rebuilt its human resources workforce since the cuts totaling about 20 percent of HR employees in the 1990s, according to a new study, cuts that cost the government “significant expertise and institutional knowledge” in personnel issues just as the government is facing a surge of potential retirements with the resulting need to replace those employees. About half of the positions lost have been refilled, but many of the replacements resulted from promotions of administrative and clerical employees who “did not receive the needed training,” according to the Partnership for Public Service. The HR workforce suffers from high turnover and is facing a retirement wave of its own, since the percentage of HR professionals who are 45 and older (65 percent) is five percentage points higher than that of the federal workforce as a whole.