Remarks of OPM Director Katherine Archuleta
Association for Talent Development
Mayflower Hotel
September 3, 2014
As prepared for delivery
Good morning to all of you here in person today and those watching online.
Thank you, Ron Sanders for that introduction, for your more than 37 years of government service and for your continued efforts to promote training and leadership development for our talented Federal workforce. Thank you, Association for Talent Development. I love the new name! It captures the breadth of what we all need to do to help employees everywhere get the support they need.
I want to thank each and every one of you all for the work you do each and every day. Your effort to make sure that our 2 million strong Federal workforce has the tools it needs to succeed is so important.
Today I want to talk with you about what we are doing at OPM to encourage and provide new training and development opportunities across government, as well as some of the initiatives I’m working on as part of the President’s Management Agenda.
We know that workforce development is THE critical link in our ability to recruit, to retain and to recognize our employees. We know that people do not want to come to work for a place that doesn’t offer opportunities for growth, for learning, and for career advancement. Your presence here today and the work you do at your agencies throughout the year is proof that you understand and value this crucial link. I thank you for that.
Making sure that we have a supported, engaged and inclusive workforce is my highest priority as the Director of OPM. Supported, engaged and inclusive. I want to make sure that from the moment someone applies for a Federal position to the day they decide to retire, that we provide the tools they need to develop and to succeed.
As you know, the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey is a powerful tool to help us determine what we need to do to retain our very talented employees. One of the things the EVS has told us is that our employees want more training, more development. They want to feel involved in their workplace. They want to know that their managers and supervisors value and respect their contributions.
OPM is analyzing the 2014 EVS data right now. We are starting to give agencies some information. And so far, OPM has provided nearly 20,000 individualized office reports, a third more than ever before - and a month earlier than usual.
OPM has also developed a web-based interactive dashboard that will help employees thoroughly analyze the EVS data. With a click of the wrist, thousands of pieces of data are available to managers. It’s called Unlocktalent.gov. I think it is going to help them create and maintain a culture of employee engagement and inclusion. I take these surveys very seriously. As an example: Employees in past have told us they want to be able to act on their innovative and creative ideas.
We listened and we are responding. Earlier this year, OPM launched GovConnect, a mobile, innovative model where employees can spend a few hours each week working in teams across the country on projects that don’t necessarily fall within their current jobs. For example, a team at HUD, cross-country based, created an App to help people find affordable housing. That’s being piloted in Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis, Minn. At the EPA, a water quality expert is being given time to work on a coordinated national response to climate change. OPM is also working on its own GovConnect pilot.
OPM is not just my interest. It is part of the important People and Culture plank in the President’s Management Agenda’s People.
So is strengthening leadership, particularly in the Senior Executive Service.
The SES is the present and future of Federal leadership.
It will be up to them to hire, to mentor, to nurture and to train out employees. And if we don’t do the best we can to support this bench of leadership, the impact with not be what we want.
As one way to strengthen our excellent management core, we are providing agencies with an improved onboarding program for new SES members. We will soon launch an SES onboarding website. We want to make sure our new leaders are supported from the day they start their assignment, and that we continue that guidance as they progress. Also as part of that leadership support, OPM is creating a situational mentoring program for the SES as well as an interagency coaching network. We are also helping to create a government-wide mentoring hub. We want our SES to use that hub to find mentors everywhere in government, and agencies to use it to share practices and available resources.
Mentoring is something I talk a lot about. I don’t look at mentoring as a feel-good kind of exercise that I do part-time. I see it as a responsibility that each one of us has for one another. We all need a mentor, and not just early in our career. All my life, I have been lucky enough to have strong mentors who continue to advise me and counsel me. They have guided me. They have propped me up when the stress gets too much. And frankly, they have been there to tell me to get a grip when I began to feel sorry for myself.
I like to think I am paying that forward by being a mentor and a sounding board for my staff at OPM. Sometimes it’s just a hello. Sometimes it’s a big smile. Sometimes it’s just ‘great work today.’ Those words mean so much. Because in this job that I call our purpose-driven passion, those are our rewards. Good Job. Thanks for your hard work. What you did today was awesome.
I encourage you to do the same. I know that you probably already do. You will get as much back from those you mentor as you will give.
Now, I’d like to describe for you some exciting new initiatives that we’re working on to add to our portfolio of training and development opportunities.
I’m sure you are all familiar with the success of HR University. Launched by the CHCO Council in February of 2011, HRU has so far saved the Federal government more than $100 million by helping agencies give HR professionals across government access to training and development. In the past, only agencies that could afford it provided such training opportunities.
We are expanding on that concept with something we’re calling GovU. GovU will take this collaborative model for the sharing of training and development resources across government to another level. We are going beyond human resources training. We are developing individual “colleges” within GovU that will concentrate on a variety of training and development needs. For example, this year we reached an agreement with DOD to open its accredited Security and Intelligence certification program to all Federal civilian workers. We are going to expand this simple idea to more occupations, including cybersecurity. We’re also looking at an SES Onboarding college so agencies can share their efforts to better welcome and help new SES members hit the ground running. We also plan a college that will help agencies fulfill mandatory training requirements in such areas as workplace flexibilities, domestic violence, disability and mental health. And we want to create a place to house content for leadership and executive decision-making that agencies can share.
Sharing is the key here. We have too few resources for all of us to be doing the same thing in our separate buildings. Each individual agency shouldn’t have to develop its own training program for subjects that pertain to the entire Federal workforce. If OPM gives agencies access to education and training for these core subjects, that will help free up precious resources for development programs customized for their employees.
OPM is also reaching out beyond government to create development opportunities for Federal workers - and for their families. This spring, OPM forged an alliance with the University of Maryland University College. UMUC is offering a 25 percent discount on out-of-state tuition rates on courses, certificates and degree programs to current Federal employees, their spouses and their dependents. This is only the beginning. We are exploring similar partnerships with other universities. And we are working with institutions to help them shape their curricula to match our workforce needs, now and for the future.
So before I take some of your questions, I want to end where I began – with thanks.Thank you for all you do every day to make sure we continue to have a model workforce for the 21st Century. What you do makes it possible for every employee in every agency and department to provide the first class service that the American people expect, and frankly, that they deserve.
As I travel the country talking about Federal service, I talk about you all the time. I will, I promise, continue to champion you, to shout you out, to Facebook you, to Tweet you, to Instagram you all over the country. Because I want the American people know about the excellent work you do each and every day.
Thank you.