Chief Human Capital Officer

Department/Agency: Cross-Cutting Management Positions

Position:

Chief Human Capital Officer

By Statute, Positions in Twenty-four Departments and Agencies*

Executive Schedule: Other Pay Plan

Major Responsibilities:

• Setting agency workforce development strategy
• Assessing agency workforce demographics and future needs
• Aligning human resources policies and programs with agency mission and strategic goals and performance outcomes
• Applying methods for measuring and linking intellectual capital to organization performance and growth 
• Instituting a culture of continuous learning to attract and retain talent
• Identifying best practices
• Participating in the Chief Human Capital Officers Council

Key Competencies and Preferred Qualifications:

• Human resource experience in public or private sector
• Defining and achieving performance results
• Building and managing relationships across organizational and functional boundaries
• Using strategic resource management to achieve organizational goals
• Knowledge of the federal budget, appropriations and legislative processes

Insight:

The federal government employs nearly 1.9 million workers (1.2 million in non-defense agencies) and hundreds of thousands of contractor staff.  Long a back-room function, human resources was brought to the forefront with the enactment of The Chief Human Capital Officers Act of 2002 as part of the Homeland Security Act.  This Act required the heads of 24 agencies* to appoint or designate Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCOs) as their principal policy advisor on all human resource management issues and vesting them with responsibility for selecting, training, and managing a high-quality workforce. A 2007 survey found CHCOs believe that the Act marked a significant advance for team leadership and increased their own engagement within each agency with the other executive chiefs (financial, information and acquisitions). 

The CHCO is expected be an integral part of agency senior leadership collaborating on business relationships and strategies, and advising and working with all levels of the agency on human resource needs to accomplish the mission while complying with statutory, regulatory and policy requirements.  Although the basic responsibilities are the same for all agencies, the duties can vary depending on the agency organization, culture, mission and authorizing statute.  The Director of National Intelligence CHCO has a different set of responsibilities than the CHCO at Education, for example.

In 2007, the Partnership for Public Service and Grant Thornton surveyed 55 CHCOs and others involved in the human resources field.  That survey plus comments by CHCOs in previous Prune Books shed some light on the challenges facing new CHCOs. 

Managing the squeeze in discretionary dollars and maintain personnel expertise. 
All agency chiefs face the same budgetary constraints. For CHCOs, this comes on top of a steady erosion of human resource capacity over the past decades.  This function has been hit twice- first in the 1990s during downsizing when departments sought to eliminate staff by centralizing what historically had been a very decentralized operation, and more recently by competitive sourcing, which makes agencies bid against private contractors to keep doing the work. The CHCOs faces a double problem.  Not only must they worry about recruiting, training and retaining their own staff, but they also must help the agency's component operations do the same. One silver lining to the current economic uncertainties may be that some senior staff may put off retirement. That could ease what long has been forecast as a looming problem for federal managers. With the graying of the workforce, The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) had forecast that nearly 15 percent of non-supervisory staff and 22 percent of supervisory staff on board in fiscal 2007 would retire in 2010. estimated that of staff on-board at the start of FY 2007, nearly 15 percent of non-supervisory staff and 22 percent of supervisory staff would retire in 2010.  Nevertheless, one CHCO said HR executives should always "watch the faucet, not the drain."

Keeping focus and working across the agency. 
It takes time to institute change and maintaining a well-communicated policy is essential. The CHCO for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence underscored this in a 2007 interview.  Asked if there were staff shortages, if he was looking to fill positions and whether some needs were critical, he replied, “Yes, yes, and yes…We’ve been trying to grow ever since [9/11].  That is not a short-term proposition...  It takes five, seven, eight years to take a raw recruit and develop him or her into a seasoned intelligence analyst or case officer...familiar with our own esoteric brand of technology.”  While other agencies may not face challenges of that magnitude, the story is similar – it takes time and attention to develop competent staff.  CHCOs may be called on to attract new talent, streamline hiring,  institute incentives for retention,  lead emergency preparedness, plan for succession, advance diversity, launch pay-for-performance programs, and figure out the best way to try to fill skill gaps.  This is a large portfolio and requires delegation and emphasis on zing what parts of the portfolio are keys to achieving the agency mission.  But, nothing will be achieved if the CHCO doesn’t collaborate and communicate across the agency functional areas to carry out the plans, particularly with the CFO, CIO and CAO.  Without the leadership's and employees' trust and support for change, success is apt to be elusive.

Get to know OPM and participate in the CHCO Council.  
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) serves as the President’s advisor on federal human capital issues and is the central human resource management agency for the Executive Branch.  OPM has the lead in developing regulations guiding the human resource functions and for implementing legislation that guides and affects the human resource function.  While OPM is the cop, ensuring that agencies comply with the laws and regulations, it also provides advice and assistance to the agencies on human resource issues.  OPM also administers the Federal Human Capital Survey, a sort of workplace satisfaction survey, every two years.

The CHCO Act also established the Chief Human Capital Officers Council, which mirrors the CFO, CIO and CAO Councils.  The Council advises and coordinates the activities of member agencies and is intended to be a high level policy-planning body that seeks to advance the modernization of human resource systems, assess legislation affecting human resource operations and improve the quality of human resource information. The OPM Director chairs the Council with the Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as the Vice-Chair. What the Council does will influence the CHCO's job but, as importantly, it provides a venue for discussing problems, hearing about innovations, and generally getting to know other CHCOs.  

* By statute, only the agencies that are required to have a Chief Financial Officer also are required to appoint a Chief Human Capital Officer:  Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, AID, GSA, NSF, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, OPM, SBA, and Social Security.

Key Relationships – Within the Department or Agency:

Key Relationships – Within the Government:

Key Relationships – Outside the Government:

National Academy on Public Administration
Council for Excellence in Government
Partnership for Public Service

Nomination Referred to:

Not subject to Senate confirmation.
Appointed by the department or agency head.