Getting the 'Gears of Government' Moving in the Right Direction
Written by: Mika Cross
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) published a new playbook and distributed it through a memo to agency heads and C-level directors to help agencies accelerate the cross-agency priority goal of the President’s Management Agenda of modernizing the Federal workforce. The Executive Playbook for Workforce Reshaping: Accelerating the Gears of Transformation, offers four plays for government leaders and employees and anyone with an appetite for change.
To help agency human capital leaders prepare for the workforce of the future, OPM is sharing these workforce reshaping, reskilling and employee learning, training, and upskilling tools. The objectives include helping to accelerate the way government leaders learn to implement assessments, set workforce modernization efforts, and implement the most effective change management transition strategies. These workforce reshaping tools include the following components:
- The Executive Playbook for Workforce Reshaping, which helps senior leaders with informed, strategic decision making based on data;
- The Reskilling Toolkit, which assists HR professionals, managers, and employees as they design reskilling and upskilling opportunities based on employee strengths; and
- Guidance for Change Management in the Federal Workforce, which provides practical advice for leaders and managers as they plan for changes that align agency culture, values, people, and behaviors to encourage the desired results.
On June 11, 2019, I chatted with Francis Rose of Government Matters about what these resources mean for agencies looking to implement effective, long-term strategic change amid the fourth industrial revolution. We discussed the importance of equipping and training the workforce with a baseline understanding of the goals and objectives of change, and how to ensure the tactics are inclusive and effectively managed by strategic communication on an ongoing basis, at all levels.
The playbook also highlights models and scenarios for determining when best to focus efforts and associated leadership training on reshaping and restructuring, versus reskilling, upskilling or recruiting new talent. It also provides a Logic Model that describes high-level tactics for establishing effective change management practices to brace the organization and the workforce, for change as it is rolling out.
CHANGE MANGEMENT
Minimizing Negative Outcomes
- Establish a transformation team.
- Outline the challenges and opportunities that exist in the external and internal environment.
- Create a communication strategy to update stakeholders.
- Put initiatives in place to support the workforce and sustain employee engagement during transition.
- Identify desired outcomes that can be used to monitor progress and measure success.
As Federal agencies undergo the myriad of changes in technology, people, process, and structure, ensuring that employees understand how they’re affected and how they can contribute on both a personal and organizational level, will be key. Supervisors and managers will also need to learn which resources they can rely upon when assessing the skills and competencies needed from their workforce, as they develop and execute Federal workforce modernization and planning initiatives both now and in the future.
