In a Washington Post article entitled, Many Hires Needed for Budget Goals, published on Tuesday, March 3, 2009 Philip Rucker writes:
President Obama's budget is so ambitious, with vast new spending on health care, energy independence, education and services for veterans, that experts say he probably will need to hire tens of thousands of new federal government workers to realize his goals.
Later in the article, the “tens of thousands” figure is estimated at between 100,000 and 250,000. These will be Federal employee hires, not contractors, because President Obama has also spoken against the expensive practice of Federal contracting.
Hiring many people in a short time is somewhat analogous to mergers, where large numbers of personnel are sometimes mixed together resulting in many different effects and challenges. Some Agency representatives say that they will also move many existing employees to more critical positions.
Some of the major challenges of this hiring tsunami (and by no means all of them) include:
- Personnel Location: In a situation where you have many new people added to the Agency, it becomes difficult to find out “who knows what” or who is responsible for a given task. Knowledge management provides a tried and tested answer to this issue, with “organizational yellow page” systems, sometimes called “expertise locators.” These systems simplify the ability to locate the right person quickly.
- Knowledge Retention: The article also mentions the large numbers of soon-to-retire Baby Boomers. Most of the tacit knowledge in Agencies is in their heads. Before they leave, it would be advisable to attempt some transfer of knowledge to younger employees.
- Knowledge-Enabling of Processes: Most new hires and personnel who transfer into new, more critical positions, will need performance support in doing their jobs. Training is the usual answer, but it takes a long time and there most likely aren’t existing courses for all of these diverse positions. When jobs consist of definable processes, it might be useful to consider process mapping, and embedding of performance support content in the process, using some fairly low cost tools which are on the market. This will enable new employees to hit the ground running.
- Knowledge Sharing and Informal Learning: It is critical that Agencies establish the proper atmosphere for rapid and efficient knowledge sharing within and across organizational boundaries. Without this capability, every task will become more difficult as employees struggle to find answers to their many questions.
- Transition Help Desk: It will be useful for each Agency to establish a Transition Help Desk staffed by experienced employees to support new hires with basic information.
Most
of these programs and solutions fit into the toolset of Knowledge Management,
or KM. KM is a discipline that uses management tools along with
culture change, has been effective in the private sector. Some agencies have succeeded at KM, including
NASA and the US Army, but there is no formal Federal program. There is no policy, standards or
direction. There is no central
clearinghouse of lessons learned or “what works.” Agencies and Departments must spend scarce
consulting dollars to find their own way, “reinventing the wheel” in a wasteful
duplication of effort.
The Federal Knowledge Management Working Group, over 700
Federal employees, contractors, academicians and interested members of the
public, have mounted a campaign to enhance collaboration, knowledge and
learning in the Federal Government by implementing formal knowledge management.
This is the Federal KM
Initiative.
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