People Pipeline

Succession planning is vital to the federal government, particularly as agencies face potentially large numbers of retirements and staff turnover in the coming years. Still, agency human resources leaders often lack the resources they need to implement and manage succession planning effectively, according to a new report.

The report, released Tuesday by the Partnership for Public Service and Booz Allen Hamilton, found that HR leaders are often impeded in their succession planning efforts by a lack time, inadequate funding, limited ability to assess and select candidates and an inability to effectively forecast attrition rates. Still, most HR professionals surveyed (86 percent) reported that despite barriers, their agency has committed to some level of succession planning, the survey found.

In addition, with HR so central to succession planning, agencies must do more to staff up, train and equip the HR workforce, the report found. For example, recent studies have shown that federal HR professionals lack sufficient skills, in part due to underinvestment and training over the course of their careers. HR also has the highest percentage (44.9 percent) of employee transferees from one agency to another, and many HR leaders report spending more time developing succession plans for their agencies than they do their own offices, the survey found.

Not having adequate succession plans in place could mean trouble for agencies, as the Office of Personnel Management projects that more than 50 percent of the 7,746 senior executives in place at the beginning of 2011 will have left government by the end of 2015, the report noted.

The potential brain drain could be particularly damaging to the federal IT workforce. The Partnership predicted in 2009 that agencies would need to fill more than 11,500 mission-critical information technology jobs by 2012, in large part because of the increasing eligibility for retirement among federal IT workers.

Despite the perceived time crunch and limited resources, however, federal managers can develop effective succession plans fairly quickly and with little or no direct funding or budget, the Partnership and Booz Allen Hamilton noted.

"Succession planning is an essential tool to deal not only with anticipated departures, but also with retention," the report states. "With federal budget cuts, many federal managers will be unable to fill all their openings. Succession planning can help managers determine truly critical skills and positions, and can help them strategize about how to develop their talent."