Human Resources

“Generation No” – Insighting an Intergenerational War

I just received today’s installment of “The Daily Pipeline” from the Partnership for Public Service and was angered when I read the opinion piece by Thomas Schweich entitled “Generation No.” Here’s how he starts his thoughts: “You know you have arrived when you get interviewed by the 29-year-old instead of the 22-year-old,” the 57-year-old foreignRead… Read more »

Brain Drain in the Intelligence Community?

Ed O’Keefe’s Federal Eye blog this morning had an enlightening post about how many of the leaders in the intelligence community are baby-boomers poised for retirement. In fact, there was a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing yesterday that highlighted these concerns. To be more precise, the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission putRead… Read more »

Cost/Benefit Analysis Part 1 – The Government Line

I’ll be writing a series of posts on Cost/Benefit Analysis. First the Government line: baseline excerpts from government hosted publications regarding cost/benefit analysis, and links back to the publication. OMB Circular A094 – Guidelines and Discount Rates for Benefit-Cost Analysis of Federal Programs: …A program is cost-effective if, on the basis of life cycle costRead… Read more »

The 4-Day Work Week: Could it Really Work?

I caught an article recently about a Louisiana House committee questioning a proposal to put state agencies on a shorter workweek. Of course thsi is being sold as a cost-saving idea by the sponsoring legislator. State Rep. Rickey Hardy, D-Lafayette, asked the House Committee on Labor and Industrial Relations to consider changing state employees’ workweeksRead… Read more »

Ten Guiding Principles for E-civil Service

I Introduction Is there anything called e-civil service or electronic civil service? If so, what is it? How does it differ from the traditional civil service? How can it keep pace with technological developments? What role does it have in Government 2.0? Is there any conflict between old conduct rules for the civil servants andRead… Read more »

An HR Style Thanksgiving

I’m one of those guys who is a very big fan of Thanksgiving dinner. I like to help with the menu, the shopping, the preparation and the presentation. I enjoy the noise of a football game in the background and sneak peeks at the TV for a quick cheer and scream. And once the tableRead… Read more »

The Multi-Dimensional Public Servant

In the media, government employees are cast like they are a different species. Living underground in caves, we speak a different language (bureaucratize), have different morals (obscurity), and generally make your life difficult. One of the most interesting things I’ve found working in public service is the diversity of the public service. I’m particularly interestedRead… Read more »

Mainstreaming

Seems to me like this little economic crisis thing may just propel our profession into an organic change of its own. For some time I’ve thought that the next evolution for HR will be to displace responsibility to operational management. Said differently, that we enable others to do for themselves what we’ve been doing forRead… Read more »