Federal Employee Development Plans
Each Federal position should have an Employee Development Plan attached to it. This plan would consist of education, experiential training, and other tasks and goals designed to help the employee become more proficient at their current job, and also prepare them for promotion to higher-level positions. This would make government more efficent in three ways: agencies would have a viable, powerful tool for succession ...more »
Each Federal position should have an Employee Development Plan attached to it. This plan would consist of education, experiential training, and other tasks and goals designed to help the employee become more proficient at their current job, and also prepare them for promotion to higher-level positions.
This would make government more efficent in three ways: agencies would have a viable, powerful tool for succession planning; employees would be encouraged and rewarded for high acheivement; and burnt-out or unsuccessful employees could be replaced with higher-performing ones.
Succession planning in many agencies is limited at best, and training dollars are often the first to be cut from a program's budget. However, there are shortages of talent for many necessary Federal positions. If each employee has training and development written into their position, agencies could be better prepared for the future, and more likely to make an investment in their staff. Agencies would be actively developing their future leadership, and employees would see clear opportunities for an ambitious career path in the Federal government.
Opportunities for education, promotion, and personal development would attract many high-performing and ambitious workers. A continuous focus on high acheivement, rather that taking the safe route and doing "good enough", would encourage staff to bring new ideas forward and seek out ways to make their agencies perform better.
Requiring employees to stay active in their own development, and having Progress Reviews every 3-5 years, would allow managers to make performance-based decisions to reward high achievers, and release workers who are stagnant or unsatisfactory. Concrete, objective standards would give employees clear goals to work towards.
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