There are several new wrinkles in the OPM government employee survey currently being distributed to your agency’s workforce. Among its most significant enhancements is timeliness: OPM is increasing the distribution frequency of this mainstay tool to every year, rather than every two years as before.

The survey also has a new name. Formerly the Federal Human Capital Survey (FHCS), it’s now the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, a rebranding that reflects an expanded emphasis on employee engagement and other morale factors. At the very top level, engagement denotes the degree to which federal employees identify with their agency’s mission and with the concrete ways in which their agency manages its workforce to support that mission.

But it’s clearly more complex and nuanced than that. A tried-and-true—very broad and basic--metric for gauging employee engagement is job satisfaction. The central question here: does a given employee feel included and appreciated by colleagues, supervisors, and managers for his or her talents and contributions? By and large, a disengaged team member usually falls somewhere on the scale between mildly cynical and entirely alienated. And you can be sure a disengaged team member is anything but fully productive and supportive of agency goals.

But what’s the connection between employee engagement and success at recruitment, an all-important element for both OPM and our TMP Government team? The tie-in is direct. As OPM helps agencies create workplace cultures that attract the best and the brightest, its survey results are core progress assessment tools. And they also form the basis for the Best Places to Work rankings from the Partnership for Public Service, which in turn directly influence many government job-seekers during the application process. Similarly, if engagement findings (and Partnership rankings) are favorable, they boost word-of-mouth enthusiasm among an agency’s own employees--in itself a powerful recruiting asset.

But will all these survey enhancements advance OPM’s stated objective of making the government “America’s model employer for the 21^st Century?” That’s an extraordinarily ambitious goal, certainly, but the energy and discipline that the OPM team is pouring into all its programs—not just the employee survey--gives this commentator some reason for optimism on this score.

If you’re interested, I can point you to an online copy of the survey instrument. But please wait to ask me until after the data gathering closes in mid-March.

Judging by their efforts, the most pro-active practitioners of social media outreach in the government are turning enthusiastically to the mobile web, Facebook, and other Gov 2.0 modes as they strive to expand their respective agencies’ prestige and audience reach.

For those of us who are focused on recruitment, it’s a little surprising that most of these initiatives don’t begin with the intent of attracting new hires. Still, these leading agencies are building their brands and that, done well, results directly in more informed and enthusiastic recruits.

Here are three examples of federal organizations that are demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of the power of social media, although each emphasizes a different aspect of the challenge:

• the U.S. Army’s IPhone application,
• the White House’s use of video on its Facebook page, and
• the EPA ‘s development of guidelines for its employees’ use of social media.

The Army has released an IPhone app that allows access to a vast store of materials, including content from the Army’s Facebook and Flickr pages, as well as all the video products on its Web site. Released in mid-December, the app achieved more than 20,000 downloads in its first month alone, soaring to a Top-25 ranking for free news sources at the iTunes App store. Take note of its Find a Recruiter facility if you need evidence of the app’s more direct contribution to recruiting. You can find out how to download the app at www.army.mil/mobile/.

Best Practies case number two is the White House, which recently posted a seven-minute video on its Facebook page. The video is a professionally produced mini-documentary about the White House advance team’s trip to an Ohio town to prep for a presidential visit. From a branding standpoint, this slice-of-life coverage, complete with jiggly hand-held camera work, reinforces the authenticity and appeal of everyday activities by the team. Other agencies—particularly those with a more urgent mission to recruit employees actively—can find a polished model here. This is exposure to on-the-job reality at its best, an indispensible tool for reinforcing the appeal of an agency to the community of potential recruits, which is almost always more expansive than agency human capital planners imagine.

My last case is not flashy in any way, but underscores an emerging need in federal social media use: how to ensure that overenthusiastic employees don’t go overboard with the tools at their disposal. EPA’s guidelines are judicious and prescient. Among agencies that encourage informed employee/brand ambassador use of social media, this is a first. In the hope that other agencies will emulate it, I’m reprinting EPA’s handy flowchart below.

In our view at TMP Government, this is a question that sorely needs to be asked. My colleague John Bersentes and I have attempted to frame an answer to this puzzle in an article forthcoming in the March issue of The Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.

We raise concerns about issues like…

• competition with the private sector for talented Latinos
• the relative scarcity of Hispanic-Americans in regions where the Feds recruit most heavily
• the absence of visible high-level government champions for Hispanic inclusion
• the absence of multi-agency, common-cause initiatives to tackle the challenge
• the possibility that agencies are unconsciously channeling bilingual Hispanics into customer contact positions and effectively discounting their qualifications for other career paths

The government’s lack of progress on this front is a very serious problem—especially considering the rapid growth of the Hispanic workforce in the American economy at large. If the Feds continue to lose ground here at the accelerating pace we’re observing, there will almost certainly be formal mandates from the top to kick Hispanic recruiting into gear. But I’m just wondering if a state-of-emergency catch-up policy is really the soundest human capital policy.

You can find a long excerpt from John’s and my article right now on ERE.net. Your best bet is to go here to read the posted excerpt and add your comments.

In October I commented on government agencies’ growing use of Facebook and Twitter. My focus then, based on a pair of September articles in Federal Computing Week, was on these social media tools as aids to recruitment. I’ve since taken a closer look at this trend.

The takeaway from my informal scan of federal social media: this trend is growing like a swath of mushrooms after a spring rain. I counted more than thirty major agencies or departments with Facebook pages and innumerable others on Twitter (contact me for a full list, if you’re interested).

None of the government Facebook pages that I found appears to be mounted with much conscious attention to recruiting. Most are devoted to agency programs and activities, and most are (first) linked from their sponsor’s home page, rather than their Careers sections.

What does this tell us? I’d venture that in most of these instances the creative impetus to enter the social media realm originated with agency public affairs professionals rather than HR staff. This doesn’t diminish their effectiveness as collateral recruiting tools. After all, they do reinforce their sponsoring agencies’ brands, and that’s a bonus for recruiting…although a bit more focus on the agency culture--and its employees—would be nice. The same goes for Twitter.

All this is good news for human capital professionals and recruiters, even if your agency’s Facebook and Twitter outreach is administered by your public affairs department. In the first place, an agency social media presence is a powerful branding “hook” for engaging potential recruits. Just because HR doesn’t own your agency’s social media resources doesn’t disqualify you from at least promoting it in your recruiting outreach, both online and off.

What’s more, these tools can provide a recruiting engagement platform that’s accessible to HR at virtually no cost other than the exercise of your team’s intra-agency persuasive powers. If you can sell the team that administers these resources on letting HR contribute content, that’s a big win indeed for your recruiting program.

The federal government has suddenly become the "employer of choice." The call to serve and economic uncertainties are sending record numbers to government. In 2009, many federal agency HR departments have suddenly found themselves struggling to keep pace with an influx of resumes. Meanwhile surveys show that college students are more than willing to put fed jobs on their lists, ranking some agencies shoulder to shoulder with Google and Disney. Furthermore, the reasons behind the shift are likely to continue: The lack of private sector opportunities and the present administration’s emphasis on service will continue to keep USAJOBS hopping.

In 2010, agencies will be faced with the new challenges of the recruitment wave. Quantity is a great opportunity, but it doesn’t automatically ensure quality for your requirements. Nor does it necessarily bode well for retention. Adjusting to abundance requires new strategies for workforce planning, branding, selection and the entire hiring process. Stay tuned for more government recruitment challenges and trends.

The advent of 3G cellular nets —plus the widespread adoption of broadband-capable IPhones, Blackberries, and Android-equipped mobiles—promises an exciting new wrinkle in recruiting practice. Government recruiters should be particularly enthusiastic, because this technology effectively creates a new and stunningly inexpensive gateway for engaging recruits with convenient mobile phone access to your Web, online, and video materials.

The linchpin in this approach is the “QR” (or “Quick Response”) code. On the surface, QR codes appear blandly unimpressive. They’re no more than two-dimensional barcodes that contain short strings of text (for instance, a URL, an email address, or a phone number). But when a prospect uses his or her properly equipped mobile (more on this below) to photograph a QR code, the phone immediately cuesup its encoded text string ready for use as a link to the Web or to the autodial function of the smartphone. This means the prospect can connect directly by phone, or open a web site, or download a video or PDF, all without keyboard or touch screen input.

Need an example? Here’s the QR code for Wikipedia’s Mobile main page.

Admittedly, QR encoding represents only an incremental advantage over finger-keying. But it’s more than just a convenience factor. QR codes can be imprinted virtually anywhere, from a brochure or business card to a poster to a Job Fair station to a T-shirt or billboard or bus wrap. If you’re a particularly dedicated ambassador for your agency, you can even tattoo a QR code on yourself (a temporary tattoo of course).

Giving a presentation to potential recruits? Embed a QR code on the projected title page and your audience can download the full slide show, supporting materials, or even a virtual library of supporting materials on the spot, right to their mobile phones. Targeting selected campuses? Place an inexpensive fractional ad in the college daily and embed your QR code in the layout. Bonus: you’ve got the “cool” factor working for you with your primary targets of influence. And because this technology is mobile-based, you can track QR responses geographically.

This technology is already in widespread use in Japan, where it originated, and is enjoying enthusiastic adoption in Europe. Consider the British billboard on the left, which was central to the national promotion of the zombie film 28 Weeks Later. (The image at right is the QR code for TMP Government’s web page.)

Is the adoption curve favorable? The skeptics among you are probably citing the apparent complexity of linking all the elements necessary to complete the engagement cycle here. For instance…

• How do you create printable QR codes for your organization?
  [A: There are many free QR generators available on the Web. Do a Google search to find one.]
• What “apps” are necessary to equip a potential recruit’s mobile phone as a QR reader?
  [A: Just one, and there are scores available, all free. Go to this site (http://www.mobile-barcodes.com/qr-code-software/) for a hyperlinked list of downloadable reader apps.]
• Why are we so certain that potential recruits will embrace this technology?
  [A: Because they already are. In Japan, where this technology originated, its use is nearly ubiquitous. And again…the “cool” factor I mentioned above.]   

On the horizon: a new generation of QR codes. Get ready for the next stage…Mobile Multi-Colour Composite codes (or MMCCs). They pack scads more data into the barcode and can respond to a cell phone scan by returning embedded digital content that includes video, games, imagery, ringtones, and so on. And these barcodes do not need an internet connection to function. The data is all in the image itself.

Ponder that for a moment, and what it could mean for your mobile outreach to potential recruits.

On October 28, with little press fanfare, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) hosted what could have been a landmark event for the future of human capital management in government.

It was a roundtable at the Ronald Reagan Building, sponsored in collaboration with some high-powered allies – Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. Sound like a must-attend? Forget it. This off-the-record event is by-invitation-only, according to Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood. The invitation list is limited to only a few dozen participants from the administration, the unions, and a selection of thought leaders from both the private and public sectors.

We’re told that the group will discuss, among other questions:

• What will the government workforce look like (ideally) in five and ten years?
• What are the government’s greatest human capital needs in terms of people and systems, and what are the barriers to achieving these?
• How can the government improve its recruiting and hiring practices?

It’s certainly good news that these familiar topics are getting aired by some pretty heavy-hitters in the HR business. As the press is excluded from the event, OPM can do its part by sharing the outcomes of the meeting with its community of practice, and by cranking the good ideas that emerge into what, so far, has been its very promising agenda for federal workforce development.

Given the government’s reputation in some quarters as a stodgy, slow-to-adopt monolith in matters of online communication, some might expect Web 2.0 social media tools, spreading so infectiously in the private sector, to have little appeal among the feds (at least during this decade).

Federal Computer Week gives the lie to this cliché in two articles published earlier last month. FCW ranks the federal agencies most successful in using Twitter and Facebook, respectively, to engage the public. The reach and social media savvy of these early adopters might surprise you.

The agencies on either or both lists are not—primarily—reaching out with a human capital and recruiting agenda top-of-mind.  Even so, if you’re inclined to regard these social media programs merely as plain old information dissemination, you’re understating their influence on their audiences. That’s like calling a popular music concert just an exercise in listening enjoyment. Yes, the description may be accurate at its core, but—especially if it’s a rock, R&B, or hip-hop event—it doesn’t quite capture the full experience of being in the auditorium.

For many in these agencies’ social media audiences, that “experience” is charged with high value, and often as much as the information content itself. The truly committed among them gain what brand adherents thrive on—the felt sense that they are insiders and sharers. To me this seems like a pretty cost-effective way to tap the collective enthusiasm and energy of appreciative individuals, in effect, kick starting the social motor of brand contagion. In their efforts to cultivate attentive communities for the agency and the medium—not merely to distribute information—these leading agencies are showing that they “get” social marketing and Web 2.0.

Will the sponsoring agencies also reap recruiting benefits from these Gov 2.0 initiatives? Do you really need me to state this obvious benefit outright? As you build a compelling brand and a community of admirers, you will attract more and more qualified and enthusiastic individuals to your workforce. It's as simple as that.

Text in graphic on right:

Government Twitter leaders (FCW, September 10) 

• The White House: 1,071,927 followers
• CDC Emergency: 808,979 folowers
• NASA: 125.901 followers
• U.S. Army: 14,263 followers
• Smithsonian: 12711 followers

Government Facebook leaders (FCW, September 14)

• The White House: 327,592 fans
• Marine Corps: 83,144 fans
• U.S. Army: 49,416 fans
• CDC: 21,257 fans
• State Department: 16,386 fans

A new study shows just where the federal government is staffing up.

Last week The Partnership for Public Service released their report on where the jobs will be in the federal government over the next three years. Thirty-five federal agencies were surveyed and the top areas of openings projected are medical, security, law enforcement, legal and administrative.

So, unlike many sectors, jobs are there. The next questions: How will they get the best people for the slots? Will OPM’s strategic plan for making government the model employer help recruit the 270,000 mission-critical government jobs that will need to be filled? Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, said in a Washington Post article, “Fixing the hiring process is a key component in making it work”

Is this deja vu all over again? Check out my colleague Mark Havard’s comments in his blog, Are we finally on the road to hiring reform? “For his part, Berry’s own goal is no less than "a complete refresh of the federal government’s people policy." A lot of folks are rooting for him, including this commentator.”

That’s right the rumors are true: the federal government has fully acknowledged that it can no longer tolerate outdated hiring processes. Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management John Berry says in an interview with Wired.com, “Many of our policies and practices are – I wouldn’t go so far back as the 19^th century, but certainly the 1950s in terms of their approach. Our hiring, for instance, has become so cumbersome and so complicated that it is a nightmare…we need to make that simpler…allowing people a fair shot at a federal job.” And while Gen Y might enjoy retro for costume parties, today’s younger job seekers prefer a job seeking experience that blends with today’s transparent, anytime, anywhere environment.

Director Berry believes that these young people have much more to offer the feds than just a replacement for baby boomers, whose retirements remain uncertain due to the economy. “When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, the average age of the federal workers who were at Mission Control – the people who got him there safely and got him home – was in the late twenties,” Barry said. “We’re not the first generation to try to involve young folks…the government did it very effectively in the 60s, and those people produced miracles.”

A draft plan (PDF) written by OPM to make the federal government the model employer is currently online and comments from the public are encouraged. The four overall strategic goals include, recruiting and hiring the most talented, providing the tools necessary to help federal employees succeed in their careers, hold leaders and workforce accountable for results and reward those with exemplary performance. Do you think the government is on its way to being “America’s best employer?”