Out of Balance Workforce Could Impact Future Readiness - Air Force's civilian employees - Brief Article

OSSLYN, Va. -The current civilian workforce is not meeting Air Force needs, which could lead to future readiness problems, said Air Force officials at a civilian workshop held here in June.

During the three-day workshop top civilian managers discussed force-shaping strategies and other issues facing the Air Force civilian workforce.

"Our civilian workforce is out of balance," said David Mulgrew, Chief of the Air Force Civilian Force Management Division "Our acquisition, scientific, and technical workforce is not being sustained with an adequate influx of new employees with current, state-of-the-art skills. The Air Force needs force-shaping legislation, allowing the use of voluntary early retirement authority and voluntary separation incentive pay without position abolishment or reduction in force."

According to Mulgrew in the past 10 years there has been a 62 percent drop in the number of civilian employees with less than eight years of service, and 11 percent of all career employees are currently eligible for retirement.

"In five years, more than 45 percent of all civilian employees will be eligible for either optional or early retirement," he said.

Past reductions, made through a combination of loss programs such as early retirement authorities, separation incentive pay, and limited hiring practices were not balanced across the civilian workforce.

"We used voluntary early retirement authority and voluntary separation incentives to trim the senior year groups and to minimize involuntary actions such as reductions in force, which are so devastating organizationally and individually" Mulgrew said.

Reductions due to changes in hiring and retention negatively affected the profile of an increasingly senior civilian workforce. The drawdown was accomplished, in part, through limiting the number of new hires and offering incentives to junior and senior employees to separate, thus leaving a high percentage of employees who are rapidly approaching retirement eligibility

The Air Force has developed a three-pronged strategy - which includes accession planning, force development, and separation management - to address the need for force shaping and sustaining a quality civilian workforce; however, help from Congress in the form of legislation is also desired.

"Better tools in the form of expanded VERA and VSIP are needed to stimulate and manage separations," said James Carlock, Air Force Civilian Workforce Shaping Program Manager.

Congress has responded by introducing legislative initiatives addressing the problem. An amendment sponsored by Ohio Sen. George Voinovich and attached to the National Defense Authorization Act proposes expanding VERA and VSIP, and allowing broader authority for tuition reimbursement.

Separation incentive pay and early outs are currently authorized for force reduction situations to reduce the number of involuntary separations," Carlock said. "Expanding these tools will help to balance out the workforce by giving incentives to workers in targeted occupational series resulting in vacancies for trainee-level positions.

"This helps us move toward our objective of a balanced civilian force made up of the right mix of entry-, mid-, and senior-level employees in our most needed skills," he said.

Allowing broader authority for tuition reimbursement will help the Air Force sustain the knowledge and skills needed in the civilian workforce, Carlock added.

The Department of Defense workforce realignment initiative proposed by Voinovich would be effective Oct. 1 through Sept. 30, 2005. Under his proposal, employees may be offered VSIP up to $25,000 each in either a lump sum payment or annual equal installments. Under current rules VSIP is offered only in a lump-sum amount.

A separate bill sponsored by Ohio Reps. Tony P. Hall and David L. Hobson provides a pilot program for temporary authority to offer VSIP and VERA to a maximum of 1,000 Air Force employees annually from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, 2003, and offers a lump-sum payment option only.

"Both of these bills allow us to shape portions of the workforce," said Leif Peterson, Director of Civilian Personnel for the Air Force Materiel Command, which projects nearly 40,000 civilian employees will be eligible for early or optional retirement within the next five years. "The Senate version is a little broader and has better application for us because the coverage period is longer and the costs to the agency appear to be less, but they are both a step in the right direction."

But according to Peterson, the Air Force also needs legislation to streamline hiring practices.

"The one instrument I need most, and has the broadest application, is a streamlined hiring authority," he said. "We have dated hiring authorities now that are time-consuming and cumbersome. We need one that addresses the competitive marketplace, but still complies with public policy requirements, and is responsive to the competition we now face [from civilian companies]."

Editor's Note: Miller is with Air Force Print News. This information is in the public domain at www.af.mil/news.

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