SES

  • A bill that makes it easier for the Veterans Affairs Secretary to fire senior executives could extend to all other employees at the department. The probationary period for new employees would also get longer -- from 12 to 18 months. House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller says too few people at the department have been held accountable for the patient wait time scandal that emerged into public view last year -- nor for other management failings at VA. The VA Accountability Act of 2015 cleared the committee earlier this week. It will likely go to a full House vote during the last week in July. Carol Bonosaro is the president of the Senior Executives Association, which drafted a letter to Congress this week raising several objections to the bill. She tells In Depth guest host Jared Serbu about the differences between this bill, and a similar one introduced in Congress last year.

    July 17, 2015
  • Federal executives say they worry about the capacity of their workforce and how it impacts their agencies’ performance in a recent “Future of Government Service” survey released this month.

    July 17, 2015
  • VA Accountability Act of 2015, would extend the probationary period for new employees to at least 18 months from the current 12. All employees would have a shorter window in which to appeal their firing or demotion.

    July 15, 2015
  • The White House is launching a leadership development program so small the participants could easily fit around a single conference table. Yet if successful, they could revolutionize the way the government tackles its most complex problems.

    July 01, 2015
  • Members of the Senior Executive Service report much higher satisfaction at their agencies than the employees who work for them, according to a new report.

    July 01, 2015
  • The annual "Best Places to Work in the Federal Government" survey measures employees' job satisfaction, and is sponsored by the Office of Personnel Management, the Partnership for Public Service and Deloitte Consulting. When you dig into the numbers, you find something odd: Big differences between the viewpoints of rank-and-file federal employees and those in the Senior Executive Service. David Dye, the director of Federal Human Capital Services at Deloitte, joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to analyze those differences.

    July 01, 2015
  • Federal jobs are not the easiest or the best-paid, but at least they're secure. Or so the thinking went. That long-held belief is less prevalent today than it once was, particularly among Senior Executive Service members. A 2014 law that gave Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald more leeway to fire SES members has taken a toll on members' morale government-wide. Many are questioning their career choices. That finding comes from a Senior Executives Association survey on the possibility of at-will employment. SEA President Carol Bonosaro discussed it with Federal News Radio's Emily Kopp.

    April 01, 2015
  • A new survey shows just how jittery Senior Executive Service members are following a landmark law targeting SES members in the Veterans Affairs Department. When asked about at-will employment, SES members questioned their choice of careers and said they would not recommend it to others.

    April 01, 2015
  • Two dozen federal employees will form a group advising the President on possible changes to the Senior Executive Service. The White House wants advice on improving how the government recruits, hires, develops and retains SES members. John Benison is the equal employment opportunity director at Housing and Urban Development, and a member of the president's advisory group. He joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with an early morning report.

    March 31, 2015
  • The real test will be if the panel created by the administration is allowed to tell the truth and make something happen, says Federal News Radio's Francis Rose in a new commentary.

    March 30, 2015
  • The key to SES reform is not about tweaking the SES or writing a set of guiding principles that no one will follow. Former DHS human capital exec Jeff Neal takes you inside his idea for an entirely new merit-based construct, neither career nor political, that is focused on a much smaller number of critical federal jobs.

    March 26, 2015
  • The White House has chosen a group of two dozen federal employees to offer advice on potential changes to the Senior Executive Service. They come from many facets of government. Their mission is to improve the way senior executives are recruited, hired, developed and retained. Will they be successful? John Palguta is the vice president for policy at the Partnership for Public Service. He joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to offer his take.

    March 24, 2015
  • The White House has named two dozen federal employees to a group that will advise the president on possible changes to the Senior Executive Service. Obama joined the group at its meeting Thursday.

    March 20, 2015
  • If you believe the surveys, employee engagement has been declining across the federal government for years. A recent Presidential Personnel memo makes the Senior Executive Service accountable for several agencies' employee engagement through the SES performance management system. So how do you go about increasing engagement? David Dye, a director in Deloitte's Federal Human Capital Group, joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to offer some answers.

    March 17, 2015