The US government has been facing a staffing problem for a long time, and still, there appears no solution to this problem. Moreover, after the eruption of COVID-19, these staffing problems will be more and more severe with time. The aging workforce, demographic restrictions, trends, shortage of essential skills, and tarnished brands are the main concerns that make it evident that there are staffing problems in the government system.
Due to the pandemic, where millions of people have lost their jobs, staffing has become much more severe. People have been repatriated to their home states after losing their jobs and living the life of an unemployed person. In this situation, there is a more significant burden on organizations as they have unskilled people, as most skilled people have either retired or have lost their jobs.
So, now, when the agencies open recruitment, there will be fewer salaries to offer. On the other hand, offering attractive salaries is not only a problem for the agencies, but the real problem is that they have to go with the new hires. So, a lot of these agencies’ time will be lost in training the newly hired employees.
These new hires with no experience in the government sector, agencies have to change their way of managing people.
In all this situation, the General Schedule salary system is a core problem that does not let any other thing get right. So, let’s discuss the things that make the General Schedule Salary System a core problem of the whole infrastructure.
What Are the Problems Associated with the General Schedule Salary System?
Several factors contribute to the ill-performance of the General Schedule Salary System. Some of the core problems are outlined below:
The Office of Personnel Management had been handed over to this department. Still, there is very little care from the OPM for this department because it is highly bureaucratic and costly to administer. It has been since some of the class standards were not updated, and they are working with obsolete and dilapidated provisions. On the other hand, the OPM has no staff to appoint the right person for the right job.
The second most crucial problem with the General Schedule Salary System is that starting salaries is too short of hiring a well-educated and well-graded person for the job. This adds more difficulties for the government.
In other sectors, the most common criterion for setting salaries is to look at the competitors. In short, it needs to be examined at what level what salary package is being offered. But, in the case of BSL/OPM, this is not the case. They don’t even know whether they are offering a higher salary than the market or lower. This is again one of the most significant problems of the General Schedule Salary System.
There is a stereotype that halts the growth of the system. The habit of creating a culture of compliance truly halts the minds of staff to grow. And later on, it becomes hard for them to tackle any problematic situation.
Up till now, the biggest problem has been to comply with the rules and regulations that were made in 1949. And still, only those vacancies are advertised to be filled that were added in 1949. While all other agencies and departments have upgraded themselves, BSL/OPM is still there with the same rules and regulations.
Having analyzed all these problems, it becomes evident that there is no single person who could justify it all. In short, even OPM/BLS are unable to substantiate the situation.
Is a New White-Collar Pay Program Necessary?
No doubt, the salaries of the employees play an essential role in bringing amelioration into their work. If wages are good, most probably, the performance will be excellent, and if the payment is not up to date, the employee has to find some other source of income to fill its needs. So, the best solution to resolve this issue is to abandon the General Schedule Salary System and bring another system worthy of implementation.
More than 1000 surveys have been conducted by different groups to analyze the pay system of job families. Using this, the government can bring a sustainable mechanism for the white-collar pay system. But up till now, no interest or willingness has been shown to do this.
Although NAPA has recommended the government to change this banded system of salaries for white-collar jobs many times, especially for engineers and IT experts, there is still no action on these recommendations too.
Therefore, in this situation, the staffing problem will remain there in the agencies. It truly does not matter how many people are working in the agency, but what matters the most is the quality of work that the workforce puts behind agencies.
The Federal government spends about $100 billion on the salaries of employees serving as white-collar employees. There are no checks and balances for who is paid what, so to avoid this situation, the Federal government of the USA must bring a new salary system for white-collar employees. This is how it will be easy for the government to appoint specific people in a particular task and their specific pay programs.
After the pandemic, the government has the best chance to implement new pay programs for white-collar employees.
Final Words:
This is one of the hardest times in the world, as unemployment has reached its peak. Millions of people have lost their jobs due to stagnant economic growth. There have been many issues in which mismanagement was at its peak just because there’s a General Schedule Salary System that does not segregate employees according to their nature and eligibility.
So, to bring improvement in the institutions, there is a dire need to introduce a system of separated banded salaries. These separated banded salaries will help the government in assigning highly professional people for high jobs. On the other hand, the General Schedule Salary System is the root cause of the problem. Unless it is eliminated, it will be hard to expect something better from the staff.
After the pandemic, the government will have the best opportunity to bring these reforms in the pay programs of white-collar employees; otherwise, things will not get better with the same dilapidated system adopted in 1949.
