by Site Staff
March 27, 2006
Like most agencies and departments in the federal government, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) faces the looming retirements of a substantial portion of its workforce. And because the IRS’ senior leadership is largely comprised of older personnel, it’s not surprising that this trend would have significant implications for this tier of the organization. Rebecca Johnson, director of leadership and education at the agency’s human capital office, is responsible for executing the strategy that ensures the IRS’ pipeline is full of candidates with vision, drive and proficiency in communication and management.
“We have a mission to provide our learning customers with competency-based training that enhances their job performance,” she said. “As the director of leadership and education in the human capital office, I have responsibility for the leadership training program. Our business units have the more technical training responsibilities embedded in those organizations. Ours has the more corporate and organizational vision-setting policies and those types of things.”
The IRS uses a suite of assorted modalities to deliver learning to its approximately 100,000 workers. The blended learning approach is a relatively recent trend for the organization and has entailed a dramatic shift from classroom-based, face-to-face training to a more technology-enabled learning environment.
“Because we have that corporate vision and responsibility in the human capital office, we actually have the technology infrastructure for the entire organization,” Johnson said. “When we talk about changing that culture to be more technology-based, where we’re headed is making that more e-learning-based. Not only is it moving to that technology infrastructure, but it’s also that cultural change. People enjoy that face-to-face interaction, but if we can achieve the same results and have the same success with technology-based training, it’s far more cost-effective. In regards to leadership, we’re undertaking a curriculum review to determine if there are ways to incorporate e-learning into leadership training for some of those soft skills. You need to have follow-up and precursor courses, and those are things that can be done online.”
To facilitate this transition, Johnson and her team have relied on systems that aren’t exclusive to the IRS.
“When we’ve tried to integrate with other federal initiatives, which is part of the President’s Management Agenda, we used an enterprise learning management infrastructure, which we’ve deemed ELM,” she said. “It’s an OPM (Office of Personnel Management) type of platform. We are one of a number of federal agencies that are using it, and private companies are using it too. It’s a platform to move us ahead of the game in regards to having that large e-learning infrastructure.”
Because the organization structure of learning is decentralized at the IRS, Johnson and her staff are only responsible for directly training candidates for leadership positions. During the organization’s fiscal year 2005, 1,139 individuals went through training programs that came out of her department, but there is definitely room to grow.
“We would probably train three times as many if we did not run into budget constraints,” she said.
The overall leadership development program is divided into three sequential groups: frontline managers, senior managers and executives. In each level, participants must successfully pass through a readiness phase, then proceed on to a comprehensive training regimen. The results so far have been very positive, Johnson said. In the most recent frontline manager program, 18 out of the 21 participants were selected for management positions for graduation day. Additionally, the frontline and senior management readiness programs have recorded an overall success rate of 85 percent, while the executive readiness level registered 71 percent.
“As everyone understands, in the federal government we have what we’re calling ‘the graying of the federal workforce,'” she said. “We’re working on having solid succession planning, and our leadership program is really designed to have the best individuals ready for leadership positions. As they experience and move through those processes, we’re really building on their skills.”
Brian Summerfield, brians@clomedia.com