Above: BLM employee prepares to monitor water quality in BLM's Glennallen District, Alaska. (photo by Edward Bovy, BLM's Alaska State Office)
The fundamental viability of the public lands, and the well-being of those who use and work upon them, depends largely upon the professional skills and personal dedication of the men and women who staff the Bureau's nationwide organization. The BLM recognizes its responsibility for maintaining and protecting America's public domain, and it likewise accepts its obligation to develop and prepare those who will become its stewards in the years ahead.
Human Resources Management (HRM) encompasses the functions of traditional personnel management and equal employment opportunity programs. It combines the complementary elements of workforce assessment, recruitment, employment, training, career development, conflict management, and affirmative employment to ensure that the BLM's workforce is prepared to meet its mission requirements. The HRM program exists to support managers in ensuring that BLM's workforce has the right skills in the right place at the right time.
The HRM Program is divided into five organizational entities. Three of these--the Office of the Assistant Director, the Executive Initiatives Group, and the Washington Office Equal Employment Opportunity Group--are located at the BLM headquarters in Washington, D.C. These organizations provide policy, direction, and program coordination for the Bureau's HRM programs, as well as operational services to headquarters.
The National Human Resource Management Center, located in Denver, provides a wide range of operational and support services to BLM's field organization. And the National Training Center, located in Phoenix, develops and presents training tailored to BLM's unique natural resources management programs.
In fiscal year 1997, the BLM functioned in the environment of uncertainty that accompanies transition and change. Fiscal year 1996 had seen significant reductions in the Bureau's experience base through losses of senior personnel due to regular and incentive-based retirements, as well as the overall restructuring of its headquarters staff to a matrix, team-based organization. In FY 1997, the BLM began to deal with the impending restructuring of the field offices from a traditional three-tier to a new two-tier structure. And, increasingly, the prospect of de facto reductions in operating funds through static levels of funding challenged BLM managers and employees to maintain productivity in the face of diminishing dollar and personnel resources.
The Nation's public lands are rich in their diversity, encompassing grasslands, forests, mountains, arctic tundra, and the desert. This diversity enriches the experiences of those who use and visit the public lands, and it adds value and purpose to the legacy of our natural heritage.
In many ways, the evolving demographics of the United States provide a parallel to BLM's varied sphere of operations. The changing population, characterized by increasing ethnic and racial diversity and growing calls for inclusion and participation in all walks of life, is creating a societal mosaic as rich and varied as the public lands themselves. It is from this mosaic that the stewards of the BLM's lands are drawn--a multi-disciplinary workforce of scientific, engineering, and program support personnel who are competent, efficient, and dedicated to public service.
The BLM strives to ensure that its workforce reflects and responds to the needs of our diversifying population, and that tomorrow's employees will be fully prepared to assume the task of managing the public lands. Because minorities, women, and the handicapped are not well represented in mainstream occupations in the natural and biological sciences and engineering, the BLM is pledged to working steadfastly toward achieving parity between its workforce and the cultural make-up of the Nation's population.
In responding to the needs of its customers, the BLM strives to ensure the capability and dedication of its employees as well as the inclusion and participation of its various publics. The HRM program plays a major role in helping the Bureau to meet these challenges. Through its communities of personnelists and equal employment opportunity practitioners, the HRM program provides continuing advice, information, and operational assistance to individuals at all levels of the agency.
To managers and supervisors, HRM provides active support in defining organizations, planning and evaluating work, and troubleshooting problems involving people. To Bureau employees, it provides day-to-day administrative services centered around the conditions, benefits, and responsibilities of Federal employment.
In 1997, the BLM developed its new Strategic Plan which, when implemented in 1998, will define clear objectives for improving program operations over a five-year period. For its part, HRM has established goals that focus on improving human resource management. They are to maintain a trained and motivated workforce and to institutionalize diversity and improve workforce composition. Many of the accomplishments of the HRM Program in FY 1997 already address these goals, a year in advance of the formal implementation of the Strategic Plan. The accomplishments listed below are reported in accordance with these two goals.
The Bureau is striving to ensure that its workforce reflects the diversity of the lands and resources that the agency manages. (BLM file photo)
BLM employees are highly qualified and committed to high standards of resource management and customer service. Most actively sought careers in natural resources management and have remained with the agency for many years.
BLM employees' performance is based on two factors: their ability to do their jobs and their motivation to serve their customers. The BLM continually endeavors to find effective ways to keep its workforce well trained and motivated in this era of change in order to successfully meet its programmatic goals.
The BLM's plan for maintaining a trained and motivated workforce is focused on assisting supervisors, managers, team leaders, and employees in identifying critical occupational skills and in acquiring appropriate training to support the BLM mission. Specific goals, targeted for 1999, are to identify critical BLM occupations for the future and identify the skills required for those occupations, and to provide a full range of support services through the National Training Center, including training course development, video conferencing, distance learning, and the adaptation of educational products from outside sources.
The Bureau is increasingly turning to video and satellite broadcast technology to train its employees. (BLM file photo)
The Bureau's National Training Center is a state-of-the-art training facility established to provide maximum flexibility in developing and presenting training products to meet BLM's unique technical and administrative requirements. Designed with an eye to the future, it incorporates a fully equipped distance learning capability, including a television studio with satellite downlink/uplink capabilities, a production staff, and classrooms and conference rooms. As an entrepreneurial enterprise, the Center's facilities are also open to other Federal agencies in the Phoenix area.
During FY 1997, the National Training Center accomplished the following:
Land record assistance in State Office Public Room, Anchorage, Alaska. (photo by Edward Bovy, BLM's Alaska State Office)
In addition to these training accomplishments, the Bureau updated its overall HRM strategy to assess the status of the program. This updated strategy, which has redefined the objectives of the HRM program, describes how the various components of the program will function in the cooperative pursuit of the Bureau's goals and objectives.
The Bureau also developed a competency framework for professional employees. This framework was created to ensure that needed professional expertise is vested in BLM's workforce and that information provided by BLM professionals to decision makers meets recognized standards. Initially used in conjunction with Procurement and Fire Management professionals, these competency models will be applied to other professional series in FY 1998.
A reference guide for managers and supervisors was developed to address personnel management and equal employment opportunity issues that arise in the workplace. This easily updated loose-leaf manual addresses position management, recruitment, hiring authorities, employee orientation, affirmative employment program operations, conflict management, ethics and standards of behavior, counseling, and discipline.
As is the case with many Federal employers, minorities and women are under-represented in many of BLM's mainstream occupations, so the Bureau has renewed its commitment to employ a workforce that mirrors the demographic composition of the Nation. In 1997, the BLM redirected its attention to reshaping its corporate culture to one that more clearly emphasizes inclusion and participation by all Americans.
This objective is strategically prudent to maintain BLM's capability to conduct program operations in the future, and it also makes good business sense, given the growing diversity of BLM's constituents and customers. To know the public land users--the Bureau's customers--and to serve them well requires that the BLM understand them, and a most effective way of accomplishing this is to employ people who represent all facets of America's diverse population.
Historically, many BLM jobs have required a background in natural science, a field not traditionally selected by women or minorities in large numbers. In addition, many positions have been located in rural areas, well away from favored urban centers. In the face of these challenges, the BLM has turned to long-term planning, the use of effective recruitment approaches, and the institution of management accountability principles as a means of correcting under-representation in the workforce.
The BLM's plan for institutionalizing diversity and improving workforce composition is based upon the concept of systematically increasing the representation of minorities, women, and persons with disabilities within planned and designated occupational series. Specific goals are established for the year 2000, the primary vehicles being BLM's new Workforce Diversity Program Plan and the cooperative education program, now known as the Student Career Experience Program.
The Bureau's overall Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Program is divided into two major functional areas--the EEO Complaints Program, which is intended to ensure non-discrimination in employment, and the Affirmative Employment Program, which seeks to achieve parity in the representation of racial and ethnic groups in BLM's workforce compared to their representation in the civilian labor force.
|
|
In support of its goals, the BLM accomplished the following in FY 1997:
