More than four-in-10 executives in the federal government who said their workforces were inadequate to deliver on agency missions identified “political pressure” as a reason for that deficiency, according to a new survey.
Among all the top officials—both career and non-career—who responded to the Partnership for Public Service and Princeton University survey, 60% said their workforces maintained shortcomings that created a “significant obstacle” in conducting their work. They were most likely to list the lengthy federal hiring process as an encumbrance, followed by a lack of career growth opportunities for staff and an inability to compete with salaries from other employers.
The 44% of executives who pointed to political pressure to stymie workforce growth as having a negative impact on workforce capacity marked a drop off from the last time the Partnership and Princeton conducted the survey in 2014. That year, following the intense budgetary pressures created by sequestration, 56% of executives attributed workforce shortcomings to political pressures to slow the growth of staff. Sixty percent cited a lack of resources as problematic that year, compared to 54% this year.
Early in the Trump administration, the White House issued a mandate for every agency in government to come up with plans to reduce its workforce. The administration has since backed away from those plans, though many agencies have seen significant reductions to their rolls. It has also faced significant criticism for exerting improper political influence on career leaders and workforces, with allegations particularly increasing during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Less than half of executives feel they have enough employees “to do a quality job,” the survey found, while just 36% said leadership is held accountable for ..
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