USAID turns to workarounds to deal with staff shortage: OIG report

The U.S. Agency for International Development faces chronic challenges related to strategic workforce planning — which were exacerbated by a hiring freeze during former President Donald Trump’s administration and by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the agency’s Office of Inspector General. In a report published last month, the USAID watchdog found that the agency failed to meet congressionally funded staffing levels in the 2020 fiscal year, hiring just over half of the civil and foreign service staff members it had planned. The effort to increase staff numbers came in the wake of a hiring freeze imposed by the Trump administration, which caused staffing levels to decline and prompted U.S. lawmakers to step in with directives for a hiring plan and timeline to meet the staffing levels they had funded. The agency planned to hire a combined 571 civil and foreign service staff members by the end of fiscal 2020 but only hired 310, or 54% of its target workforce, according to the report. A combination of bureaucratic confusion, sudden changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and chronic issues with USAID’s strategic workforce planning capabilities contributed to the agency’s challenges in meeting its hiring targets, the OIG found. “In the absence of clear Agency-wide policies and procedures, operating units have developed ad hoc approaches toward assessing their workforce needs and identifying and addressing skill gaps,” the report read, adding that “USAID lacked a comprehensive approach to human capital management.” “As a result, USAID risks missing an opportunity to strategically hire and manage its human capital resources to meet workforce needs and fully address Agency-wide skill gaps,” the OIG found. USAID Administrator Samantha Power has been outspoken about the need to address the agency’s workforce shortages. “Over several years, USAID’s workforce has been sorely depleted, and our current numbers of civil service and foreign service staff are well short of our needs, even as global conflicts are lasting longer, development needs are accelerating, and the number of complex emergencies we deal with each year has ballooned … from 16 to 44” in the past two decades, she said in November. Power said the staffing shortfalls have forced USAID to engage in “unsustainable workarounds,” with roughly 90% of positions in the Global Health, Humanitarian Assistance, and Conflict Prevention and Stabilization bureaus filled through short-term contracts. USAID’s shortage of foreign service officers has also forced the agency’s employees into arrangements that tax their well-being, according to Jason Singer, USAID vice president of the American Foreign Service Association. “USAID’s shortage of career officers, lack of strategic workforce planning and consequential complex bidding requirements mean that too many FSOs serve tour after tour in positions beyond their personal ranks—and this has a number of negative consequences,” he wrote in the April issue of The Foreign Service Journal. FSOs serving in “stretch positions” do not receive higher pay or promotion benefits, Singer wrote — and since they feel taken advantage of, they often experience increased stress, overwork and exhaustion, and resentment toward the agency and their colleagues. “This is especially true when there is no agency strategic workforce plan to address the situation. Resentment is not healthy for individuals or for agency morale. In some cases, resentment and related tensions can even undercut operations,” Singer wrote. The OIG’s recommendations to USAID include creating a plan to fill the Office of Human Capital and Talent Management positions that are needed to undertake the strategic workforce planning and hiring that USAID’s leadership and lawmakers have deemed necessary. The OIG also advised USAID to create a specific definition of “skill gaps” that its operating units can use to determine and act upon their hiring needs. USAID did not respond to an inquiry from Devex by press time.