Like many organizations, federal agencies face challenges successfully acquiring, developing, and retaining talent. Investing in and enhancing the value of employees through training and development is a crucial part of addressing this challenge. However, constrained budgets and the need to address gaps in critical federal skills/competencies mean that training dollars must be invested effectively.
This guide can help federal agencies improve their training efforts by providing a number of ways to assess how they plan, design, implement, and evaluate effective training and development programs.
This guide has helped assess agencies’ efforts to develop effecting training and development programs. However, federal agencies should continue to monitor how they approach training and development.
For instance:
Federal agencies are implementing several leading practices to make strategic decisions about staff training, such as determining the best mix of decentralized and centralized training. However, they do not always prioritize training so that the most important needs are met first, evaluate the benefits of training, or take steps to ensure that they aren’t duplicating internal training investments.
Following ship collisions in 2017 that resulted in the loss of 17 sailors’ lives and significant damage to Navy ships, the Navy has added classroom and simulator training for the Surface Warfare Officers who drive these ships. The Navy plans to triple ship-driving training hours by 2021. However, the Navy does not yet have a plan to collect fleet-wide feedback on the quality of the new training or routinely test ship-driving skills.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has faced a number of challenges in the past few decades in meeting its varied responsibilities and training its staff appropriately. The agency has taken steps to incorporate some strategic management principles into its workforce planning and training