United States General Accounting Office 

GAO Report to the Subcommittee on 

Legislative Branch, Committee on 

Appropriations, U.S. Senate 

October 2003 GOVERNMENT 

PRINTING OFFICE 

Advancing GPO’s 

Transformation Effort 

through Strategic 

Human Capital 

Management 

GAO-04-85


a
Highlights of GAO-04-85, a report to the 

Subcommittee on Legislative Branch, 

Committee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate 

The Government Printing Office 

(GPO) has undertaken the task of 

transforming itself in response to 

pressing fiscal and other realities in 

the 21st 

century. This report 

focuses on actions GPO’s leaders 

can take to advance its 

transformation efforts through 

strategic human capital 

management and is a part of GAO’s 

response to a congressional request 

that GAO conduct a general 

management review of GPO that 

focuses on issues related to GPO’s 

management and transformation. 

GAO plans to address other 

management topics, including 

strategic planning and financial 

management, in a series of reports 

that may assist GPO in its ongoing 

transformation efforts. 

GAO makes many interrelated 

recommendations that reflect the 

important role of human capital in 

GPO’s ongoing transformation. 

These recommendations provide a 

framework to reinforce GPO’s 

initial transformation efforts and 

enhance its future efforts. 

We provided a draft of this report 

in September 2003 to the Public 

Printer for review and comment. 

GPO’s Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief 

of Staff, and Chief Human Capital 

Officer provided comments orally 

and by e-mail on behalf of GPO 

generally agreeing with the 

content, findings, and 

recommendations in the draft 

report. 

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-85. 

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact J. Christopher 

Mihm at (202) 512-6806 or mihmj@gao.gov. 

October 2003 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

Advancing GPO’s Transformation Effort 

through Strategic Human Capital 

Management 

The Public Printer has demonstrated the leadership commitment that is 

essential to transforming GPO, stating that GPO is going to have to 

reengineer itself to remain relevant and viable for the future. Under the 

Public Printer’s direction, GPO has taken several steps that recognize the 

important role strategic human capital management plays in its 

transformation. For example, GPO created and filled the position of Chief 

Human Capital Officer (CHCO), shifted the focus of existing training and 

expanded opportunities for more staff to attend needed training, enhanced 

recruitment strategies, and initiated a process to develop an agency strategic 

plan and an accompanying strategic workforce plan. 

To sustain its transformation efforts, GPO’s leadership needs to ensure that 

managers throughout the agency appreciate the importance of their role in 

managing GPO’s workforce and helping transform the agency. Furthermore, 

now that GPO has hired a CHCO, it can begin to restructure its human 

resources office to better support its transformation by adopting a more 

strategic view of human capital management and by having human resources 

officials work collaboratively with GPO managers. To further support its 

transformation, GPO should use strategic workforce planning to help ensure 

that its staff has the skills needed to meet emerging needs. A workforce plan 

that includes both an inventory of current GPO employees’ knowledge and 

skills and an identification of the knowledge and skills GPO needs in the 

future will best support GPO’s transformation. Finally, a modern, effective, 

and credible performance management system can help GPO facilitate the 

transformation process and serve as the basis for establishing individuals’ 

roles and accountability in the transformation. Performance management 

can also help GPO achieve results, accelerate change, and facilitate two-way 

communication between managers and employees. 

GAO makes numerous recommendations to GPO on the steps it should take 

to strengthen its human capital management in support of its transformation. 

These recommendations can guide GPO as it seeks to meet the changing and 

emerging information needs of its customers. The focus of GAO’s 

recommendations is on the following four interrelated areas: 

• communicating the role of managers in GPO’s transformation, 

• strengthening the role of the human resources office, 

• 	 developing a strategic workforce plan to ensure GPO has the skills 

and knowledge it needs for the future, and 

• using a strategic performance management system to drive change. 

By implementing the recommendations in these four areas, GPO can build 

the strong human capital foundation needed to reinforce the transformation 

now under way. 
Contents


Letter 1 

Results in Brief 3 

Background 5 

Communicating the Role of Managers and Following Up on 

Employees’ Stated Concerns Is Vital to GPO’s Transformation 9 

Developing a Strategic Human Capital Office 12 

Strategic Workforce Planning Can Assist GPO’s Transformation 19 

Performance Management Can Help GPO Drive Internal Change and 

Achieve External Results 26 

Concluding Observations 34 

Agency Comments 35 

Appendix 

Appendix I: Objective, Scope, and Methodology 

Table Table 1: Key Agency Actions to Integrate Human Capital 

Approaches with Strategies for Accomplishing Agency 

Missions 

Figures Figure 1: 

Figure 2: 

Figure 3: 

Figure 4: 

Figure 5: 

Figure 6: 

Figure 7: 

The Net Operating Income (Loss) for GPO’s Major 


Operations (in Thousands of Dollars) 7


GPO’s Net Operating Income 8


GPO’s New Organizational Structure 16


Critical Elements to Include in the Workforce Planning 


Process 20


Examples of Workforce Data That Are Collected and


Analyzed by Other Federal Agencies 22


Key Practices for Effective Performance Management 28


2001 Performance Ratings for Current GPO 


Employees 31


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Page i GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 

36 

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Page ii GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Page 1 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 

A

United States General Accounting Office 

Washington, D.C. 20548 

October 20, 2003


The Honorable Ben Nighthorse Campbell


Chairman


The Honorable Richard J. Durbin


Ranking Minority Member


Subcommittee on Legislative Branch


Committee on Appropriations


United States Senate


Like other public and private organizations, the Government Printing


Office (GPO) has undertaken the enormous task of transforming itself in 


response to the pressing fiscal and other realities of the 21st century. This 


transformation process will eventually lead the organization to make some 


fundamental program and cultural changes. During his nomination hearing 


on October 3, 2002, the Public Printer emphasized GPO’s need to transform 


itself by stating that “. . . like every other manufacturing business in 


America, the GPO is going to have to reengineer itself if it is to remain 


relevant and viable for the future.” On several occasions, the Public Printer 


has reiterated the need for GPO to move from the 19th century to the 21st


century by looking at “. . . the changing and emerging information needs of 


our customers and develop a deeper understanding of our true strengths so 


that we can plan for and build a new business model that will allow us to 


meet the information demands of our customers.” To underscore these 


statements, the Public Printer has taken actions to transform GPO by


creating a new management structure, launching a major reorganization of 


GPO’s divisions, and initiating a demonstration project to allow federal 


agencies more flexibility in contracting for printing services. The Public 


Printer has also taken steps to reduce GPO’s persistent financial losses by 


closing bookstores1

 and reducing staffing levels. Finally, the Public Printer 


has initiated a process to develop an agency strategic plan and an 


accompanying strategic workforce plan.


GPO leadership already recognizes that implementing large-scale


organizational transformations are not simple endeavors. As we have 


noted, it typically takes at least 5 to 7 years until an organization’s change


initiatives are fully implemented, and the related culture is transformed in a


1

GPO closed all of its bookstores except for its Washington, D.C. bookstore. 

Page 1 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
sustainable manner.

2

 Further, successful transformations require the 

concentrated efforts of both leadership and employees to accomplish the 

organization’s new goals.3

 To sustain and focus the transformation effort, 

organizations need to concentrate on how effectively they use their people, 

or human capital. 

As agreed with your Subcommittee, this report focuses on actions GPO’s 

leadership could take to advance its transformation efforts through 

strategic human capital management. To examine GPO’s transformation 

efforts, we used our Model of Strategic Human Capital Management 

released in March 20024

 as the analytical framework for collecting data and 

reviewing GPO’s human capital management. This model is designed to 

help agency leaders effectively use their human capital and determine how 

well they integrate human capital considerations into daily decision making 

and planning for the program results they seek to achieve. We focused our 

review on the human capital issues that are of most immediate concern and 

significance to GPO’s transformation initiative, such as the recent hiring of 

a Chief Human Capital Officer (CHCO), the desire to restructure GPO’s 

workforce, and the use of a performance management system. We 

reviewed GPO documentation describing its personnel practices and 

transformation initiatives and interviewed numerous GPO managers about 

GPO’s human capital practices. For additional information on our scope 

and methodology, see appendix I. 

This report is part of your request that we conduct a general management 

review of GPO that examines GPO’s human capital, financial management, 

information management, strategic planning, organizational operations, as 

well as its use of technology in printing and information dissemination. The 

Subcommittee requested that our general management review be done in 

conjunction with another GAO review mandated in the Committee on 

Appropriation’s report of legislative branch appropriations for fiscal year 

2003, which will examine the current state of printing and dissemination of 

2

U.S. General Accounting Office, Highlights of a GAO Forum: Mergers and 

Transformation: Lessons Learned for a Department of Homeland Security and Other 

Federal Agencies, GAO-03-293SP (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 14, 2002). 

3

U.S. General Accounting Office, Results-Oriented Cultures: Implementation Steps to 

Assist Mergers and Organizational Transformations, GAO-03-669 (Washington, D.C.: July 

2, 2003). 

4

U.S. General Accounting Office, A Model of Strategic Human Capital Management, GAO02-373SP (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 15, 2002). 

Page 2 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
federal government information. We plan to address this topic and others 

related to GPO’s management as part of a series of reports to be issued 

periodically to assist GPO in its ongoing transformation efforts. For 

example, in the coming months, we plan to issue a report on legislative and 

executive branch printing requirements and views of GPO, which will 

provide GPO with important information it needs to develop its strategic 

plan. In addition, we plan to continue working with GPO leaders 

cooperatively, meeting regularly with them about the progress of their 

transformation initiatives, and at their request, continuing to provide them 

with information on our human capital efforts and related initiatives. 

Results in Brief	 The Public Printer clearly recognizes strategic human capital management 

as critical to the success of GPO’s transformation. To strengthen GPO’s 

human capital management, the Public Printer has established and recently 

filled the position of CHCO, shifted the focus of training, and enhanced 

recruitment strategies. GPO can build on these important first steps by 

taking additional actions to further (1) enhance communication with senior 

managers, (2) build a strategic human resources office to help drive the 

transformation, (3) develop strategic workforce plans, and (4) implement 

an individual performance management system that aligns organizational 

goals with day-to-day operations and creates a line of sight between 

individual and organizational performance. 

•	 Communication: As part of their efforts to transform the organization, 

GPO’s leadership has shown commitment to improving human capital 

management. To sustain this transformation, GPO’s leadership needs to 

ensure that managers throughout the organization appreciate the 

importance of their roles in transforming the organization and managing 

GPO’s workforce. To this end, we recommend steps that the Public 

Printer and GPO’s CHCO should take to strengthen communications and 

hold managers accountable for effectively managing people and leading 

change. 

•	 Strategic human capital office: The appointment of the CHCO was a 

critical first step. GPO can now support its transformation by adopting a 

strategic view of human capital management that centers on the 

contributions GPO’s Human Resources Office can make to the long-term 

accomplishment of GPO’s mission. We recommend numerous steps 

GPO leadership can take to strengthen the role of human capital and 

ensure that it will be integrated with strategies for accomplishing GPO’s 

mission and program goals. For example, by involving the CHCO and 

Page 3 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
other human capital leaders in strategic planning, GPO can ensure that 

its human capital approaches are integrated with its program strategies. 

The Public Printer and CHCO will need to develop a new human capital 

organization with a strong collaborative focus and culture. The Human 

Resources Office should work in partnership with managers in all of 

GPO’s divisions to integrate human capital approaches with GPO’s 

program strategies. 

•	 Strategic workforce planning: GPO should use strategic workforce 

planning to integrate its human capital approaches with its programs 

and ensure that it recruits and develops staff needed to meet emerging 

needs. We recommend several steps to assist GPO leadership in 

preparing for GPO’s future. Specifically, to implement effective 

workforce planning, GPO will need to analyze workforce skills gaps 

based on the decisions it is making as part of its ongoing efforts to set a 

strategic direction, develop human capital strategies to fill the gaps, 

build the capability to support workforce planning, and evaluate and 

revise its human capital strategies. GPO collects some data on its 

workforce, including the number of people eligible for retirement and 

the results of employees’ performance reviews. However, GPO needs to 

develop a system to collect and analyze data on the knowledge and 

skills of its workforce and develop performance measures for its human 

capital strategies in order to evaluate them. 

•	 Performance management: Effective performance management is one 

of the nine key practices we identified for effective mergers and 

transformations.5

 The performance management system can help 

manage and direct the transformation process and serve as the basis for 

setting expectations for individuals’ roles in the transformation process. 

GPO is developing a strategic plan and organizational goals that, when 

completed, can serve as the basis for setting individual performance 

expectations and ensuring accountability. However, GPO can begin to 

use the performance management system now to drive its 

transformation and help achieve critical organizational imperatives, 

such as improving its financial condition. We recommend several steps 

through which GPO can develop a performance management system to 

help achieve results, accelerate change, and facilitate two-way 

communication between managers and employees so that discussions 

5

GAO-03-669. 

Page 4 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
about individual and organizational performance are integrated and 

ongoing. 

We provided a draft of this report in September 2003 to the Public Printer 

for review and comment. GPO’s Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff, and 

Chief Human Capital Officer provided comments orally and by e-mail. The 

GPO officials generally agreed with the content, findings, and 

recommendations of the draft report. The officials also provided minor 

technical clarifications, and we made those changes where appropriate. 

Background	 Under the public printing and documents statutes of Title 44, United States 

Code, GPO’s mission is to fulfill the needs of the federal government for 

information products and to distribute those products to the public.6

 GPO 

was created in 1860 as part of the legislative branch primarily to satisfy the 

printing needs of Congress but eventually became the focal point for 

printing, binding, and information dissemination services across the federal 

government. GPO publishes the Congressional Record overnight when 

Congress is in session and produces the Federal Register, the Code of 

Federal Regulations, and other key federal government documents, such 

as the annual U.S. Budget. In addition, approximately 130 federal 

departments and agencies use GPO’s in-plant printing facility, electronic 

information systems, or printing-buying operations to produce a variety of 

government information products, such as census and tax forms, U.S. 

passports, and federal regulations and reports. Through its Information 

Dissemination programs (formerly Superintendent of Documents), GPO 

disseminates these government information products via a system of 1,200 

depository libraries located around the country (the Federal Depository 

Library Program), its Web site (http://www.gpoaccess.gov), telephone and 

fax ordering, an online ordering site, and a bookstore. 

GPO’s role as the principal agent for printing and distributing federal 

government information currently faces two major challenges. First, in a 

memorandum dated May 3, 2002, the Office of Management and Budget 

(OMB) recommended that the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council 

eliminate restrictions mandating the use of GPO as the federal 

government’s single source for obtaining printing services and related 

supplies. After this proposed rule change was issued in the Federal 

6

These are chapters 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 39, and 41 of Title 44, U.S.C.. 

Page 5 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Register on November 13, 2002,

7

 GPO and OMB entered a compact on June 

6, 2003, in which GPO would create a demonstration project designed to 

provide federal agencies flexibility in choosing their own printing services. 

According to GPO, the demonstration project would be a print 

procurement contract, which would function similar to the General 

Services Administration’s (GSA) Federal Supply Schedule8

 and be tested 

for 1 year, beginning on October 1, 2003, with the Department of Labor 

serving as the federal agency customer. The demonstration project is 

expected to result in GPO adopting the role of registering and qualifying 

printers to participate in the contract as well as offering customer support 

and in federal agencies being able to select qualified printers, using either 

lowest price or best value techniques. 

Second, the demand from federal agencies for ink-on-paper printing has 

declined in recent years because the public has increasingly accessed 

government information through the Internet and obtained GPO’s products 

through electronic publishing technologies. This trend has affected all of 

GPO’s programs, reducing the production, procurement, and sales of 

printed products. As a result, over the past 5 fiscal years, GPO has 

sustained losses in all of its major operations except for its in-house 

printing. As shown in figure 1, since 1998, in-house printing, which includes 

the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations, has raised 

$39,814,000 in income; purchased printing, which includes most of the 

printing done for federal agencies, lost $12,299,000; the sales program, 

which includes sales from the recently closed bookstores, as well as online 

and telephone sales, lost $48,275,000; and agency distribution services, 

which distributes executive branch publications, lost $274,000. 

7

67 Fed. Reg. 68,914-68,918 (2002). 

8

Under the Federal Supply Schedule Program, GSA enters into contracts with commercial 

firms to provide supplies and services at stated prices for given periods. Orders are placed 

directly with the schedule contractor and deliveries are made directly to the customer. 

Page 6 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Figure 1: The Net Operating Income (Loss) for GPO’s Major Operations (in Thousands of Dollars) 

14,539 

9,420 

2,104 2,712 

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

0 

16,000 

8,000 

4,000 

12,000 

-16,000 

0 

-8,000 

-12,000 

-4,000 

4,000 

-4,000 

-6,000 

-2,000 

2,000 

-8,000 

0 

-400 

-200 

-100 

100 

-300 

0 

200 

Fiscal year 

Dollars in thousands Dollars in thousands 

Dollars in thousands Dollars in thousands

11,039 

Total: $39,814 

Fiscal year 

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

-3,808 

3,722 

280 

-5,623 

-6,870 

Total: -$12,299 

Fiscal year 

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

-395 

-193 

129 105 80 

Total: -$274 

-15,981 

-3,626 

-9,246 

-11,815 

-7,607 

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

Fiscal year 

Total: -$48,275 

In-house printing Purchased printing 

Sales program Agency distribution services

Source: GAO. 

As shown in figure 2, GPO’s losses for its major operations during the 5-

year period were $21 million, with the greatest net loss at approximately 

$17 million from operations in fiscal year 2002. 

Page 7 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Figure 2: GPO’s Net Operating Income 

Dollars in thousands 

4,000 3,133 

2,000 

0 

2,000 

4,000 

6,000 

8,000 

10,000 

12,000 

14,000 

16,000 

18,000 

-1,676 

-5,642 

148 

-16,997 

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 

Fiscal year 

Source: GAO. 

5-year total: -$21,034 

Note: Net operating income before eliminations. 

The decline in the demand for GPO’s ink-on-paper products and the shift 

toward using its electronically disseminated products has led to a decline 

in GPO’s workforce. Over the past 6 years, GPO’s total number of full-time 

equivalent (FTE) employees has declined by 13 percent, from 3,430 FTEs in 

1998 to 2,978 FTEs in 2003. The workforce will experience additional 

decreases through GPO’s retirement separation incentive program, which 

was announced on April 29, 2003. The program, based on authority 

provided in the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 1999, as amended, 

seeks to generate payroll savings by reducing GPO’s existing staffing levels 

by approximately 300 employees.9 

GPO’s current workforce represents a diverse set of skills, ranging from 

electricians to printing machinists to information technology specialists. 

About 47 percent of GPO’s employees are in blue-collar occupations, such 

as platemakers and electricians, which are represented by 16 different 

unions. As of August 2003, almost half of GPO’s workforce was eligible for 

9

44 U.S.C. 305 note. 

Page 8 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
retirement, while about 5 percent of the workforce was under the age of 30. 

As we have reported before,10 it is important to consider the number and 

type of employees an agency will lose to retirement because retirees often 

represent an agency’s most experienced and knowledgeable staff. 

In January 2003, the Public Printer initiated a process to develop a strategic 

plan and an accompanying strategic workforce plan. The process includes 

a year of data gathering to assess GPO’s current status; a year to develop 

and write the plan, which will include input from employees, Congress, 

customers, and other stakeholders; and 3 to 5 years to fully implement the 

plan. Currently, GPO is in the data-gathering phase of its strategic planning 

process. 

Communicating the 

Role of Managers and 

Following Up on 

Employees’ Stated 

Concerns Is Vital to 

GPO’s Transformation 

Creating an effective, ongoing communication strategy is essential when 

defining and implementing any transformation effort. More specifically, for 

GPO it is important to communicate the role that managers should play in 

managing people and implementing human capital initiatives in the 

agency’s transformation. A comprehensive communication strategy that 

reaches out to employees, unions, Congress, customers, and stakeholders 

and seeks to engage them in the transformation process could help GPO’s 

leaders convey an understanding of the purpose of planned changes and 

build trust, cultivating a strong relationship with management and gaining 

employee ownership for the transformation. Additionally, communication 

should facilitate a two-way honest exchange between managers and 

employees and allow for constructive feedback from employees. 

This communication is central to forming the effective partnerships that 

are crucial to the success of any organization. Because an organization’s 

people are the drivers of any transformation, it is vital to solicit their input 

and monitor their attitudes. Obtaining employees’ attitudes through pulse 

surveys, focus groups, or confidential hotlines can serve as a quick check 

of how employees are feeling about the large-scale changes that are 

occurring and the new organization as a whole. Most important, employees 

should see that top leadership not only listens to their concerns, but also 

takes action and makes appropriate adjustments to the transformation 

effort based on them. 

10U.S. General Accounting Office, Federal Employee Retirements: Expected Increase Over 

the Next 5 Years Illustrates Need for Workforce Planning, GAO-01-509 (Washington, D.C.: 

Apr. 27, 2001). 

Page 9 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Status of GPO’s 

Communication and Followup Efforts 

GPO’s leaders have demonstrated that they are committed to a strategic 

human capital approach and understand that implementing a large-scale 

management initiative, such as GPO’s transformation, requires the 

concentrated efforts of both leadership and employees. GPO leadership 

has communicated to employees the need for a transformed GPO through 

several channels, including holding town hall meetings with question and 

answer sessions for all employees. In addition, GPO has established an 

Employee Communications Office to disseminate information to the 

employees regarding GPO’s ongoing changes through a recently created 

intranet site, newsletters, and mailings to employees’ homes. Overall, 

managers say that communication has improved dramatically since the 

arrival of GPO’s new leadership team. 

To indicate his commitment to GPO’s human capital, the Public Printer has 

•	 shifted the focus of existing training and expanded opportunities for 

more staff to attend needed training; 

•	 instituted a new time-off awards program, the first such program 

instituted at GPO in a decade; 

•	 implemented a new executive development program, demonstrating 

GPO’s investment in its future leaders; and 

•	 initiated an employee climate survey to get GPO employees’ views on 

issues requiring management attention. 

Although GPO leadership demonstrated commitment to communication 

and human capital, we found that GPO’s managers did not consistently 

understand the roles they should play in the transformation. For example, 

some managers expressed the need to have additional details about the 

direction of their units within the context of GPO’s transformation and 

were unclear about what training requests they should accept. A key factor 

in the success of any strategic human capital initiative is the sustained 

attention of senior leaders and managers at all levels of the agency to 

valuing and investing in their employees. As GPO’s leadership 

communicates with employees regarding its transformation efforts, it also 

needs to inform managers about their roles in managing people and in 

monitoring and refining human capital initiatives. Establishing a 

performance expectation that holds managers accountable for the effective 

management of people can help clarify the roles of managers and further 

demonstrate leadership’s commitment to human capital management. 

Page 10 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Follow-up action on GPO’s employee climate survey, conducted in 

February 2003, has been slow. Planned focus groups with employees to 

discuss the findings and develop actions that could be taken to address 

some of the issues raised by the survey results were delayed until the new 

CHCO was hired to ensure that the follow-up and the implementation of 

any recommendations resulting from the survey received the appropriate 

level of attention. Moreover, while GPO’s employee climate survey 

identified several issues for immediate attention, such as communications, 

performance management, and training, managers we interviewed, both 

within the Human Resources Office and in other areas of GPO, said they 

did not believe that it was their responsibility to address issues identified in 

the employee survey. To address these issues, all GPO managers should 

have performance expectations making them responsible and accountable 

for taking actions to change GPO’s work environment. While monitoring 

employee attitudes provides good information, it is most important that 

employees see that top leadership not only listens to their concerns but 

also takes action on them. 

Recommended Next Steps	 GPO’s leaders have communicated a clear message about the need to 

transform GPO. To build on their progress by strengthening two-way 

communications and employee involvement, the Public Printer should take 

the following actions: 

•	 Communicate with managers about their roles in strengthening GPO’s 

human capital management in support of mission needs. GPO 

leadership should continue to hold town hall meetings and use the 

Employee Communication Office to reach out to employees and engage 

them in a two-way exchange so that they understand how they may be 

able to help with the transformation. 

•	 Ensure that managers are held accountable, through GPO’s performance 

management system and other mechanisms, for effectively managing 

people and leading change. 

In addition, the CHCO should follow up on the completed employee 

climate survey by holding focus groups that work to develop recommended 

solutions to issues raised in the survey results, including adjustments to 

GPO’s transformation and human capital approaches. 

Page 11 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Developing a Strategic 


Human Capital Office


Our work and that of others has shown that over the past decade, highperforming organizations have increasingly adopted a strategic view of 

human capital management in helping to achieve organizational missions 

and program goals.11 This new strategic view centers on the contributions 

that human capital management can make to the long-term 

accomplishment of the agency’s mission. As such, the function traditionally 

called personnel or human resources needs to be fundamentally 

transformed, from being a strictly support function involved in managing 

personnel processes and ensuring compliance with rules and regulations to 

designing and implementing human capital approaches that are aimed at 

supporting the agency’s strategic goals. Human capital professionals must 

have the appropriate preparation not just to provide effective support 

services, but also to consult effectively with line managers in tailoring 

human capital strategies to the unique needs of the agency. 

In April 2003, we reported on key actions that selected agencies had taken 

to integrate their human capital approaches with their strategies for 

accomplishing organizational missions and to shift the focus of their 

Human Resources Office from performing primarily compliance activities 

to performing consulting activities.12 These actions can be particularly 

instructive to GPO as it strengthens the role of human capital in support of 

its transformation. Table 1 identifies the actions taken and who within each 

agency initiated them. 

11GAO-03-446. 

12 GAO-03-446. 

Page 12 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Table 1: Key Agency Actions to Integrate Human Capital Approaches with Strategies for Accomplishing Agency Missions 

Action initiators Description of action 

Agency leaders • Agency leaders included human capital leaders in key agency decision-making. For example, United States Coast 

Guard’s (USCG) agency leadership has engaged its human capital organization earlier in the strategic planning 

and decision-making process by appointing its Assistant Commandant for Human Resources as a member of the 

agency’s senior management team and a full partner in the development of key USCG management decisions. 

• Agency leaders also established entities, such as human capital councils, accountable for integrating human 

capital approaches with strategies for achieving programmatic goals. The groups’ members include both program 

leaders and human capital leaders. For example, the GSA created a Human Capital Council to ensure, among 

other objectives, that the agency’s human capital strategic plan was integrated within GSA’s strategic plan and 

supported the agency’s program strategies. 

Human capital 

leaders 

• Human capital leaders are establishing and communicating clear human capital strategic visions. For example, 

GSA’s Chief People Officer’s vision is for GSA’s Chief People Office (CPO) to become a partner in GSA’s 

business success. To do so, she explained that CPO must deliver products and services that enable its customers 

to focus on their core business. Similarly, Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) former Chief Human Resource 

Officer’s vision is for the human capital professionals in IRS to become more proactive in providing human capital 

strategies and solutions that directly enhance the agency’s performance. 

• Human capital leaders are restructuring their human capital organizations to improve their alignment with their 

vision. For example, IRS’s restructured human capital management function includes, as one of three major 

components, a national headquarters strategic human resources organization. 

• Human capital leaders are using technological advances to provide opportunities to free organizational resources 

that can be redeployed for strategic purposes. For example, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) 

partnered with QuickHire, a commercial off-the-shelf software developer, to develop an on-line automated 

recruitment system (OARS) that allows USGS’s human capital staff to enter job vacancies into a centralized 

database and develop rating and ranking criteria by selecting and weighting questions from an extensive question 

library organized by job series. According to USGS, as the agency continues to gain experience and efficiencies 

using OARS, it hopes to divert an increasing number of human capital staff members to other strategic efforts. 

• Human capital leaders are promoting a more strategic role for human capital professionals and are investing in the 

development of new competencies for human capital professionals to support their increased strategic 

engagement. For example, in response to the changing role and functions of its human capital community, GSA 

has developed new core competencies needed by its human capital staff. Included in these competencies are the 

new skills GSA’s Chief People Officer believes the agency’s human capital staff members must develop to become 

business partners. 

Agency leaders • Jointly, agency leaders and human capital leaders are having human capital professionals and agency line 

and human managers share the accountability for successfully integrating strategic human capital approaches into the 

capitalleaders planning and decision making of the agency. For example, Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) 

human capital leaders and program officials have implemented an innovative employee staffing effort. According to 

FEMA officials, this greatly enhanced the agency’s emergency response capability by providing the human capital 

staff and the line managers the ability to collaborate in identifying available deployment candidates for assignment 

as soon as federal disasters are declared. 

Source: GAO. 

Page 13 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Status of GPO’s Efforts to 

Create a Strategic Human 

Capital Function 

GPO’s new leaders recognize that its Human Resources Office has been 

characterized by the following weaknesses: 

•	 Lacking a strategic focus. Managers in both the Human Resources 

Office and GPO’s program divisions acknowledged the need to improve 

collaboration in support of agency goals and the transformation and 

indicated that efforts should be more proactive. One official in the 

Human Resources Office indicated the need for the new CHCO to 

dramatically improve communication with GPO program managers so 

that the Human Resources Office can better understand and anticipate 

their needs. 

•	 Viewing human capital as costs to be cut rather than as assets needed 

to achieve results. Managers told us that the Human Resources Office 

had been used to reduce and control salary costs by restricting 

promotions, denying managers requests to increase the grade levels of 

positions so that they would reflect increased responsibilities, and 

downgrading vacant positions. Managers said that these actions 

contributed to good employees leaving GPO for positions in other 

federal agencies where they had more opportunities for advancement. 

•	 Focusing more on processing transactions rather than strategically 

managing human capital to help achieve results. Program managers 

viewed the Human Resources Office’s assistance in such efforts as 

filling recruitment needs and providing requested employee data as 

positive but very limited and falling far short of their expectations for 

assistance. 

•	 Being an obstacle to rather than supporting manager’s needs. For 

example, we were told that the Human Resources Office has not 

provided adequate assistance or guidance to managers in writing 

position descriptions needed to fill critical vacancies or get positions 

reclassified. A few managers told us that, as a result, they found the 

hiring process took longer than necessary and caused significant 

frustration and rework, taking attention away from other higher 

priorities. 

GPO’s Human Resources Office faces substantial challenges resulting from 

the many changes accompanying GPO’s transformation. For example, the 

Information Dissemination Division, formerly the Superintendent of 

Documents Division, is undergoing a major reorganization to better 

position it to address GPO’s increasing emphasis on electronic information 

Page 14 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
dissemination. This divisional reorganization has created four major 

sections within the division, which will require the Human Resources 

Office to perform additional work reclassifying positions, developing 

position descriptions, and recruiting people for new positions. GPO 

managers expressed concerns about the Human Resources Office’s ability 

to respond to the increased demands for support due to other divisional 

reorganizations and transformation-related initiatives on the horizon. In 

addition, some managers questioned whether the Human Resources Office 

had sufficient staff with the competencies needed to effectively serve as 

advisors to and partners with senior leaders and managers. 

As an important first step in changing the role of the Human Resources 

Office at GPO, the Public Printer created a new organizational structure 

that establishes the position of CHCO, equivalent to the heads of the other 

administrative and operating divisions. (See fig. 3.) This structure is 

consistent with executive branch agencies, many of which have now 

established CHCO positions. The creation of the Human Resources Office 

establishes accountability for the cross-functional area of human capital 

management within GPO and may help GPO use resources driven by the 

Public Printer’s strategic vision more efficiently. 

Page 15 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Figure 3: GPO’s New Organizational Structure 

Deputy Chief Of Staff 

Chief of Staff 

Inspector General 

Office of Equal Employment 

Opportunity 

Office of Dispute Resolution 

General Counsel 

Assistant Chief Of Staff 

(Deputy Public Printer) 

Customer 

Services 

(Managing 

Director) 

Information 

Dissemination 

(Superintendent 

of Documents) 

Plant Operations 

(Managing 

Director) 

IT & Systems 

(Chief Information 

Officer) 

Human 

Resources 

(Chief Human 

Capital Officer) 

Finance & 

Administration 

(Chief Financial 

Officer) 

Innovation & New Technology 

Congressional & Government Relations 

Public Relations 

Chief Operating Officer 

(Public Printer) 

Chief Executive Officer 

Computerized printing console on a GPO press. 

Pre-press, press, and post-press stages of GPO’s in-house printing operation. 

Source: GAO. 

Page 16 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
GPO’s new CHCO has the opportunity to transform GPO’s Human 

Resources Office into one that integrates GPO’s human capital approaches 

with strategies for achieving programmatic results. The new CHCO realizes 

that this transformation is critical to the success of GPO’s strategic human 

capital efforts and told us that his vision for the Human Resources Office 

includes human capital professionals working strategically with GPO’s line 

managers to integrate the human capital function throughout the agency. 

As the CHCO begins his efforts, he can build on the Human Resources 

Office’s ongoing efforts to streamline operations and employ technology to 

meet customer needs and free organizational resources that can be 

redeployed for strategic purposes. GPO’s Human Resources Office is 

streamlining and moving its payroll functions from within GPO to the 

National Finance Center, which handles payroll functions for many federal 

agencies. The Human Resources Office has also developed an automated 

system that alerts managers when employees under their supervision are 

due in-grade promotions and is working to convert employee performance 

ratings into an online/automated format. GPO managers have viewed these 

efforts positively and have indicated that there may be other opportunities 

to further automate and streamline human capital processes. 

Recommended Next Steps	 GPO’s hiring of a CHCO, concurrent with its efforts to begin developing an 

overall agency strategic plan and a complementary strategic workforce 

plan, creates the opportunity for GPO leadership and human capital leaders 

to work together to strengthen the role of human capital and ensure that it 

will be integrated with strategies for accomplishing GPO’s mission and 

program goals. To effectively support GPO’s overall transformation efforts, 

the CHCO will need to develop a new human capital organization with a 

strong collaborative focus and culture. This may involve a number of steps, 

such as establishing a strategic vision for the Human Resources Office and 

ensuring that human capital professionals have the competencies needed 

to collaborate with GPO’s managers. The final result should be a Human 

Resources Office that helps integrate human capital approaches with 

GPO’s program strategies throughout the organization by working in 

partnership with managers of all divisions. 

To enhance the role of strategic human capital in support of GPO’s 

transformation efforts, the Public Printer should take the following actions: 

•	 Include human capital leaders in agency strategic planning and decision 

making. Involving these leaders as full partners would acknowledge 

Page 17 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
both the commitment of the Public Printer to strategically managing 

GPO’s people and create the expectation that human capital 

professionals will contribute to organizational success. 

•	 Establish an entity, such as a human capital council, that is accountable 

for integrating human capital approaches with strategies for achieving 

programmatic goals. The group’s members should include both program 

managers and human capital professionals. As GPO develops and 

implements its strategic plan and human capital plan, the group can help 

ensure that the plans are integrated. 

•	 Communicate clearly that the CHCO should create a Human Resources 

Office that is not solely focused on routine processing and compliance 

issues but is also focused on strategic human capital planning and 

management. 

To further the integration of human capital with GPO’s strategies for 

transformation and mission accomplishment, the CHCO should take the 

following actions: 

•	 Establish a human capital strategic vision, and a mission for the Human 

Resources Office, and define goals and expectations for human capital 

professionals as well as the Human Resources Office that can be used to 

hold human capital professionals accountable. 

•	 Strengthen communication between human capital officials and 

program managers to enhance the understanding of how they can work 

together to achieve organizational goals. As a key part of strengthening 

communication, the CHCO should routinely solicit the feedback of GPO 

managers to identify how the Human Resources Office can best meet 

managers’ needs and help them uphold federal merit principles. 

•	 Consider how to organize the Human Resources Office to align it with 

the strategic vision and best achieve integration of GPO’s human capital 

approaches and mission strategies. One potential approach used 

successfully in other federal agencies is to integrate human capital 

professionals throughout the agency’s operational divisions. Each of 

these human capital professionals reports to a particular operating 

division leader and is tasked with implementing and customizing human 

capital policies, procedures, and strategies to fit the division's unique 

needs. 

Page 18 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
•	 Ensure that human capital professionals have the skills needed to 

implement the Human Resources Office’s mission, thereby helping to 

achieve the goals of the Human Resources Office and the agency as a 

whole. This will include providing necessary training for current human 

capital professionals and hiring new human capital professionals with 

the appropriate skills to help implement the Human Resources Office’s 

mission. 

•	 Further explore how technological advances can provide opportunities 

to better serve managers and free organizational resources that can be 

redeployed for strategic purposes. 

Together, the Public Printer and the CHCO should clearly define and 

communicate to the human capital professionals, as well as throughout 

GPO, that the role of the Human Resources Office is to partner with the 

other units within GPO to achieve the agency’s mission. The town hall 

meetings initiated by the Public Printer are one forum in which this type of 

communication can happen. It should be made clear that agency and 

human capital leaders, human capital professionals, and line managers 

share responsibility for advancing agency programmatic and human capital 

goals. 

Strategic Workforce 

Planning Can Assist 

GPO’s Transformation 

A key factor in successfully transforming GPO and sustaining high 

performance is the effective integration and alignment of GPO’s human 

capital approaches with its strategies for achieving mission and 

programmatic goals and results. GPO should use strategic workforce 

planning to integrate and align its human capital approaches with its 

mission strategies. Strategic workforce planning focuses on developing 

long-term strategies for acquiring, developing, and retaining an 

organization’s workforce to meet future needs. It is an essential element of 

GPO’s management infrastructure, which is needed to ensure that its 

human capital program addresses workforce issues in a manner that is 

clearly linked to achieving the agency’s mission and goals. 

The goal of strategic workforce planning is to ensure that the right people 

with the right skills are in the right place at the right time. Agency 

approaches to workforce planning can vary with their particular needs and 

missions. Nevertheless, looking across existing successful public and 

private organizations, certain critical elements recur as part of a successful 

workforce plan and workforce planning process. Although fluid, this 

process starts with an organization setting a strategic direction that 

Page 19 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
includes program goals and strategies to achieve those goals. The process 

consists of five critical elements that frame successful workforce planning 

efforts. Figure 4 uses a simple model to show these critical elements and 

their relationships to the agency’s overall strategic direction and goals. 

Figure 4: Critical Elements to Include in the Workforce Planning Process 

Involvement 

of management 

and employees 

Workforce gap 

analysis 

Workforce strategies 

to fill the gaps 

Evaluation of 

and revisions 

to strategies 

Set strategic 

direction 

Build capability to support workforce strategies 

Source: GAO. 

These five elements may be helpful to GPO in developing its plan: 

•	 involve top management, employees, and other stakeholders in 

developing, communicating, implementing, and evaluating the strategic 

workforce plan; 

•	 determine workforce gaps by identifying the critical skills and 

competencies that will be needed to achieve the future programmatic 

Page 20 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
results, inventorying the skills and competencies of the existing 

workforce, and analyzing the gaps; 

•	 develop strategies to address gaps in number, deployment, and the 

alignment of human capital approaches that enable and sustain the 

contributions of all critical skills and competencies; 

•	 build the capability needed to address administrative, educational, and 

other requirements important to support workforce strategies; and 

•	 monitor and evaluate the agency’s progress toward its human capital 

goals and the contribution that human capital results have made toward 

achieving programmatic goals. 

Additionally, collecting and analyzing data is a fundamental building block 

for measuring the effectiveness of human capital approaches in support of 

the mission and goals of an agency. Having complete and reliable data is 

particularly important to doing a workforce gap analysis. Early 

development of the data provides a baseline by which an agency can 

identify current workforce problems, and regular updating of the data 

enables agencies to plan for improvements, manage changes in the 

programs and workforce, and track the effects of changes on achieving 

program goals. As shown in figure 5, agencies can collect and analyze a 

variety of information to support their workforce planning efforts. 

Page 21 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Figure 5: Examples of Workforce Data That Are Collected and Analyzed by Other 

Federal Agencies 

●	 Actual and projected attrition rates (including retirements) showing how many 

people have left the agency in the past and the estimated number who will leave in 

the future. 

●	 Exit surveys or interviews with departing employees to better understand the 

reasons that people leave. 

● Knowledge, skills, and experiences of the current workforce. 

●	 Size and shape of the workforce including information such as, the distribution of 

employees by pay level and ratio of managers to employees. 

●	 Dispersal of performance appraisal ratings, such as the mean, mode, and 

standard deviation of scores. 

● Number of performance awards and their distribution among divisions and offices. 

● Total human capital cost in dollars and as a percentage of total operating budget. 

● Average period required to fill vacancies, and trends over time. 

● Acceptance rates among job candidates to whom positions are offered. 

● Costs of promotion, grade increase, and within-grade increases. 

Source: GAO. 

Status of GPO’s Workforce 

Planning Efforts 

GPO leaders have shown that they understand the benefits of involving 

managers and employees in developing human capital initiatives and have 

the opportunity to continue this practice to support GPO’s workforce 

planning efforts. GPO has included both managers and employees in newly 

created task forces that are examining the training needed for the new 

Information Dissemination Division, exploring the creation of a 

gainsharing program, and making decisions to implement the time off 

awards program. GPO managers and labor leaders told us that they view 

participation in these efforts favorably and want more specific information 

about the role that they could play in GPO’s transformation. GPO 

leadership can build on its experiences in using management and employee 

task forces and on the interest and support shown by these managers and 

employees by involving them in workforce planning. Involving GPO 

Page 22 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
employees in strategic workforce planning can build support and foster a 

clear understanding of how managers and employees can contribute to the 

overall transformation of GPO by doing their part to help develop and 

implement human capital approaches. 

GPO leaders acknowledge the importance of strategic workforce planning, 

including workforce gap analysis, to help GPO transform itself. They 

understand that they need to identify, in greater detail, the new skills and 

competencies that GPO will need and develop an inventory of the skills and 

competencies of its existing workforce to analyze workforce gaps. GPO 

leadership has told us that, currently, it is difficult for leaders to identify all 

of the specific skills and competencies GPO will need because they are still 

working to better define GPO’s future mission and strategies as part of its 

recently initiated strategic planning effort. Although uncertainty about 

GPO’s future may complicate the identification of future workforce needs, 

GPO may find it useful to begin producing an inventory of its employees’ 

skills and competencies and work with its senior managers to identify 

some obvious gaps and establish a more systematic process for analyzing 

workforce gaps as it develops its strategic plan. 

More specifically, although GPO leadership has not systematically 

determined the specific skills it will need to effectively carry out its shifting 

role, it has indicated that GPO’s emphasis will increasingly shift from 

printed information dissemination to more electronic dissemination, and in 

some areas GPO has begun to identify some potential skills gaps. For 

example, the Superintendent of Documents said that the skills needed to 

complete GPO’s document cataloging function are changing rapidly as the 

number of electronic documents increases. Cataloging now requires 

Internet searching skills and greater sophistication to locate documents 

that are available on agency Web sites. While GPO currently lacks a factbased systematic approach to define the critical skills and competencies 

required to meet its strategic program goals, it can use available 

information about skills gaps as a starting point for its workforce planning 

activities. 

To help meet its skills gaps, GPO has begun by strengthening its ability to 

recruit and develop staff. GPO formed a strategic partnership with leading 

universities in the areas of printing and graphic communications and 

initiated a recruiting drive to attract graduates in other disciplines, such as 

business administration and electrical, mechanical, and chemical 

engineering. Also, GPO hired experts who possess skills and competencies 

for addressing immediate needs, such as developing new sales and 

Page 23 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
marketing strategies, to serve in temporary positions. To develop its 

existing workforce, GPO has shifted the focus of existing training and 

expanded opportunities for more staff to attend needed training. 

Recent actions by GPO’s leaders demonstrate an understanding of the need 

to consider workforce skills and knowledge when making business 

decisions and implementing human capital approaches. For example, GPO 

made the business decision that it needed to decrease its staff by about 300 

people to reduce its costs. To achieve this reduction, GPO initiated a 

retirement separation incentive program, which included an approach to 

ensure that GPO retained employees with critical knowledge and skills. 

This approach involved GPO’s executive committee screening employees 

to separate early retirement applicants into two groups, priority 1 and 

priority 2. Priority 1 applicants held positions that would not be filled 

because the positions were no longer necessary. Priority 2 applicants held 

positions that would be filled by other GPO employees, who would leave 

positions that would not be filled. Thus, GPO took a step toward stemming 

its operating losses while ensuring the retention of needed knowledge and 

skills. 

Workforce planning includes building the capability to support workforce 

strategies by addressing administrative, educational, and other 

requirements. For example, it is important for GPO to educate managers on 

the use of available human capital flexibilities, such as the time-off awards 

program recently introduced at GPO. Educating managers and employees 

on the availability and use of such flexibilities is one way for GPO to 

integrate human capital approaches throughout the organization. Managers 

and supervisors can be more effective in using time off awards and other 

authorities if they are properly trained on when they can be used and how 

to ensure consistency, fairness, and transparency for their use. 

GPO collects some data on its workforce, including the number of people 

eligible for retirement and the results of employees’ performance reviews. 

However, GPO lacks information necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of 

its workforce strategies. Attention to the development and collection of 

workforce data could help ensure that GPO’s human capital approaches are 

supporting its strategies for achieving results and transforming the 

organization. 

GPO's managers can use human capital data like those shown in figure 5 to 

help them identify human capital challenges, develop strategies to address 

them, and create measures to assess the strategies' success. For example, 

Page 24 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
exit interviews can help GPO develop effective workforce strategies to 

address the reasons why top performing staff leave. Although overall 

attrition may not be a problem for GPO given its current downsizing 

efforts, it is important for GPO to retain top performers who have the skills 

it needs in the future. Some managers told us that high-performing staff 

have left GPO for comparable positions at other federal agencies because 

GPO’s promotion possibilities were limited, often resulting from difficulties 

in reclassifying these positions. However, GPO has not conducted 

interviews with its departing employees to confirm their reasons for 

leaving. Without comprehensive data on why people leave GPO, it cannot 

determine what types of actions it should take, if any, to retain top 

performers. 

Recommended Next Steps	 To ensure that human capital strategies are integrated throughout the 

agency, GPO should develop a strategic workforce plan that can guide its 

transformation and support mission accomplishment. The Public Printer 

and the CHCO should take the following actions: 

•	 Involve staff in all phases of workforce planning to help improve the 

quality of the plan and build support needed to successfully implement 

it. Specifically, GPO should (1) ensure that top management sets the 

overall direction and goals of workforce planning, (2) involve employees 

and other stakeholders in developing, implementing, and evaluating 

future workforce strategies, and (3) establish a communication strategy 

to create shared expectations, promote transparency, and report 

progress. 

•	 Complete a workforce gap analysis to identify critical skills and 

competency gaps that could affect GPO’s ability to achieve its mission 

and transform the organization. The workforce gap analysis should 

include (1) an analysis of the current workforce to develop an inventory 

of employees’ skills and competencies and (2) a systematic 

identification of the new skills and competencies that GPO will need in 

the future so that it can pinpoint any gaps that could affect its mission 

accomplishment and transformation. 

•	 Develop strategies to address any identified workforce gaps and move 

from the current to the future workforce needed to achieve GPO’s 

mission and transformation. These strategies, consistent with recent 

efforts at GPO, should include the programs, policies, and practices that 

will enable an agency to recruit, develop, and retain critical staff. 

Page 25 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
•	 Build the capability to support workforce strategies by addressing 

administrative, educational, and other requirements. To this end, 

managers and employees need training to understand how to use 

available human capital authorities and flexibilities effectively so that 

they are implemented equitably and their strategic purpose is fulfilled. 

•	 Evaluate the results of current human capital strategies and make any 

needed revisions to ensure that the strategies work as intended and 

support the transformation. This will provide a baseline by which to 

evaluate these strategies to ensure alignment with its mission and 

transformation efforts. 

•	 Develop performance measures for GPO’s human capital strategies. 

Such measures are a first step in holding managers accountable for their 

management of human capital and provide valuable data for future 

workforce planning efforts. GPO could benchmark its human capital 

data against the data of high-performing organizations. 

•	 Periodically survey managers and employees regarding human capital 

strategies to ensure that they are being implemented fairly, observing 

federal merit principles, and being used appropriately. 

Performance 

Management Can Help 

GPO Drive Internal 

Change and Achieve 

External Results 

In July 2003, we reported that an organization’s performance management 

system can be a vital tool for aligning the organization with desired results 

and creating a “line of sight” showing how team, unit, and individual 

performance can contribute to overall organizational results. The 

performance management system can help manage and direct the 

transformation process. The system serves as the basis for setting 

expectations for individuals’ roles in the transformation process.13 

Effective performance management systems are not merely used for onceor twice-yearly individual expectation setting and rating processes, but are 

tools to help the organization manage day to day. These systems are used to 

achieve results, accelerate change, and facilitate two-way communication 

throughout the year so that discussions about individual and organizational 

performance are integrated and ongoing. 

13 GAO-03-669. 

Page 26 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
In March 2003, we reported on key practices for federal agencies to 

consider when developing modern, effective, and credible performance 

management systems.

14 While it is important that organizations develop 

performance management systems that reflect their specific structures, 

priorities, and cultures, these systems also reinforce individual 

accountability for results, and therefore, can strengthen overall agency 

performance. Figure 6 lists nine key practices for effective performance 

management that GPO may find instructive as it develops a more robust 

performance management system. 

14 U.S. General Accounting Office, Results-Oriented Cultures: Creating a Clear Linkage 

between Individual Performance and Organizational Success, GAO-03-488 (Washington, 

D.C.: Mar. 14, 2003). 

Page 27 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Figure 6: Key Practices for Effective Performance Management 

1. Align individual performance expectations with organizational goals. An explicit alignment of daily activities with broader 

results helps individuals see the connection between their daily activities and organizational goals and encourages individuals 

to focus on their roles and responsibilities to help achieve those goals. 

2. Connect performance expectations to crosscutting goals. High-performing organizations use their performance 

management systems to strengthen accountability for results, specifically by placing greater emphasis on fostering the 

necessary collaboration, interaction, and teamwork across organizational boundaries to achieve these results. 

3. Provide and routinely use performance information to track organizational priorities. High-performing organizations 

provide objective performance information to individuals to show progress in achieving organizational results and other 

priorities and help them manage during the year, to identify performance gaps, and to pinpoint improvement opportunities. 

4. Require follow-up actions to address organizational priorities. High-performing organizations require individuals to take 

follow-up actions based on performance information available to them. By requiring and tracking such follow-up actions on 

performance gaps, these organizations underscore the importance of holding individuals accountable for making progress on 

their priorities. 

5. Use competencies to provide a fuller assessment of performance. High-performing organizations use competencies, 

which define the skills and supporting behaviors that individuals need to effectively contribute to organizational results, and are 

based on valid, reliable, and transparent performance management systems. 

6. Link pay to individual and organizational performance. High-performing organizations seek to create pay, incentive, and 

reward systems that link employee knowledge, skills, and contributions to organizational results. 

7. Make meaningful distinctions in performance. Effective performance management systems seek to achieve three key 

objectives to help make meaningful distinctions in performance. First, they strive to provide candid and constructive feedback 

to help individuals maximize their contribution and potential in understanding and realizing the goals and objectives of the 

organization. Second, they seek to provide management with the objective and fact-based information it needs to reward top 

performers. Third, they provide the necessary information and documentation to deal with poor performers. 

8. Involve employees and stakeholders to gain ownership of performance management systems. High-performing 

organizations have found that actively involving employees and stakeholders in developing the performance management 

systems and providing ongoing training on the systems helps increase their understanding and ownership of the 

organizational goals and objectives. 

9. Maintain continuity during transitions. High-performing organizations recognize that because cultural transformations take 

time, they need to reinforce accountability for organizational goals. 

Source: GAO. 

Page 28 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Analysis of GPO’s 

Performance Management 

Efforts 

GPO has begun to make progress on two of the key practices for effective 

performance management. GPO has taken a first step toward aligning 

individual performance expectations with organizational goals by 

beginning to develop an agency strategic plan and complementary 

workforce plan. GPO is also beginning to explore the use of competencies 

to provide a fuller assessment of performance. The other seven key 

practices present opportunities for GPO to strengthen its performance 

management system. For example, GPO presently does not make 

meaningful distinctions in performance or link pay to individual and 

organizational performance. As GPO explores actions to strengthen its 

performance management, it has the opportunity to involve employees and 

stakeholders so that they gain ownership of the performance management 

system. 

An explicit alignment of daily activities with broader results is one of the 

defining features of effective performance management systems in highperforming organizations. These organizations use their performance 

management systems to improve performance by helping individuals see 

the connection between their daily activities and organizational goals and 

encouraging individuals to focus on their roles and responsibilities to help 

achieve these goals. Such organizations continuously review and revise 

their performance management systems to support their strategic and 

performance goals, as well as their core values and transformational 

objectives. 

Currently, GPO requires that supervisors set annual performance 

expectations for all staff that are linked to employees’ position descriptions 

rather than unit goals. Once GPO’s strategic plan and organizational goals 

are established, GPO can use them as the basis for setting individual 

performance expectations and ensuring related accountability. However, 

GPO can begin to use the performance management system now to drive 

its transformation and hold individuals accountable for helping to achieve 

critical organizational priorities, such as improving GPO’s financial 

condition and customer service. For example, we were told that employees 

in GPO’s Information Dissemination Division lack basic sales techniques, 

like matching customer needs with available products. GPO could create a 

performance expectation for its sales staff related to their knowledge of 

GPO products. The performance expectation could help GPO improve its 

financial condition and customer service as staff become more familiar 

with the types of products GPO offers and matching these products to 

customers’ needs. 

Page 29 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Further, GPO could help staff achieve organizational goals by requiring that 

managers take follow-up actions to address performance gaps. For 

example, GPO could routinely collect and analyze information from its 

customers to determine their views on the quality and timeliness of the 

products and services GPO provides as well as their current and future 

needs. Through the performance management system, managers in GPO's 

in-house printing operation could be required to use this information to 

follow up on recurring issues and plan for its customers' future needs. 

High-performing organizations use competencies to examine how the 

performance of individual employees contributes to the organization’s 

results. Competencies, which define the skills and supporting behaviors 

that individuals are expected to exhibit to carry out their work effectively, 

can provide a fuller picture of an individual’s performance. Because GPO is 

developing its agency strategic plan and related workforce plan, identifying 

core competencies for employees will necessarily lag. However, some GPO 

managers have started to identify critical competencies for employees in 

their units. For example, one manager in the Human Resources Office 

plans to revise the performance expectations for her staff to include a 

focus on customer service in order to improve the collaboration between 

her staff and managers throughout GPO. More generally, GPO is identifying 

competencies for senior managers to be included in their performance 

contracts. 

Effective performance management requires the organization’s leadership 

to make meaningful distinctions between acceptable and outstanding 

performance of individuals and to appropriately reward those who perform 

at the highest level. In doing so, performance management systems in highperforming organizations typically seek to achieve three key objectives: (1) 

they strive to provide candid and constructive feedback to help individuals 

maximize their contribution and potential in understanding and realizing 

the goals and objectives of the organization, (2) they seek to provide 

management with the objective and fact-based information it needs to 

reward top performers, and (3) they provide the necessary information and 

documentation to deal with poor performers. 

GPO’s performance management system does not make meaningful 

distinctions among employees’ performance in the performance appraisal 

process. Managers told us that attention given to preparing individual 

performance ratings had decreased over the past decade due to the lack of 

performance awards. In addition, they said that since the ratings were not 

used as the basis for employee recognition, there was little incentive for 

Page 30 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
mangers to make distinctions among their employees’ performance when 

rating their staff. As a result, managers said that they rated large numbers 

of their staff as outstanding to boost morale and to avoid employee 

complaints. Figure 7 shows that over 94 percent of the employees who 

were rated in 2001 received an overall rating of outstanding or excellent. 

Figure 7: 2001 Performance Ratings for Current GPO Employees 

70% 

Outstanding 

1,603 employees 

24% 

5% 

0% 

1% 

Excellent 

556 employees 

Marginal 

0 employees 

Fully successful 

106 employees 

Unsatisfactory 

18 employees 

100% 

2,283 employeesa 

Source: GPO. 

Note: Data are 2001 ratings of on-board employees as of August 7, 2003. Data for 2002 are not yet 

available. 

a

This number is less than GPO’s current number of staff, or 2,928, because it does not include 

employees hired since 2001 and those not rated because they were not covered by performance 

standards for a minimum of 90 days. 

The lack of identified distinctions among employee’s performance 

compromises GPO’s ability to select among employees for development 

and advancement opportunities. In the absence of objective and fact-based 

performance information, managers rely on their personal knowledge of 

employee performance and employees’ reputations. Having objective and 

fact-based information and related documentation on which to justify 

personnel decisions is fundamental to ensuring that managers can 

effectively fulfill their responsibilities to uphold federal merit system 

principles. Further, without this information, managers lack the basic tools 

to motivate and reward staff for their performance. 

Page 31 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Seniority rather than performance is the basis for most pay decisions by 

GPO managers, and financial awards are not used to reward GPO’s top 

performers. However, GPO’s leadership recognizes the need to strengthen 

incentives for individual and organizational performance and has taken 

some actions to stimulate higher performance. On February 10, 2003, GPO 

instituted a time-off awards program to recognize outstanding effort by 

rewarding productivity, dedication, creativity, and superior 

accomplishment. Before the time-off awards program was introduced, GPO 

had been without any mechanism to recognize and reward outstanding 

performance since 1992 when funding for its incentive awards and 

recognition system was removed due to financial constraints and equity 

concerns. While the time-off awards program represents an improvement 

in GPO’s rewarding of employees for good performance, several managers 

told us that GPO needs to do more to reward performance through 

financial mechanisms. Consistent with this view, GPO leadership recently 

formed a task force to determine the feasibility of developing a gainsharing 

program modeled after the program at the Bureau of Engraving and 

Printing, which rewards employees for meeting organizational goals. Under 

the program, all employees share in the gains from proven savings 

according to predetermined standards and payout formulas. 

High-performing organizations have found that actively involving 

employees and stakeholders, such as unions or other employee 

associations, when developing results-oriented performance management 

systems helps improve employees’ confidence and belief in the fairness of 

the system and increases their understanding and ownership of 

organizational goals and objectives. Effective performance management 

systems depend on individuals’, their supervisors’, and management’s 

common understanding, support, and use of these systems to reinforce the 

connection between performance management and organizational results. 

These organizations recognize that they must conduct frequent training for 

staff members at all levels of the organization to maximize the 

effectiveness of the performance management systems.15 Overall, 

employees and supervisors share the responsibility for individual 

performance management. Both are actively involved in identifying how 

they can contribute to organizational results and are held accountable for 

their contributions. 

15U.S. General Accounting Office, Human Capital: Practices That Empowered and 

Involved Employees, GAO-01-1070 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 14, 2001). 

Page 32 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
GPO leadership has demonstrated that it understands the importance of 

working with employees at all levels of the organization to implement 

human capital changes. As GPO moves forward to make additional needed 

changes to its performance management system, it is vital that leaders 

work to further strengthen the involvement of employees and stakeholders 

such as GPO’s unions and employee associations. GPO cannot successfully 

improve its performance management system without the support and 

commitment of its many unions, which have substantial influence over 

GPO’s human capital policies because of their right to bargain for wages. 

Given that union leaders and GPO’s leadership agree that GPO’s 

performance management system is ineffective, common ground exists 

from which GPO, GPO’s employees, and the employees’ elected 

representatives can begin a dialogue about how best to change the system. 

The constructive relationship that currently exists between GPO’s union 

leaders and GPO management can facilitate this dialogue. 

Recommended Next Steps	 Public sector organizations both in the United States and abroad have used 

their performance management systems to create a clear linkage—“line of 

sight”—between individual performance and organizational success and, 

thus, transform their cultures to be more results-oriented, customerfocused, and collaborative. GPO can obtain similar benefits by adopting the 

practices of leading organizations’ performance management systems. 

Specifically, the Public Printer, in conjunction with the CHCO should take 

the following actions: 

•	 Align the individual performance expectations with organizational 

goals, which helps individuals identify the connection between their 

daily activities and organizational goals. 

•	 Connect performance expectations to crosscutting organizational goals, 

which would foster the necessary collaboration, interaction, and 

teamwork across organizational boundaries to achieve these results. 

•	 Provide and routinely use performance information to track 

organizational priorities, which would help GPO identify performance 

gaps and pinpoint improvement opportunities. 

•	 Require individuals to take follow-up actions on identified performance 

gaps to address organizational priorities, which underscores the 

importance of holding individuals accountable for making progress on 

their priorities. 

Page 33 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
•	 Use competencies, which define the skills and supporting behaviors that 

individuals are expected to exhibit, to provide a fuller assessment of 

performance. 

•	 Link employee pay and awards to individual and organizational 

performance, which establishes incentives for high performance. 

•	 Make meaningful distinctions in performance, which provides a basis 

for constructive feedback, rewarding top performers, and dealing with 

poor performers. 

•	 Involve employees and stakeholders in the development of the 

performance management system which helps increase their ownership 

of the organizational goals and objectives. 

•	 Maintain continuity during leadership transitions by focusing on a broad 

set of programmatic priorities. 

Concluding 	 Realizing the importance of effective human capital management, the new 

Public Printer has taken several important steps to establish the foundation Observations	 needed to successfully transform GPO. However, there are additional 

opportunities for GPO to strengthen human capital management to support 

its progress into the 21st century. 

We found that, although GPO’s leadership recognizes the importance of 

human capital management in GPO’s transformation, it must ensure that 

managers appreciate the importance of their roles in order to make the 

entire workforce accountable for results. To achieve this transformation, 

GPO will need to strengthen the role of human capital management and 

ensure that it will be integrated with strategies for accomplishing GPO’s 

mission and program goals. In addition, to ensure that GPO’s workforce has 

the correct mix of skills and competencies for the future, GPO leadership 

will need to establish a strategic workforce planning process. Finally, to 

make GPO’s units and workforce accountable for results, GPO will need to 

strengthen its current performance management systems. GPO’s future 

success will depend largely on how well it is able to build and strengthen 

its capacity to effectively manage human capital in support of results. 

Page 34 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Agency Comments	 We provided a draft of this report in September 2003 to the Public Printer 

for his review and comment. GPO’s Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff, 

and Chief Human Capital Officer provided comments orally and by e-mail 

on behalf of GPO generally agreeing with the content, findings, and 

recommendations of the draft report. They also provided minor technical 

clarifications, and we made those changes where appropriate. 

The officials stated that GPO is committed to implementing the 

recommendations that we made to strengthen its human capital 

management and that the recommendations were fully consistent with the 

direction in which GPO is already moving. The officials stated that they 

look forward to continuing to work cooperatively with us throughout 

GPO’s transformation effort and that our ongoing work on legislative and 

executive branch printing requirements will be an important input into 

GPO’s ongoing strategic planning efforts. 

Unless you announce its contents earlier, we plan no further distribution of 

this report until 7 days after its issuance date. At that time, we will send 

copies to the Public Printer, GPO, as well as the Joint Committee on 

Printing, and the House Appropriations Legislative Subcommittee, Senate 

Committee on Rules and Administration, and House Committee on 

Administration. We will also make copies available to others upon request. 

In addition, the report will be available at no charge on GAO’s Web site at 

http://www.gao.gov. 

If you have any questions about this report, please contact me or Steven 

Lozano on (202) 512-6806 or on mihmj@gao.gov and lozanos@gao.gov. 

Major contributors to this report were William Reinsberg, Benjamin 

Crawford, Masha Pastuhov-Pastein, and Carole Cimitile. 

J. Christopher Mihm 

Director, Strategic Issues 

Page 35 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Appendix I 

Objective, Scope, and Methodology


The objective of our review was to describe the Government Printing 

Office’s (GPO) actions and plans for strategically managing its workforce 

and recommend next steps for GPO as it transforms. To identify strategic 

human capital practices and recommend next steps, we reviewed our 

models, guides, reports, and other products on strategic planning and 

performance measurement, strategic human capital management, 

transformation efforts, and other related areas. We used our Model of 

Strategic Human Capital Management to guide our initial analysis. From 

that analysis, we identified a set of human capital issues that could benefit 

GPO if addressed in the short term. These issues include the role of GPO’s 

Human Resources Office and the Chief Human Capital Officer (CHCO), the 

desire to restructure GPO's workforce as part of its transformation, and the 

use of performance management systems. In order to address these 

immediate issues, we narrowed our review to focus on five of the eight 

critical success factors in our model: 

• leadership’s commitment to human capital management, 

• the role of the human capital function, 

• integration and alignment, 

• data-driven human capital decisions, and 

• unit and organizational performance linked to organizational goals. 

To assess GPO’s actions and plans related to these critical success factors, 

we reviewed statements by the Public Printer; individual performance 

standards, position descriptions, and vacancy announcements; GPO 

policies and procedures; results from GPO’s employee climate survey taken 

in March 2003; studies of GPO human capital issues conducted by the 

Office of Personnel Management and Booz-Allen and Hamilton; 

organizational charts; information from GPO’s intranet; and other relevant 

documentation. 

To obtain additional information and perspectives on GPO’s human capital 

issues, we interviewed key senior GPO officials, including the Deputy 

Public Printer; Chief of Staff; Deputy Chief of Staff; Superintendent of 

Documents; Managing Director of Plant Operations; Managing Director of 

Page 36 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
Appendix I


Objective, Scope, and Methodology


Customer Services; the CHCO; former Personnel Director;

1

 Acting 

Personnel Director; Director, Office of Employee and Labor Relations; 

General Counsel; and Comptroller. We also interviewed GPO officials at the 

next level of management responsible for human capital, information 

dissemination, and customer service and union leaders. In addition, we 

visited GPO headquarters in Washington, D.C., and a distribution center in 

Laurel, Maryland, to talk with frontline managers about their 

responsibilities and the responsibilities of their employees. 

We developed the recommended next steps by referring to our models, 

guides, reports, and other products on strategic human capital 

management and identifying additional practices that were associated with 

and would further complement or support current GPO efforts. We 

performed our work from March through September 2003 in accordance 

with generally accepted government auditing standards. 

1

 GPO’s Personnel Director retired on July 3, 2003. 

(450233) Page 37 GAO-04-85 GPO’s Strategic Human Capital Management 
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