This year AFSA weighed in on the Department of State’s Five-Year Work-
force and Leadership Succession Plan, 2016-2020, which the Department
prepares every year in order to take stock of its human capital needs and
to identify challenges and advances in the areas of recruiting, hiring, staff-
ing and training. Working together, we strengthened the narrative by ensur-
ing it clearly defined today’s workforce challenges—the mid-level staffing
bulge and consular adjudicator gap. AFSA also urged the Department to
elaborate on how it plans to address deficits in diversity at the senior
levels, keep a new generation engaged by assuring that entry-level officers
have in-cone experience in one of their first two entry-level tours, and take
into account leadership and management acumen during the chiefs of mis-
sion and deputy chiefs of mission/principal officer selection processes.
IMPROVING USAID’S HUMAN RESOURCES FUNCTION
AFSA and USAID have participated pre-decisionally in USAID’s roll-out of its
Human Capital and Talent Management (HCTM) transformation as the agen-
cy seeks to improve efficiencies in customer service to better address the
needs of its Foreign Service members. As a major component of that trans-
formation, AFSA and the Agency began negotiations regarding the Agency’s
proposed Performance Redesign Initiative. Throughout 2016, AFSA continued
to push the Agency to address the critical need for better workforce plan-
ning through the production of meaningful data. We called for USAID to
WORKFORCE
AND LEADERSHIP
SUCCESSION
AFSA is continually en-
gaged in a constructive
dialogue with State’s
Bureau of Human
Resources and other
key stakeholders on
Foreign Service work-
force issues.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
27
Members of the AFSA
Governing Board with
Dr. Beth Fisher-Yoshida
following a discussion
on 360 feedback in the
Foreign Service.