The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to address Government Accountability Office recommendations about recruiting and retaining new contract and federal workers by the end of the year, the agency told the office.
In two reports released Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommended the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) attempt to streamline the process it uses to approve changes to benefits and compensation at its management and operations contractors.
About 55,000 people worked for six NNSA management and operations contractors as of fiscal year 2022, according to GAO’s report. Half of them reported long lag times between requesting changes to employee compensation packages and getting an NNSA ruling on the request.
Three of the six contractors said that “the amount of time it can take for NNSA to approve requests can put the … contractors at a disadvantage when competing for talent with the private sector,” GAO reported.
The time it takes for NNSA to review these requests from contractor human resources departments “is unknown because NNSA does not formally track this information or have a system to determine whether or why there are delays in the process,” GAO said. According to one contractor the office interviewed, lag time can be between three and six months.
In a letter appended to the report on management and operations contractors, Jill Hruby, administrator of NNSA, said the agency’s Office of Partnership and Acquisition Services will create a list of all the contractors’ human resource requests by March 2025 to determine which requests should be met to retain contractors.
Hruby said NNSA will also work with contractors to understand how best to recruit and retain workers in the future. Hruby estimates that NNSA will identify a process for collecting information on contractors by December 2024.
For the federal workforce, about 1,800 strong in fiscal 2022, GAO recommended that the NNSA establish a process to better leverage data gathered by employee surveys.
In a letter appended to the report on the federal workforce, Hruby said NNSA will complete enhancement of its processes for reviewing employee surveys and collaborating with stakeholders by September and assess recruitment and retention actions for federal workers by December.
“[NNSA] continues to be proactive in addressing the challenges we face with recruiting and retaining the highly skilled federal workforce needed to accomplish NNSA’s nuclear security missions,” Hruby said in her letter to GAO.
Congress ordered GAO to investigate NNSA’s recruitment and retention processes in a report that accompanied the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, which became law in December 2022.