Expediting the VA Hiring Process
NAVAPD is pleased to learn that Secretary McDonough has outlined 10 steps to invest in VA employees.
The Secretary’s 10 steps program includes:
Working with Congress to invest in wages.
Maximizing bonuses and retention incentives
Increasing opportunities to advance at VA.
Expediting the hiring process.
Offering greater flexibility in where employees work.
Helping cover the cost of childcare.
Investing in measures to improve well-being.
Investing in education.
Embedding inclusion, diversity, equity and access across VA.
Protecting employees from COVID-19.
NAVAPD has been actively involved in six of the items on the Secretary’s list (#1,2,3,7,8,9). Item number 4, Expediting the Hiring Process, is an issue that we see as needing a major and immediate overhaul. We have learned that to address the fourth step on the list, a multidisciplinary team of 30 leaders from across VHA met the week of March 14, 2022, to streamline and improve the employee onboarding experience. The group examined every aspect of the onboarding process, including employee physicals, credentialing and privileging, pay setting, personnel security, and all the other requirements and actions that must take place before a new employee can begin working at VA.
The workgroup identified several barriers within the current process and developed a series of recommendations that they then grouped into four main strategies:
Realign and restructure the process to ensure selected candidates are retained and welcomed to VHA. The workgroup suggested that this can be done by giving more flexibility to the selectee and hiring manager on items such as when the selectee will start, their preferred communication method, regular status updates, allowing the hiring manager to extend a single offer, and providing a single point of contact within HR to expeditiously resolve issues during the process.
Re-sequence or eliminate non-critical actions to accelerate onboarding. The group’s recommendations included potentially eliminating tentative offers and the need for unnecessary physical exams, deferring–when possible–the remaining physical exams to within 120 days of the new employee’s start date, and segmenting the credentialing and privileging process to allow some tasks to be done before the employee starts and other tasks within their first 120 days.
Enhance system integration and data capture to improve process transparency and data integrity by utilizing the USA Staffing system, increasing automation to reduce errors, and integrating existing interoperability between USA Staffing and other systems such as VetPro.
Implement effective communications and change management to enhance awareness and streamline the adoption of changes through an aggressive outreach and engagement strategy to break down barriers and facilitate change.
NAVAPD believes this is a step in the right direction. Anyone involved in the hiring of a new employee knows how inordinately long it takes to onboard. Many members have reported losing qualified physicians and dentists to other non-government organizations because the candidate could no longer continue to wait the months it takes to get a firm offer or have everything in place so that they may start work at VA.
We think that some additional steps need to be taken into consideration, including hiring physicians and dentists as soon as a staff member announces their plan to leave or retire. It is inexcusable that Medical and Dental Services be left at a disadvantage and must wait until a doctor out-processes before an announcement can be made to fill that position. This only serves to delay care to the veteran.
NAVAPD also believes that a lot of the hurdles in place need to be removed, or at the very least, streamlined to allow for expeditiously bringing new hires on board. We also believe that there should be a pool of temporary physician and dentist hires that can be accessed to make up for the delay in brining new employees on board. These temporary hires can be prescreened, with limited access to VA data systems and should be available for short term work so that the veteran is taken care of while VA completes the onboarding of the new full-time employee.
NAVAPD believes by doing this our members will not be overworked by having to take on multiple patient panels; and ultimately the veteran will get the quality timely care they so rightly deserve.
If you or your colleagues have thoughts, ideas, suggestions or concerns please contact us at opscoord@navapd.org.