Pay Flexibility
In the meantime, OPM expanded VA’s ability to hire noncompetitively and encouraged retired federal employees to return to service by offering pay flexibilities. The CARES Act, which provided emergency funding to agencies during the pandemic, also allowed VA to waive pay limitations during the national emergency. That includes the biweekly premium pay cap.
“We had upward of 150 employees who exceeded the biweekly caps in the first month,” explained Jessica Bonjorni, MBA, VA’s chief of human capital management. “We expect that we’ll use more of those waivers as the year goes on, as we’re responding not just to the pandemic but other simultaneous emergencies.”
During the emergency hiring, VA has seen more temporary employees hired than permanent, but Bonjorni said she expects many will convert to full-time. She also noted that the pandemic’s negative effects on other healthcare systems could serve to benefit VA.
“Other healthcare systems are laying off staff or furloughing them,” she explained. “That may make it easier to convince people that we’re an employer of choice. We can offer greater job security.”
Lieberman cautioned legislators, however, that VA was still only three months into the process and that not enough was known about the long-term effects of expedited hiring. “We’ll be paying close attention to this, making sure there are no unintended consequences to these improvements we’ve made.”
For example, the MISSION Act, which defines VA’s new system of community care providers, is only a year old. Lieberman pointed out that, with COVID-19 changing the landscape of care, VA might need to do more strategic planning to make sure hiring takes into account community needs and is in the best interest of veterans.
Legislators asked for reassurance that the unintended consequences wouldn’t include hiring unqualified staff at the VA.
“We check three items up front,” Lieberman responded. “We make sure they have an active license, we check a reference and we go to the National Practitioner Data Bank. There we can see if any application has had a payment with a malpractice suit or a history of criminal activity and whether they’ve been denied an appointment to a healthcare program, state or federal. If we were to see any warning signs during or following the application process, we would take an immediate look at what was going on with that individual and pull them away from patient care while we did further investigation.”
According to VA, the department so far has not needed to remove any clinical staff hired under the expedited hiring process.
