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2. Develop and Manage Talent

Recruit and Retain

The Postal Service recognizes the need to recruit people who have the specialized training and skills. It has implemented two new recruitment and development programs. The Management Intern Program brings in individuals with Masters degrees. Through a series of highly-focused assignments, each individual is given experiences in managing a wide range of functions prior to outplacement in a key operational position. The Professional Specialist Trainee Program recruits people with advanced technical skills, such as engineers, information technology experts, certified public accountants, and economists — key players for conducting business in the 21st Century. Over the past 4 years, over 145 participants in both programs have graduated and been placed in permanent positions.

The Postal Service realizes the importance of identifying talent and improving employee skills. Talent management strategies will result in a workforce that possesses the skills and competencies necessary for organizational success. In addition to the Management Intern and Professional Specialist Trainee Programs, partnerships with professional organizations and associations will be pursued to attract new, high-caliber candidates from both internal and external sources. The Postal Service will continue with aggressive approaches to recruit student interns, and attract seasoned business and technical professionals who have proven track records in both the public and private sectors.

The Postal Service will explore opportunities to enhance the competitiveness of pay for technical and non-executive manager positions, monitor trends that draw talent from the workplace, and identify retention and recruitment strategies to address the needs of future labor pools. The Postal Service will continue to identify the critical skills and abilities, and update its selection, assessment methods, and training curriculum. The organization will reassess needed critical skills and abilities and conduct ongoing reviews of all job descriptions and qualification standards.

Prepare New Leaders with Corporate Succession Planning

To retain and develop the valuable employees who make the many contributions to successful Transformation, the Postal Service redesigned Corporate Succession Planning to make the process more transparent and standardized, yet highly competitive and performance-based. Through this new process over 1,300 employees at the PCES and Executive and Administrative Schedule (EAS) Level 22 and above have been identified as potential successors for 785 executive, senior executive, and officer-level positions. These employees are monitored through an automated system which tracks individual development.