WORKFORCE
where workers want to go into the office—where they don’t drive to work hoping to hit every red light on the way just to delay the start of the workday,” he said.
Giunta’s job is to lead his command’s workforce into the future and ensure mission success—and it’s a future that looks very different following the COVID-19 pandemic. ACC-RSA is the largest contracting center, with over 900 contracting profession- als. Roughly 100 of them operate remotely, Giunta said, and it’s a trend leaders must embrace without being held hostage to a corporate or command climate of convenience.
Army AL&T magazine sat down with Giunta in November to discuss his approach to recruiting and retention in the post- pandemic environment.
AL&T: What nuances in trends are you seeing in the workplace environment and recruitment within the command?
GIUNTA: In my experience, historically, when recruiting some- one from an outside location, candidates frequently asked for relocation incentives. Prior to COVID, that seemed to be the greatest challenge we faced in the recruiting process once we found the right person for the position. Fast-forward through COVID, and it’s no longer about relocation incentives. Now, the question we get asked is, “Can this position be offered as remote?”
Of course, we can hire remotely if we authorize that as part of the hiring action, but we can’t do everything remotely in our business. I don’t believe remote work or 100% telework will ever replace the need to work closely and face-to-face with our mission part- ners, but it does offer us flexibility for recruiting and retention purposes. We’ve been able to move work around from a remote employee if we need to have someone who must engage in a more face-to-face exchange with our mission partners, but that’s been an exception. Our remote employees are extremely valuable to us, but they represent a smaller portion of our larger workforce. Te contracting workforce is a unique functional career field, and it takes a significant amount of on-the-job training and “hands on” experience to fully develop a contracting professional. To that end-state, we use remote positions to augment our work- force, and frankly, that can be a challenge in the post-COVID employment culture.
AL&T: As a civilian workforce, we’re experiencing both inter- agency competition and private industry competition, and the post-pandemic environment has exacerbated those challenges. How has ACC-RSA faced those challenges?
GIUNTA: It might surprise you to know but we don’t lose a lot of our contracting professionals to industry. Generally, we pick up more folks from industry than we lose, and there are various reasons for that. I believe government employment offers greater stability than industry, and I think the operational tempo is more consistent. Lastly, we have an awesome mission and supporting the Army and our Soldiers is very satisfying.
On the other hand, we do compete with other governmental organizations, whether it be DOD or other federal, state or local agencies who can offer the same stability with competitive pay. Tere are two major hubs for Army contracting or contracting professionals in the federal government: [Washington] D.C. and Redstone [Arsenal, Alabama]. It’s getting more challenging in Redstone because other federal agencies have either moved here or have expanded and they have significant contracting work- force requirements. We are surrounded by competition: the FBI, NASA, the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the Defense Logistics Agency—even my higher headquarters, which is located across the street from my center. It’s always good to have your folks go to your higher headquarters and expand their profes- sional opportunities, but when they leave our organization, their departure creates a talent gap. Te contracting career field is very volatile, highly competitive and desirable. It takes roughly 10 years to develop a truly capable, fully competent contracting professional, so our competition proactively recruits our best and brightest—what we call journeymen—because they are a highly sought-after asset. So, our challenge is more interagency, I guess you’d say, and I think that will always be the case.
AL&T: How do you mitigate those losses?
GIUNTA: Te government uses a variety of pay and evaluation systems, and that’s both a blessing and a challenge. A significant portion of the acquisition community is in the Army Acquisition Demonstration Project (AcqDemo) pay and evaluation system. My supervisors—at least in Huntsville—are in AcqDemo, but most of my employees are in DPMAP (DOD Performance Manage- ment and Appraisal Program). AcqDemo provides a great amount of flexibility to recruit and compensate high-performing employ- ees. Most of my competition at Redstone utilizes AcqDemo or an equivalent system. Tat makes it extremely challenging to compete when recruiting critical positions. For example, it’s hard to recruit and retain employees who work secure environ- ment contracting, because they are required to operate in a SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility), so I’m trying to transition part of that workforce into AcqDemo. I would love to put the entire workforce in AcqDemo, but there are funding
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