SEC struggles to rebound from its two-year hiring freeze – By Jessie Bur (Federal Times) / Jan 25 2020
Financial limitations that caused the Securities and Exchange Commission to freeze the hiring of new employees from October 2016 to April 2019 have adversely impacted the overall mission of the agency, according to responses to a Government Accountability Office survey of agency personnel, released Jan. 24.
SEC employees largely found that the hiring freeze had a noticeable negative impact, with 65.7 percent saying that it had in effect on their workload. Over 94 percent of supervisors and managers at SEC said that the hiring freeze had a negative effect on their division’s workload, with half noting that it had a large negative effect.
Employees also felt that the freeze had a noticeable negative impact on morale, with 31 percent of respondents saying that there was a large negative impact.
“Based on SEC’s budget justification documents, from October 1, 2016, through September 30, 2018, SEC lost a net total of 476 positions agencywide, including 363 positions across its mission-critical offices and divisions,” GAO wrote in a December 2019 report.
Continue to article: https://www.federaltimes.com/management/hr/2020/01/24/sec-struggles-to-rebound-from-its-two-year-hiring-freeze/
