CREATING A MORE DIVERSE WORKFORE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00530R000100100002-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 17
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 21, 2013
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: October 27, 1988
• Content Type: MISC

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DRAFT
CHAPTER SIX
CREATING A MORE DIVERSE WORKFORCE
The intelligence agencies have been in the enviable position of
having much larger rates of staff growth than the government-wide
rate of two percent. For the four agencies whose equal employment
profiles and policies NAPA analyzed, the percent of civilian staff
increases from fiscal years 1982 to 1987 were: CIA, 24 percent;
NSA, 37 percent; DIA, 42 percent; and FBI, 18 percent.
This chapter reviews the intelligence agencies' efforts to
recruit and promote women and members of minority groups, and the
extent to which the agencies took advantage Of their growth
environments to make their workforces more diverse ones.
Recognizing that organizations must do more than simply bring new
people into their workforces, the panel also examined retention and
promotion rates and agency efforts to help their staffs deal with
people from all racial and ethnic groups in the workplace.
I. Marked Variations in Workforce Profiles
Table 1 summarizes the changes of the intelligence agencies'
employment profiles between 1982 and 1987, and compares them to
government-wide data for approximately the same period.
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7 'AFT
Intelligence
Table 1
Agency and Government-Wide Comparisons
Equal Employment Data
Fiscal Years 1982 - 1987
FBI
CIA
NSA DIA
GOVT-WIDE
Staffing
Increase
18%
24%
37% ' 42%
2%
Change in
43.7% to
35.8% to
32.0% 34.8% to
38.2% to
female wkfc
44.9%
40.8%
42.0% 38%
40.2%
proportion
+0.2%/yr
+1%/yr
+2%/yr +0.6%/yr
+0.5/yr
Change in
24.3% to
11.6%
8.3% to 14.6% to
23.8% to
minority wkfc
24.8%
(no
9.6%
19.4%
25.5%
proportion
+0.1%/yr
change)
+0.2%/yr
+1%/yr
+0.4%/yr
Change in
9.7% to
22% to
24% to
6.2% to
23.5% to
proportion
16.6%
30%
28%
14.7%
26.8%
of female
professionals
+1.4%/yr
+1.6%/yr
+0.8%/yr
+1.7%/yr
+0.8%/yr
Change in
8.5% to
7% (no
7.0% to
2.7%
12.7% to
proportion
11.2%
change)
7.6%
6.8%
15.0%
of minority
professionals
+0.5%/yr
+0.1%/yr
+0.8%/yr
+0.6%/yr
NAPA
Women
Women
Women
Women
N/A
Constructed
lltn of 11
4th of 11
4th of 11
8th of 9
Index
Minority
Minority
Minority
Minority
Ranking*
10th of 11
11th of 11
11th of 11
9th of 9
1982 Supergrd
99.2% men
97.7% men
97.1% men
96.4% men
93.8% men
distribution
96.3% wht
98.3% white
95.4% white
100.0% wht
93.6% white
1986/7 Suprgrd
98.6% men
95.7% men
94.6% men
98.0% men
91.7% men
distribution
94.4% wht
97.0% white
96.1% white
98.1% wht
93.2% white
Government-wide data covers fiscal years 1982 - 1986; Intelligence
agency data is for fiscal years 1982 - 1987.
Government-wide supergrade data is for fiscal year 1986; Intelligence
agency data is for fiscal year 1987.
Indexes were constructed based on size of agency professional
or professional administrative staff. Thus, when two agencies
appear to be "tied," they are actually ranked on different
scales, because they are on different indexes.
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LiKAI' I
Given their rates of agency growth, NAPA expected that there
would be growth in the proportion of women and members of minority
groups in each agency's worktorce. In fact, the proportion of women
rose in all agencies, with the proportion of professional women
growing more than the government-wide proportion. DIA's proportion
of professional women increased the most. DIA had, however, the
smallest proportion of women in professional positions in 1982, and
the largest rate of overall staff growth. The CIA and NSA are both
above the government-wide proportion and have a much larger
proportion of women in their professional workforce than do DIA and
the FBI.
Growth in the proportion of members of minority groups as part
of the total workforce was similar to that of the growth of women at
the FBI and DIA. NSA's proportion increased (actually at a greater
rate than the FBI's), and CIA's proportion remained exactly the
same. The FBI's total proportion (24.8 percent) is closest to the
government-wide proportion of 25.5 percent.
No intelligence agency is equal to the government-wide
proportion (15.0 percent) of members of minority groups among the
professional staff; FBI is the closest, with 11.2 percent. However,
DIA had a nigher annual rate of growth (again, starting from a much
lower base). The CIA had no growth and NSA very little.
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AFT
After examining each agency's staff distribution, NAPA compared
each to a set of other government agencies. In all cases, the
intelligence agencies were at or near the bottom of the ranking in
terms of members of minority groups in professional or
professional/administrative positions. The FBI and DIA also ranked
poorly in terms of the proportion of women in the professional
ranks, but CIA and NSA compared favorably.
Government-wide, few women or members of minority groups are in
supergrade jobs -- 91.7 percent are filled by men and 93.2 percent
whites. No intelligence agency, however, did even this well.
Recruitment Efforts
All of the agencies have special emphasis recruiting programs,
though the levels of focus seem to differ somewhat.
The CIA emphasizes its college student programs, some of which
are designed to attract minority students, eitner directly or
through college administrators and placement directors. The NSA
Black Affairs and Hispanic special emphasis program managers are
focus of a great deal of that agency's outreach. The FBI has a
centralized recruiting program, in terms of advertising and
promotional efforts, with much direct recruiting done through staff
in its field office. DIA focuses employment advertising and site
recruitment toward minority educational institutions.
the
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DRAFT
One base against which to compare IC agency recruitment results
is the composition of college graduating groups. Just over 50
percent of 1984/85 college graduates with bachelor's degrees were
women, and 12 percent were members of minority groups.
Most of tne agencies' recruitment levels of women have risen
steadily, but the proportion of new hires who are members of
minority groups varies somewhat more. In fiscal year 1987, the
proportion of professional recruits who were members of minority
groups was: FBI, 15 percent; NSA, 8.9 percent; DIA, 8.0 percent;
CIA, 7.5 percent. These proportions were not constant through the
five year period studied. CIA, for example, has increased its
proportion from three percent in 1985.
Conclusions and Recommendations: Recruitment
It is difficult to determine what factors account for the
varying levels of increase. Among those which would affect changing
proportions are: occupational groups recruited and the proportion
of women and members of minority groups in them; agency level of
effort; and agency location(s).
For example, in the panel's judgment, NSA's level of effort
appears to the greatest -- staff are involved throughout the agency;
staff and managers have received a lot of training in equal
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Lacgr-tr
employment issues; and the agency has analyzed its needs and the job
market and done some very targeted recruiting. Yet, the proportion
of professional staff who are members of minority groups has risen
from only 7 to 7.6 percent. However, the proportion of the overall
minority workforce grew by .8 percent, secpnd only to DIA's 4.8
percent growth.
DIA's level of effort, as they described it, was less than any
other agency's, yet the proportion of staff growth was greatest.
Even taking into account that DIA started with the lowest levels of
professional staff, the agency's growth is still marked.
This leads to consideration of geography DIA's sites are in
an urban area, with a large minority population, and they are on
major public transportation routes. NSA is near urban areas, but is
not on major public transportation routes. On the other hand, the
CIA and NSA are in similar types of locales, and the CIA's levels of
minority representation in its workforce did not grow at all.
Public and private organizations have cited transportation ease and
child care availability as important factors when recruiting women
and members of minority groups, especially for support positions.
Working Within the Heterogeneous Workplace
Most organizations concentrate on hiring increasing proportions
of women and members of minority groups, but focus less on whether
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AFT
the existing workforce is prepared to work in a more heterogeneous
workplace. This is not a comfortable topic to address, in that it
requires managers and staff to become more aware of and perhaps
discuss their perceptions and feelings, things not easily done.
Without somewhat deliberate consciousness raising, workforces
that have been predominantly white and male may not be as likely to
absorb women and members of minority groups into the mainstream.
How does this translate into organizational policy? It means, among
other things, that organizations need to assure that they don't
encourage informal communication networks which work around official
employee performance systems, and that they must work to assure that
women and members of minority groups have the same opportunities to
perform the difficult work that leads to recognition and promotions.
It was beyond the scope of NAPA's work to take the pulse of
each intelligence agency's organizational culture. However, there
are some indicators of "organizational absorption" that can be
examined. These include retention and promotion figures, as well as
special emphasis programs designed to promote a more heterogeneous
workplace.
A. Promoting and Retaining Staff
All of the agencies promote women in greater proportion to
their representation in the agency workforce. However, these are
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LNAFT
aggregate figures, and thus include support staff, whose career
ladders more often include the option of yearly promotions. To
determine whether staff in like positions were being promoted in
similar timeframes would require more discrete data. NAPA did not
request this.
Members of minority groups were generally promoted in a
proportion closer to their representation in the workforce, with
some agencies above and some below the representation level. Again,
tnis data is for all staff, and doesn't permit analysis about
promotions through professional ranks.
The intelligence agencies do not appear to do a great deal of
analysis of retention figures for minority and female staff. The
FBI has done some, and as a result deliberately made some
adjustments in its training programs to reduce attrition. These
have had a definite, positive impact on retention.
Only CIA and NSA provided aggregate attrition data. While
there were not any startling indications, some trends do appear
worth monitoring. For example, in NSA, women make up more of those
who left in 1987 (43.8 percent) than 1982 (35.0 percent). Members
of minority groups had also become a larger proportion of those
leaving (rising from 8 to 13 percent). In the CIA, Asian staff seem
to leave at a higher rate tnan otners.
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ZAFT
B. Preparing the Workplace to Deal with Differences
The agencies described special emphasis training programs,
usually discussing them in terms of benefit to members of a special
emphasis group and to the organization as a whole. For example, the
CIA has three courses in special awareness training for women only,
and a fourth for agency male middle managers.
The FBI is developing a new set of programs designed to
sensitize managers and supervisors to equal employment issues and
provide a greater awareness to all staff. All DIA training courses
for managers and supervisors include EEO principles and
responsibilities, and EEO courses are included in career ladder
training.
NSA held in October 1987 a one-day, off-site seminar for senior
executives on "Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action: The Role
of the Executive." The NSA Director and the entire senior staff
directorate attended. Designed to provide upper management with
sound knowledge of equal employment opportunity and to reaffirm that
this is an innerent part of each senior manager's responsibilities,
the seminar was deemed a "tremendous success." Since October 1987,
180 senior staff have attended, and the goal is for all managers and
supervisors to eventually do so.
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DRAFT
Conclusions and Recommendations: Working Within the Heterogeneous
Workplace
A more diverse workforce is not created solely by bringing more
women and members of minority groups into an organization. Workforce
acculturation is especially important in organizations whose staffs
were predominantly white, male and stable for a long period. This
is not to presume that existing staff would not welcome their new
associates, but to recognize that dealing with differences in the
workforce is often a learning process in any institution.
The intelligence agencies have made different levels of effort
in providing acculturation training. All now appear to be very
aware of the importance of this, and this awareness is reflected in
ongoing efforts. In the panel's judgment, NSA's programs seem to
involve the most outreach to all staff and the most visible amount
of top management participation commitment. Other agency heads have
expressed strong commitment, but NSA leaders have made their
commitment more apparent.
The panel cannot assess the movement of women and members of
minority groups through middle management toward senior level
positions. The agencies now gather data to examine entry level
statistics and promotions, but are not as geared to examining, for
example, the proportion of minority and female staff who enter who
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make it to the top of career ladders or to senior management. This
is reflected in the relative lack of analysis of retention data
(except within the FBI), as compared to the attention paid to hiring
information.
IV. What the Future Holds
Any discussion of intelligence agencies' special emphasis
employment efforts has to be in the context of the occupations they
recruit for and the expected demographics of the future workforce.
Most professional positions in the intelligence agencies are for
those with at least one college degree, and the agencies seek to
recruit at or near the top of graduating classes or professions.
In the next decade, there will be fewer new entrants to the
workforce, and a larger proportion of them may not have the level of
skills needed in the intelligence agencies. More of the young
people who will comprise the workforce will be from "at risk"
families (those in poverty, where English is not the first language,
and in which there is only one parent in the household). A
disproportionate number of these at risk children (and later,
entrants to the workforce) will be members of minority groups, that
segment of the U.S. population which will comprise 29 percent of new
entrants to the workforce between now and the year 2000. (See
detailed discussion in Chapter Two.)
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1.4 %.
Why will more of these young people perhaps not have the skills
needed for intelligence agency work? College attendance rates have
historically been higher among whites than for blacks and Hispanics,
a function in part of the larger proportion of white high school
students who graduate than blacks and Hispanics (83 percent of
whites, 75 percent of blacks and 60 percent of Hispanics in 1984).
While the proportions who graduate from high school have risen (up
seven percent for blacks since 1978 and four percent for Hispanics),
recent evidence does not suggest increases in college-going
participation rates for minority group high school graduates. In
addition,'smaller numbers and proportions of new Ph.D.s are members
of minority groups. Within this smaller number, women from minority
groups often now comprise a larger proportion than men.
This discussion is not meant to imply that young adults who are
members of minority groups are intrinsically less qualified for
intelligence agency work. It is important to recognize that not
only will a large proportion of new entrants to the U.S. workforce
be members of minority groups, but that since many will be from "at
risk" families they -- as well as the white children from "at risk"
families will be less prepared for many of the hi-tech jobs of
tne future, and the intelligence agencies have a larger proportion
of these positions than do many other federal agencies.
To ignore these trends would be to avoid coping with them. To
avoid coping with them would be to reduce the likelihood that
intelligence agencies can continue to make their workforces more
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diverse. As the public and private sectors continue efforts to
increase members of minority groups in their workforces, the federal
government -- which practiced equal opportunity earlier and was thus
able to attract a larger proportion of talented members of minority
groups -- will face much stiffer competition for these individuals.
Given their specialized skill needs, the intelligence agencies will
find competition even tougher than at the present.
The basic message here is "if you think it was tough before,
just wait." Given this, it becomes even more important to analyze
the immediate past and current intelligence agency special emphasis
recruiting efforts. Lessons learned need to be expeditiously
applied.
Chapter Six Conclusions: Creating a More Diverse Workforce
In a period of large staff increases, the intelligence agencies
have made gains in hiring women and members of minority groups,
although NSA has not done as well as the FBI and DIA in hiring
members of minority groups to the professional staff, and CIA's
proportion of staff who are members of minority groups has not
changed at all. However, CIA's entry level hiring of professionals
shows recent increases. While this is not an area in which the
agencies can be judged only on numbers, aggregate data do offer
useful comparisons.
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RAFT
The panel believes that top management of the intelligence
agencies did not focus on equal employment issues in hiring to the
extent that domestic agencies were doing so during this period of
rapid growth. The intelligence agencies did not take advantage of
their massive growtn to bring in and move up members of minority
groups. The agencies were more successful in recruiting women.
Having said this, it is important to recognize that many of the
occupations for which the agencies hire are not those that have
traditionally attracted large numbers of women and members of
minority groups. Thus, to compare an IC agency with the Veterans
Administration, with its large complement of nurses a traditional
profession for women -- is not a fair comparison.
The panel also recognizes that the IC agencies had done
relatively little recruiting immediately prior to 1981, given the
lack of staff growth, and in some cases staff decreases. To go from
slow/no-growth to large growth is a massive administrative
undertaking, and the agencies may have done as well as any
organization could in similar circumstances. The differing levels
of success in recruiting members of minority groups does raise
questions as to whether some agencies developed effective special
emphasis hiring programs more quickly than others.
The agencies now describe recruiting programs that indicate
strong top management interest and active levels of effort. They
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have carefully defined targets for special emphasis recruiting and
have developed advertising and on-site efforts in a range of
academic and professional organizations.
The panel cautions that, given current compensation inequities
ana projected workforce contractions, it will be difficult for the
IC agencies to recruit staff in exact proportions to the racial and
gender distribution of college graduating classes. Thus, strong
special emphasis recruitment programs may not be reflected as
quickly in recruiting results as they might in growth periods.
However, the projected employment market makes it all the more
important that the IC agencies continue these efforts.
The panel believes analysis of retention, promotion and
training participation data are important, and recognize that the
intelligence agencies are becoming more aware of this. If the
agencies are to retain the staff they have worked so hard to
attract, they need to make concerted efforts in these areas.
Recommendations: Creating a More Diverse Workforce
Most of what the NAPA panel believes needs to be done is a
question of an enhanced degree of effort rather than a new
activity. The panel firmly believes that intelligence agency equal
employment efforts need to be integrated into overall workforce
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liKA1- I
management -- incorporated into recruiting, training, career
development and succession planning. While special emphasis
activities are important, managers must understand that they have a
day-to-day responsibility to make their agencies' workforces more
diverse, at all levels.
Some of the NAPA recommendations are best stated in terms of
current congressional initiatives.
Congressman Stokes has introduced legislation that would
require the Director of Central Intelligence and the Secretary of
Defense to submit to the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence and the Senate the Select Committee on Intelligence a
report analyzing each equal employment opportunity group's
representation in the CIA and the NSA. The proposal also requires
that agencies prepare a plan to address underrepresentation of any
such equal employment group by September 30, 1991. The panel
supports this initiative.
Further, the panel recommends that:
- this initiative be extended to DIA and the FBI;
- the proposed Senior Coordinating Group receive and monitor
these reports; and
- these agencies share with each other their successful
techniques in achieving these goals.
To help the intelligence agencies reach the goals embodied in
these proposals, the Congress needs to recognize employment market
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DRAFT
realities, and work with the IC community to create a work
environment that will permit the intelligence agencies to recruit
the most diverse workforce possible. Some of these issues relate to
compensation and benefits, and are discussed in that segment of
NAPA's work.
In the last analysis, the panel believes top management in each
of the intelligence agencies must make a sustained commitment t
recruit members of minority groups and to assure that women and
members of minority groups advance to top positions.
393/ October 27, 1988
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