CHAPTER FIVE CREATING A MORE DIVERSE WORKFORCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00530R000200160002-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 21, 2013
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: November 28, 1988
• Content Type: REPORT

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CHAPTER FIVE
CREATING A MORE DIVERSE WORKFORCE
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:
\-._
Throughout the chapter, the terms "professional" and
"administrative" are used. These refer to the intelligence
agencies' classification of employees, as this is done to align
with the five employment categories established by OPM. The PATCO
categories are: professional, administrative, technical, clerical
, and other. Some intelligence agencies classify a large proportion
of "professional" employees (i.e. intelligence analysts, case
officers) in the OPM professional category. Others use the
administrative designation, as the FBI does for special agents.
/062c0a44+ when intelligence agency equal employment levels are compared
.---- t
to those of other federal agencies, NAPA compared them to 4-94.e4-a4
,? ? workforces in a simi1a4=-14-a-niie-r.
L_c-c,o4.43Le 6 eoupt ~ 7pc ?,F 73'Z OTA/e72 ACCAPOWH-----
The intelligence agencies have been in the enviable position
of having much larger staffing level 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,
and FBI, 18 percent.
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.
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 workforce. In fact, the proportion of
women rose in all agencies, with the proportion of professional
women growing more than the government-wide proportion, except at
DIA. The FBI's proportion of professional women increased the
most, but it did start from the smallest base. The FBI did,
however, have the smallest rate of staff growth through which to
increase its proportion of professional women. DIA, which had the
largest proportion of staff growth, had the smallest proportional
increase of female professional staff. The CIA and NSA are both
above the government-wide proportion and have the largest
proportions of women in their professional workforces.
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The annual rate of growth in the proportion of members of
minority groups as part of the total workforce was greatest at DIA
(1 percent per year), and much smaller at NSA (.2 percent), the FBI
(.1 percent) and the CIA (no growth). It should be noted that the
FBI has the largest proportion of staff who are members of minority
groups (24.8 percent), so their rate of growth, while not large, was
computed on a much larger base. NSA's growth was also based on a
fairly large starting base (14.6 percent of all staff, rising to
19.4 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. DIA had
the second highest annual rate of growth in this area, the CIA had
no growth and NSA very little.
After examining each agency's staff distribution, NAPA compared
each to a set of other government agencies. Tables 2 and 3 show
some of the comparative agency statistics. 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
lower 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, either directly or
through college administrators and placement directors. The NSA.
Black Affairs and Hispanic special emphasis program managers and the
undergraduate training program manager are the 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.
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One base against which to compare IC agency recruitment results
is the composition of college graduating groups. Just over 50
percent of 1984/85 U.S. college graduates with bachelor's degrees
were women, and 12 percent were members of minority groups.
Most of the 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;
These proportions were not constant through the
rive year period studied. CIA, for example, has increased its
proportion from three percent in 1985.
Conclusions: Recruitment
It is difficult to determine what factors account for the
varying levels of increased recruitment of women and members of
minority groups. 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 be the greatest -- staff are involved throughout the
agency; staff and managers have received a lot of training in equal
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
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DIA's level of effort, as they described it, was less than any
other agency's, yet that agency achieved a greater annual rate of
growth than NSA or the CIA. DIA started out with nearly the same
proportion of profe
WOW staff who were members of minority groups, t/
and was able to inc se the proportion by 1.4 percent, compared to
CIA's no-growth and NSA's .6 percent.
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.
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III. Working Within the Heterogeneous Workplace
Most organizations concentrate on hiring increasing proportions
of women and members of minority groups, but focus less on whether
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 create a more heterogeneous
workplace.
A. Promoting and Retaining Staff
All of the agencies promote women in a proportion greater than
their representation in the agency workforce. However, these are
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
attempt to compare this data.
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,
this 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.
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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 than others.
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 inherent part of each senior manager's responsibilities,
the senior management deemed the seminar a "tremendous success."
Since October 1987, 180 senior staff have attended, and the goal is
for all managers and supervisors to eventually do so.
Conclusions: 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.
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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
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.)
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
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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
the future, and the intelligence agencies have a larger proportion
of these positions than do many other federal agencies.
While there will be a continuing need for employees with
sophisticated skills, some of the agencies use a number of
technicians or para professional staff. In these areas, the
agencies' recruitment programs and employee development policies may
have more impact on the composition of their workforce.
A report prepared for the Department of Labor -- Opportunity
2000: Creative Affirmative Action Strategies for a Changing
Workforce -- concludes that, as a nation, employers need to
increase their investment in human capital. Essentially, employers
will have to adopt the costliest, but most effective method of
preparing the economically disadvantaged for the workplace. They
will have to do what many public schools have not been able to do:
train workers in the skills necessary to do a job.
The report notes that, while many firms have long carried out
special task-related training, the concept of training is expanding
as the quality of public school graduates declines and the number of
drop-outs increases. Thus, while training in the past typically
involved building upon basic skills the emplo 111?rought to the job,
g111 such basic skills
the training in many companies today often
as literacy, simple mathematics and work h4?its.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: CREATING A MORE DIVERSE WORKFORCE
To ignore the trends discussed in this chapter would be to
avoid coping with them. To avoid coping with them would reduce the
likelihood that intelligence agencies can continue to make their
workforces more diverse or even maintain the proportions they have
achieved.
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As the public and private sector employers 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.
In a period of large staff increases, the intelligence agencies
have made gains in hiring women, and some gains in hiring members of
minority groups. Gains in hiring members of minority groups to the
professional or professional/administrative positions have not been
large in any organization. The FBI did better than the other
intelligence agencies, DIA improved somewhat, and NSA and CIA had
little or no change in that proportion of their professional
workforces composed of members of minority groups. While this is
not an area in which the agencies can be judged only on numbers,
aggregate data do offer useful comparisons.
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 focusing on it during this period
of rapid growth. The intelligence agencies did not take advantage
of their massive growth to bring in and move up members of minority
groups.
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 smaller
hiring requirements immediately prior to 1981, given the lack of
personnel growth and, in some cases, decreases. To go from
slow/no-growth to large growth is a massive administrative
undertaking. 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.
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The agencies now describe recruiting programs that indicate
strong top management interest and active levels of effort. They
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
and projected workforce contractions, it will be difficult for the
IC agencies to recruit employees 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.
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 recommends that the intelligencies conduct
regular analysis of retention, promotion and training participation
data. If the agencies are to retain the employees they have worked
so hard to attract, they need to make concerted efforts in these
areas.
The panel firmly believes that intelligence agency equal
employment efforts need strong commitment from the agency head and
senior staff, and should be integrated into overall workforce
management -- 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
recent congressional initiatives.
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cNSA-7.? The proposal also required that agencies prepare a plan to
/address underrepresentation of any such equal employment group by
September 30, 1991. Tiler:Hot:I-se --repoxt-cm -the -ti-M-emphe-size5the-t?i-t-s
plIrgoss=i7a-requi-ringequal.:empToyment_oppoxtuni-ty=1-51-ail-vas fltto
xwe7a7k-ne-s:ses=i-n=rwiwartity-r-epres-en-tati-c-n=a-nd=patttc-tat?o-n,,_=stren-gtt-e?ri
cs-X7i-s-ti-ng-Jp-r-ogxaro=aciqu'i-ire-.=bet ter=mi7n70-ri-ty=re-pres-e-n-tat-i-o-n-and---
tfccu-s=n-e_w=c_e7sciu-rces7-...a_ -n-d-h-i-g-h-e-r-p-r-kortty=a-tteTnrct oss=t7h-ee-q-u-a-1
emgtoymemt=oppot7u114t-y-epec-t_rum7,. The panel supports this
initiative.
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Further, the panel recommends that:
- this initiative be extended to DIA and the FBI;
- the_I nte lligence_Communi-ty?Staff ive_arid?rn-onito r these=
creports_;_and-i
- 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
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 chapter six of this
report.
Other innovations must come from within the intelligence
agencies themselves. They have taken creative steps (such as the
CIA's college placement director meetings), but need to do more.
The panel recommends that the intelligence agencies consider some
of the options recently adopted by the private sector, such as the
"adopt a school" programs or agency-sponsored high-school debating
teams.
In the last analysis, the panel recommends that top management
in each of the intelligence agencies must make a sustained
commitment to recruit members of minority groups and to assure that
women and members of minority groups advance to top positions.
393 November 28, 1988
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