VA to set caps on its workforce, eliminate positions and tighten controls on hiring

Updated Sept. 4 at 9:24 a.m.

The Veterans Affairs Department is setting new caps on staffing levels within its various components and offices while tightening controls over future hiring as the agency continues its push to shed staff. 

VA Secretary Doug Collins will soon create an overall baseline setting the approved number of employees at the department, according to an internal memorandum obtained by Government Executive and officials briefed on the matter. That will lead to baselines for major departmental offices, which will then begin eliminating positions that exceed their new caps. How that process will play out remains unclear, but officials preliminarily speculated it would only impact jobs that are currently or soon-to-be vacant. The VA did not respond to requests for comment by publication.

While VA has dispensed with its plan to shed 80,000 employees through mass layoffs, it has announced it will cut 30,000 employees through various incentives and attrition. It is still moving forward with a plan to reorganize the department and is currently conducting a “VA-wide review of its mission” and structure, the department said in July. 

Collins’ new staffing baseline was determined “in conjunction with the enterprise-wide review,” Mark Engelbaum, a VA assistant secretary in charge of human resources, operations and preparedness, said in the memo, which noted the new cap will go into effect Oct. 1. VA is looking to “codify” its staffing needs, Engelbaum added, “as part of the secretary’s workforce optimization priorities and the administration’s enterprise-wide directives for workforce accountability.” 

All undersecretaries, assistant secretaries and other “key officials” throughout VA will soon have to set their own staffing caps. It will send those baselines to the Reorganization Implementation Cell, which will in turn pass it along to the secretary for approval. The RIC was originally established in February to develop plans for mass layoffs, though it is now focusing on other reorganization efforts.

Each administration—health, benefits and cemeteries—as well as staff offices will create organizational charts that include both the current level of staffing in each unit, as well as “to-be” charts that show the number of positions remaining after cutting down to the secretary’s baseline. Those charts are due next week. 

Going forward, VA will conduct “enterprise-level” reviews of organizational charts to ensure they are in compliance with the secretary’s workforce baseline. 

By the end of September, offices will eliminate from VA’s official database—known as HR Smart—all “excess positions” above the secretary’s approved baseline. One VA official who received the memo said it was not yet clear how that process will play out and each office is still waiting for their approved staffing cap. 

The expectation, that official said, is that VA will eliminate some number of unfilled positions, but not those that are currently staffed. Some of the 30,000 positions VA has pledged to cut by the end of the month are still on the books and will be eliminated, the official suggested. Next month, the department’s Manpower Management Service will conduct a final clearing out of positions exceeding the secretary’s caps. 

VA currently has 461,000 total employees, or the equivalent of around 452,000 full-time staff. It also had more than 40,000 vacant positions as of July 1—which does not include employees currently sitting on paid leave after taking the “deferred resignation” offer—meaning the department could opt to slash a significant number of roles without forcing out any current workers.

Pete Kasperowicz, a VA spokesman, said each unit will receive their staffing baselines "soon," determined by "department performance and mission needs, and assessments of how available resources are being used." The department does not foresee or anticipate the need for any "large-scale" reduction in force, he added. 

"This change was necessary because there are currently no centralized controls on the creation of positions and the evaluation of mission at VA," Kasperowicz said. "This represents VA’s first attempt to create a centralized process that ensures VA staffing is aligned with VA’s mission across all three administrations."

The current thinking is VA will set a high-level number for staffing for each assistant secretary-level office, the VA official said, and leadership will then set a workforce cap within that total for each program office. That could in turn translate to each regional office in the Veterans Health Administration receiving a workforce number and each VA medical center then receiving a staffing cap within that overall regional total, though the final details are still being sorted out. 

Starting Oct. 1, Engelbaum said, VA components cannot create new positions above the secretary’s baseline without special permission from various central offices in the department, including his own and the chief financial officer. Such requests must be “submitted as a formal package for approval,” he explained. Any staffing above designated levels must be “supported by a documented mission requirement, statutory authority, or approved programmatic need,” he added. 

The existing process requires far fewer and lower levels of approval for hiring, VA employees said. Parts of VA are still operating under a hiring freeze, though hundreds of thousands of positions have been exempted. A senior VA official said it appeared the department was tightening its controls on hiring and preventing any ad hoc or “loose” staffing decisions. The change would bring VA in line with most other agencies, the senior employee said. 

One VA staffer in HR said there could be benefits to the new approach, as the numbers of positions are often “based on bogus grades and org structures rather than the actual work and the workload delegation.” 

VA’s efforts to cut the workforce has drawn some bipartisan concerns, though Republicans’ hang ups were largely abated when Collins walked back his original plan. Democrats have remained frustrated by the Trump administration’s approach at VA. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said in July VA was already bleeding employees at an unsustainable rate and that trajectory would “continue to ruin veterans’ trust in VA for years to come.” 

In his memo, Engelbaum thanked senior VA officials for their “continued leadership as we work to shape a more agile, accountable and mission-aligned workforce.”

This story has been updated with additional comment.