Schedule F won’t fix government’s performance management problems, report finds

A new report from a nonpartisan good-government organization warned that the adoption of a plan to strip federal workers in policy-related positions of their civil service protections would not fulfill the Trump administration’s stated ambitions of making agencies more effective and responsive, and could instead cost hundreds of millions of dollars in increased recruitment and training spending.

The Partnership for Public Service this week released a report examining at-will employment in state governments, in light of the impending revival of Schedule F—since renamed Schedule Policy/Career—which would forcibly convert tens of thousands of federal workers in “policy-related” jobs out of the competitive service, effectively making them at-will employees. The Trump administration is preparing to issue a final rule implementing the policy in the coming weeks.

The Partnership found that while supporters of Schedule F—or implementing at-will employment more broadly at federal agencies—often tout the successes of state governments like Florida, Texas and Missouri, it is hard to isolate what impact at-will employment had on state and local agencies, because it is typically undertaken alongside a bevy of other policies under the banner of civil service reform.

“These broader sets of changes demonstrate that lawmakers did not view the transition to at-will employment as an end goal in and of itself,” the report states. “Instead, it was viewed as one tool in a menu of personnel system changes . . . Proponents of at-will employment at times mistakenly draw conclusions about the effects of at-will employment by looking at evidence from the whole body of changes undertaken by state governments.”

Indeed, academic surveys of state and local HR officials in jurisdictions with at-will employment generally have not reported an improvement to efficiency or government services.

A 2014 survey of HR professionals in six states with at-will employment found only 20% agreed with the notion that the policy made employees more productive. And more than 30% of HR officials in four at-will employment states in a 2010 survey reported that the policy was utilized more to remove competent workers than poor performers.

“A similar percentage agreed that it had resulted in employees being terminated because of personality conflicts with management,” the Partnership wrote. “In Georgia, over 30% of HR professionals [in 2010] agreed that employees in their agency had been terminated for politically motivated reasons. [And] Professor Ben Goehring [at the University of Virginia] found that Gov. Jeb Bush and his appointees removed at-will employees from Florida’s Department of Education after the agency was reorganized in 2001 to be more under the governor’s control.”

The Partnership also found that in states with full or nearly entirely at-will employment have much higher turnover than federal agencies. In Texas, attrition in government tops 16%, compared to the federal government’s 5.9% turnover, as of 2023. In Missouri, the attrition rate was as high as 29% in 2022.

“In the private sector, the cost to replace an employee has been found to range from 50% to 400% of the employee’s salary, depending on the role and level of experience and specialized skills,” the report states. “A significantly increased turnover rate for the tens of thousands of employees that would be covered under Schedule Policy/Career could cost the federal government hundreds of millions of dollars every year.”

The Partnership also found that states that have deployed at-will employment upon their governmental workforces tend to have been politically stable, in that one political party—usually Republicans—perennially dominate both the statehouse and governor’s mansion. Don Kettl, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and former dean of its School of Public Policy, said the federal government’s more frequent vacillations between which political party is in power could further complicate matters.

“That particularly means that states run by Republicans have within them bigger problems and worries and concerns about an entrenched bureaucracy making it harder for them to get where they want to go, as well as less worry about what the opposing party might do if and when they get into power,” he said. “[The] idea that at-will employment is a strategy for managerial change, as opposed to one for political control is at the heart of all of this. And this paper underlines that it is far more about political control than it is effectiveness.”