Federal leader supports Partnership for Public Service council for chief diversity officers
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Federal leader supports Partnership for Public Service council for chief diversity officers

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Federal leader supports Partnership for Public Service council for chief diversity officers

Sharon Wong has spent much of her 40-year career launching recruitment and training programs to build a more inclusive, open and collaborative federal workplace that reflects the full diversity of America.

Today, she is helping others do the same.

As a member and former co-chair of the Partnership for Public Service’s Chief Diversity Officers Council, Wong has shared best practices, common challenges and core strategies in the development of what she terms “inclusive diversity,” a principle devoted to the creation of diverse workplaces that use the full breadth of employees’ skills and perspectives to meet strategic objectives.

Sharon Wong, chief employee experience officer, Department of Homeland Security.

A call to action

The council was one of two initiatives launched by the Partnership in response to a 2021 executive order that called upon agencies to create chief diversity officer positions to coordinate agencywide diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts.

The council convenes leaders in these new roles to share best practices for supporting underserved talent in the federal government and operationalizing new DEIA standards.

A companion program—the Partnership’s Chief Diversity Officer Bootcamp—provides these leaders with a more detailed crash course on how to perform their jobs successfully.


Sharing expertise and lessons learned

Wong, the chief employee experience officer at the Department of Homeland Security, had previously overseen DEIA strategy at the Office of Personnel Management and the NASA Goddard Space Center.

In fiscal year 2022, she oversaw a successful effort to ensure that nearly one-third of new DHS law enforcement officers were women and, one year earlier, she led a cybersecurity sprint that onboarded 300 new cybersecurity professionals in just 60 days.

She also spearheaded the creation of the Strategic Marketing, Outreach, and Recruiting Engagement platform—or the SMORE tool, a central database of all DHS hiring activities that enables staff to identify opportunities for better recruitment at the agency—as well as several innovative career events.

More recently, DHS hosted a large-scale hiring event that included various components and offices such as the U.S. Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The hiring event enabled DHS recruiters and managers to screen, interview and extend an offer to qualified candidates on the spot, reducing the agencies’ time-to-hire by six to eight weeks.

As a result of initiatives like this, the Government Accountability Office dropped DHS’ recruitment operations from its High Risk List, which highlights the federal program most in need of improvement. More recently, DHS was also the most improved large agency—and saw a jump in its overall DEIA score—in the Partnership’s 2023 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® rankings.

“I would talk about these kinds of recruiting events, and people in the council reach back out and say, ‘wow, how do you set something like that up?’” Wong said.

“‘You’re not doing diversity just around recruitment,’ she recalled telling participants. ‘You need to put DEIA at the center of how you communicate with and manage the workforce.’”

Wong knows that executing this vision is easier said than done, but she believes the council will help her and her colleagues do it.

“We have worked to broaden the DHS narrative around DEIA to demonstrate that it is about the employee experience and that all have a stake and can participate. We are moving beyond concepts and into actionable practices to make DEIA come to life for our people,” she said.

“At DHS, our interpretation of—and action around—DEIA centers on outcomes that benefit all, and our work is around expanding access to things like advancement, recognition and pathways into leadership.”

As a result of the Partnership’s effort to convene federal DEIA experts, DHS has deepened its relationships with peer leaders in other agencies. While other councils convene DEIA federal leaders, they are hosted and operated by the federal government and use more formalized reporting practices, changing the nature of the work and drivers for engagement.

The Chief Diversity Officers Council is operated from a perspective of thought leadership, and as a third party outside the federal government, it enables open discourse around broad ideas.

DHS also participated in the Partnership’s pilot CDO Bootcamp and believes its curriculum would empower DEIA leaders and practitioners at the agency.


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