IRS: Accounting for the Future of Leadership

Like most agencies and departments in the federal government, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) faces the looming retirements of a substantial portion of its workforce. And because the IRS' senior leadership is largely comprised of older personnel, it's not surprising that this trend would have significant implications for this tier of the organization. Rebecca Johnson, director of leadership and education at the agency's human capital office, is responsible for executing the strategy that ensures the IRS' pipeline is full of candidates with vision, drive and proficiency in communication and management.

"We have a mission to provide our learning customers with competency-based training that enhances their job performance," she said. "As the director of leadership and education in the human capital office, I have responsibility for the leadership training program. Our business units have the more technical training responsibilities embedded in those organizations. Ours has the more corporate and organizational vision-setting policies and those types of things."

The IRS uses a suite of assorted modalities to deliver learning to its approximately 100,000 workers. The blended learning approach is a relatively recent trend for the organization and has entailed a dramatic shift from classroom-based, face-to-face training to a more technology-enabled learning environment.

"Because we have that corporate vision and responsibility in the human capital office, we actually have the technology infrastructure for the entire organization," Johnson said. "When we talk about changing that culture to be more technology-based, where we're headed is making that more e-learning-based. Not only is it moving to that technology infrastructure, but it's also that cultural change. People enjoy that face-to-face interaction, but if we can achieve the same results and have the same success with technology-based training, it's far more cost-effective. In regards to leadership, we're undertaking a curriculum review to determine if there are ways to incorporate e-learning into leadership training for some of those soft skills. You need to have follow-up and precursor courses, and those are things that can be done online."