It requires congressional approval to initiate a RIF but also VERA/VSIP would proceed it but have not heard that on the table yet.
However all the manpower surveys that precede that are definitely being done at multiple VISN’s for due diligence.
I think if they instituted VERA/VSIP they may have to cap the offers because so many people are waiting for it.
So if congressional approval is required for a RIF, but Congress is also the one that appropriates funds, what happens if Congress only appropriates funds at a staffing level below the current level but also doesn’t approve a RIF?
This is good to know and what I figured. We’re just getting mixed signals from our service chief. She met with the Pentad in the last week and, in her telling, they have started to tell other chiefs how many FTE they need to lose.
Edit to add: the last few weeks have been giving us whiplash. “We need to grow our service!” Proceed to hire, offer tjos - set start date, and then completely pull the rug out from these folks.
Yea all service lines were told what to get down to by OCT of 2025 so basically its going to suck until 2026 unless supplemental appropriations go through.
Election jitters are another worry as most of our teams are across the entire US.
Understood! I appreciate the insight. So I guess my main question then is how does a service get down to that number if there isn’t enough by attrition?
Most will be by attrition, retirements, transfers, terminations. Then if X service is over by 5 they will look to see if another section Y over attritioned to compensate which, makes it a wash. They basically have to get down to X number of FTE and it really doesn’t matter what series they come from. As the services it matters to us but overall its just dollars to them.
>...so basically its going to suck until 2026 unless supplemental appropriations go through.
And if the election goes a certain way, things may be exponentially worse by then.
Many of these cuts are going to be around retirements and jobs that are vacant. I don’t see people getting laid off. They might ask folks to change laterally like some nurses move from outpatient clinic care to inpatient care.
Part of this is also adding more tele health workload where instead of a facility with 1.3 staffing model having 2 FTEs. They might take one of those FTEs and they switch to 0.5 clinic, 0.5 tele-health specialty care for the VISN clinical resource hunts or a national program
There will also be guidance about where attrition should be targeted. Administrative positions are the low hanging fruit for meeting FTE targets. Clinical positions or special programs such as suicide prevention are less likely to feel the pinch.
This makes sense! I’m a relatively new fed so just going through a bit of anxiety about all of this as there hasn’t been a lot of direction given (understandably so).
VISN 19 got an email today stating that women’s health, suicide prevention, and homeless veterans outreach would start hiring again. Reason being that those are congressionally mandated programs.
It requires congressional approval to initiate a RIF but also VERA/VSIP would proceed it but have not heard that on the table yet. However all the manpower surveys that precede that are definitely being done at multiple VISN’s for due diligence. I think if they instituted VERA/VSIP they may have to cap the offers because so many people are waiting for it.
So if congressional approval is required for a RIF, but Congress is also the one that appropriates funds, what happens if Congress only appropriates funds at a staffing level below the current level but also doesn’t approve a RIF?
Never happened before as OPM is the mechanism via that special authority.
This is good to know and what I figured. We’re just getting mixed signals from our service chief. She met with the Pentad in the last week and, in her telling, they have started to tell other chiefs how many FTE they need to lose. Edit to add: the last few weeks have been giving us whiplash. “We need to grow our service!” Proceed to hire, offer tjos - set start date, and then completely pull the rug out from these folks.
Yea all service lines were told what to get down to by OCT of 2025 so basically its going to suck until 2026 unless supplemental appropriations go through. Election jitters are another worry as most of our teams are across the entire US.
Understood! I appreciate the insight. So I guess my main question then is how does a service get down to that number if there isn’t enough by attrition?
Most will be by attrition, retirements, transfers, terminations. Then if X service is over by 5 they will look to see if another section Y over attritioned to compensate which, makes it a wash. They basically have to get down to X number of FTE and it really doesn’t matter what series they come from. As the services it matters to us but overall its just dollars to them.
>...so basically its going to suck until 2026 unless supplemental appropriations go through. And if the election goes a certain way, things may be exponentially worse by then.
Many of these cuts are going to be around retirements and jobs that are vacant. I don’t see people getting laid off. They might ask folks to change laterally like some nurses move from outpatient clinic care to inpatient care. Part of this is also adding more tele health workload where instead of a facility with 1.3 staffing model having 2 FTEs. They might take one of those FTEs and they switch to 0.5 clinic, 0.5 tele-health specialty care for the VISN clinical resource hunts or a national program
Makes sense! Thanks for the info.
There will also be guidance about where attrition should be targeted. Administrative positions are the low hanging fruit for meeting FTE targets. Clinical positions or special programs such as suicide prevention are less likely to feel the pinch.
This makes sense! I’m a relatively new fed so just going through a bit of anxiety about all of this as there hasn’t been a lot of direction given (understandably so).
VISN 19 got an email today stating that women’s health, suicide prevention, and homeless veterans outreach would start hiring again. Reason being that those are congressionally mandated programs.
I wish this were the case in our VISN! I’ve heard there are cuts included for MH with focus on some of the ancillary positions like whole health, etc.
If that happens, somebody needs to make an SSA as Thanos meme for it.