Agencies are getting more information on how to implement the recently finalized “rule of many.” The federal hiring strategy, several years in the making, aims to create broader pools of qualified job candidates while adding flexibility for federal hiring managers.

A series of guidance documents the Office of Personnel Management published earlier this month outlined the steps agencies should take to begin using the “rule of many” when hiring. OPM’s new resources also detail how the “rule of many” intersects with other aspects of the federal hiring process, such as shared certificates, skills-based assessments and veterans’ preference.

Under the “rule of many,” federal hiring managers score job candidates on their relevant job skills, then rank the candidates based on those scores. From there, hiring managers can choose one of several options — a cut-off number, score or percentage — to pare down the applicant pool and reach a list of qualified finalists to select from.

OPM’s new guidance comes after the agency finalized regulations last September to officially launch the “rule of many.” The concept was initially included in the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, and OPM during the Biden administration proposed regulations on the “rule of many” in 2023.

“Coupled with the use of functional skills assessments … the [rule of many] gives hiring managers the much-needed flexibility to distinguish candidates based on their demonstrated functional merit-based qualifications for the role in question,” OPM Director Scott Kupor wrote in a Sept. 8 blog post, the same day OPM issued the final rule.

The “rule of many” aligns with some aspects of the Trump administration’s merit hiring plan, OPM said, such as using technical assessments and shared certificates. OPM said the “rule of many” in particular aligns with skills-based hiring, since it can expand candidate pools with applicants who have more fitting skillsets.

The “rule of many” also encourages agencies to use more “comprehensive” assessments, like structured interviews or job simulations, OPM said in its new guidance. And it can “support improved hiring outcomes, particularly for nontraditional candidates, veterans and those with varied career paths,” OPM added.

But for many agencies, the actual adoption of the “rule of many” may be put on the back burner, according to Jenny Mattingley, vice president of government affairs at the Partnership for Public Service. She said without enough funding or staffing, agencies are not likely to overhaul their current and already well-established hiring practices in the short term.

“The ‘rule of many’ is a good tool, but until those ingredients are all put together, I don’t think that you’ll see it rolled out immediately,” Mattingley said in an interview.

OPM’s finalization of the “rule of many” last September officially ended agencies’ ability to use the past “rule of three” hiring practice. The older candidate assessment technique already had been largely phased out, but previously restricted agencies to only selecting from the top three ranked applicants.

The “rule of many” also differs from most agencies’ current candidate-vetting technique, called “category rating,” which lets federal hiring managers assort job applicants into categories such as “qualified,” “better qualified,” and “best qualified,” then select a candidate for the job from the highest category.

When “category rating” was introduced years ago, it was an improvement over the “rule of three,” but Kupor said “category rating” created other challenges — namely, that all candidates within a single category would be considered equally qualified.

“In other words, the categories are minimum hurdles for consideration, but they don’t distinguish between applicants within a category,” Kupor said in September. “For example, if a score of 80% is the minimum hurdle to qualify into the ‘best qualified’ category, an applicant who scores 100% is treated no differently than one who scores 80%.”

OPM said in its new guidance that the “rule of many” uses the strengths of “category rating,” while adding flexibility to the process. It also allows for “finer distinctions” between candidates and broadens the range of applicants available for selection.

In most cases, OPM said the “rule of many” is preferable over “category rating.” But there are also best use cases for each hiring mechanism. Higher-level positions with more robust assessments will usually require the finer distinctions between candidates that the “rule of many” provides. But for more entry-level positions that don’t require highly technical qualifications, the “category rating” system may be just as effective.

Adopting the “rule of many” will also require a significant cultural shift at agencies, which the Partnership’s Mattingley said can be difficult. Existing strategies like skills-based hiring have not yet been fully adopted at agencies, which may indicate that the uptake of the “rule of many” will also be slow, she explained.

“Until agencies crack the nut on really leveraging skills-based hiring, I don’t think it’s going to be this big change in the immediate future,” Mattingley said. “You need skills-based hiring in order to leverage the rule of many, because you have to be able to make much finer technical assessments on the skills between candidates if you’re going to rank them in the way rule of many does.”

OPM’s “rule of many” guidance comes a few months after President Donald Trump officially lifted the governmentwide hiring freeze. But the White House has emphasized that when hiring, agencies should still focus on maintaining their now-smaller staffing sizes.

“Hiring is still a big question this year,” Mattingley said. “It does look like the administration is going to encourage agencies to hire, except at the same time, agencies are still facing budget uncertainty. They’re facing downward pressure on headcount.”

The post OPM details expectations for the ‘rule of many’ in federal hiring first appeared on Federal News Network.

After a year of upheaval for federal employees, the Trump administration appears to be only getting started on its plans for overhauling the career civil service.

Further federal workforce changes are expected to continue into 2026 and beyond, according to the goals the administration recently laid out in its President’s Management Agenda.

Many of the priorities, as the Office of Management and Budget outlined, either already have — or soon will — significantly impact federal employees.

Here are three workforce changes from the Trump administration that federal employees should look for in the new year:

Future federal staffing plans

The sheer size of the federal workforce changed considerably over the past year, with executive branch agencies losing a cumulative total of more than 300,000 federal employees, according to numbers from the Office of Personnel Management.

With those staffing cuts in place, agencies are beginning to assemble future-looking plans to further reshape their workforces over the next few years.

As a months-long hiring freeze starts to thaw, the Trump administration has required all agencies to submit annual staffing plans for the coming year, subject to review and approval by OMB and OPM officials. The administration also directed agencies to form strategic hiring committees, composed mainly of political appointees, to oversee all recruitment efforts.

Agencies’ staffing plans must “consider efficiencies” of organizational restructuring and consolidation, removal of “unnecessary management layers,” the elimination of “unnecessary” jobs and contractor positions, managing the performance of underachieving employees — and much more, Trump administration officials explained in November guidance.

Until OMB and OPM approve the staffing plans, agencies will have to stick to a four-to-one ratio of removing to hiring employees, according to the guidance.

An OMB senior official speaking on background recently told Federal News Network that the administration will measure agencies’ progress toward fulfilling the first PMA priority by seeing how they adhere to Trump’s latest executive order on federal hiring. The goal over the next few years is to ensure that while hiring does take place, it’s in a way that maintains the smaller size of the current federal workforce.

“A key part of that will be making sure agencies are putting in place those hiring committees,” the official said. “They’re making very strategic decisions around who they’re hiring and what positions they’re hiring for, so we don’t just inflate the federal government again and overwhelm all the success we’ve had in reductions to date.”

In past administrations, there have been efforts to dramatically downsize the federal workforce — most recently during the Clinton administration in the 1990s. But a recent report from the Federation of American Scientists said those prior efforts had “decidedly mixed results,” and cautioned the Trump administration not to make the same mistakes.

“The cuts came before changes to agency to-do lists that never materialized,” FAS wrote. “It will be important for this administration to learn lessons from the past to avoid some of the long-term damage wrought by the Clinton years, for which agencies are still paying.”

Many experts have also raised concerns of the loss of federal workforce expertise, due to the reductions that have already taken effect. Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, warned that the loss of institutional knowledge will worsen over time.

“The forced exodus of over 212,000 civil servants has created dangerous gaps in food safety inspection, Social Security processing, veterans’ healthcare and disaster response,” Stier told Federal News Network. “This loss of expertise directly harms Americans’ access to critical services and will take decades to repair.”

Going forward, Robert Shea, a former OMB official in the George W. Bush administration, said doing more work with significantly fewer employees is both a challenge, and a possible opportunity.

“Agencies that rely on existing processes will fail. Agencies that rethink how work gets done may actually improve,” Shea told Federal News Network. “The upside of AI and automation only materializes if feds are given the authority, training and political cover to use these tools.”

“Accountability” of federal employees

A focus on “accountability” has been another common theme for the Trump administration’s federal workforce changes — it’s an area of emphasis in the PMA, and likely to strengthen and expand in 2026 and beyond.

Already, “accountability” has appeared as a priority in the administration’s efforts to remove protections for career federal employees in “policy-influencing” positions, make reforms to the Senior Executive Service, and create a new governmentwide recruitment plan.

Heading into 2026, OPM has also estimated that around 50,000 career federal employees will be reclassified as “Schedule Policy/Career,” a move that would make the impacted workers at-will and easier to fire.

The Trump administration touted Schedule Policy/Career as a way to drive “accountability” in the federal workforce, while offering agencies more flexibility. But critics of the policy, formerly known as “Schedule F,” have warned that it will politicize the non-partisan career civil service.

“Ultimately, this ‘trauma’ leads to the federal government’s loss of talent and institutional knowledge, which damages our national security and makes us more vulnerable to bad actors; reduces government accountability to its citizens; and generates even more loss of trust in government,” said Raymond Limon, a former member of the Merit Systems Protection Board and career-long federal executive in human capital.

Going forward, the Trump administration’s efforts on expanding these plans are “on track to get more severe,” according to the Partnership’s Stier.

“The expansion of Schedule Policy/Career authority threatens career protections, creates a climate of fear that drives talented professionals to leave government and further diminishes the services received by the public,” Stier told Federal News Network.

All told, the administration’s overhauls will lead to a “collapse of long-standing assumptions about civil service protections,” according to Shea.

“Constraints on removing career employees that were once treated as untouchable have been challenged directly,” Shea said. “Regardless of how courts ultimately rule, the impact will be long lasting.”

In 2026, federal employees are also facing significant changes in the way agencies measure performance, another way that OPM has said it is looking to increase “accountability” of employees.

OPM is looking to change performance management standards for federal employees. OPM Director Scott Kupor argues that “performance culture” in government is broken, and far too many federal employees are rated as high performers at their agencies.

“We have rampant ratings inflation and a lack of accountability for poor performers that fails to meaningfully differentiate between excellence, successful achievement of one’s objectives and poor performance,” Kupor wrote in a Dec. 5 blog post.

In June, OPM outlined plans to end “inflation” in performance ratings, and more strictly delineate between different levels of performance for employees. The changes also call on agencies to swiftly remove poor performers — and not substitute a suspension, for instance, when a full removal is more appropriate.

Forthcoming final regulations are expected to cement the emphasis of “accountability” in the administration’s changes to employee performance evaluations.

The idea of “accountability” also appears in the President’s Management Agenda, as part of a goal of fostering a “merit-based federal workforce.”

“The president’s executive orders and the PMA, together, call for revolutionary change, and together with OPM, we’re delivering,” OMB Deputy Director for Management Eric Ueland said in a Dec. 9 CHCO Council meeting. “The president directed agencies to reform the workforce, to maximize efficiency and productivity … Federal agencies have created meaningful efficiencies, allowing them to laser focus on their statutory duties.”

“Merit-based” workforce reforms

Finally, the Trump administration is calling for a focus on “merit-based” hiring across the federal workforce. It’s a top priority of the administration’s President’s Management Agenda, but also something that has appeared across multiple efforts from OPM.

In May, OPM first issued the administration’s new “merit hiring plan,” setting goals for reducing the government’s time-to-hire, as well as focusing on skills-based recruitment and a streamlined process.

The hiring guidance also required all agencies to assess candidates on USAJobs on how they plan to support the administration’s priorities when applying for open positions.

But in 2026, the goals of the “merit hiring plan,” in combination with the Trump administration’s PMA priority, are expected to take further effect, as agencies move forward with their new annual staffing plans.

“Moving forward, hiring will be based on merit and focused on practical skill, competence and dedication to the Constitution,” OMB’s Ueland said.

Combined, the merit hiring plan, performance changes, and newly required annual staffing plans will significantly reshape the federal workforce going forward.

“For those of you who have been in the private sector, much of this will seem like motherhood and apple pie,” Kupor wrote in a Nov. 21 blog post. “We are now inviting the federal government to join the planning party.”

OPM’s new “Tech Force” recruitment initiative, as an example, will embed the “merit hiring” principles as agencies look to onboard private-sector technologists and early-career talent through the new program.

But some of the hiring changes are common across recent presidential administrations. Recruitment strategies such as skills-based hiring and the use of shared certificates appeared in the Trump administration’s hiring guidance, similar to prior efforts from the Biden administration.

The FAS report noted, “the perennial need to hire federal employees more quickly and efficiently … have appeared in every PMA to date.”

The post 3 efforts federal employees should track from Trump’s management agenda first appeared on Federal News Network.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Despite CISOs’ formidable training efforts on behalf of teams, a commonly overlooked phenomenon is the human tendency to freeze amidst a crisis. Building your incident response operations around this ingrained aspect of psychology can help prevent your teams from seizing up during intense and urgent situations.

In the event of an intrusion or ransomware attack, how exactly will your security team respond? Will they take an aggressive approach, pass the potato, or involuntarily experience fear-based paralysis?

While CISOs commonly contend that their staff has the expertise and training required to fight off a cyber attack, there’s still a chance that staff will freeze up when the pressure is on.

Fight, flight, freeze

Director of Human Science at Immersive Labs, Bec McKeown, says that “You may have a crisis playbook and crisis policies, and you may assume those are the first things you’ll reach for during an incident. But that’s not always the case because the way [in which] your brain works isn’t just fight or flight. It’s fight, flight or freeze.”

According to Chief Information Security Officers, freezing during a high-stakes moment isn’t so unusual. But when a security staff member or team freezes, rather than acts, it can give hackers an edge, enabling them to inflict further damage or export additional data. At the end of the day, it can also culminate in higher regulatory penalties and loss of business.

Preventing freeze

Given the very real possibility of a ‘freeze’ reaction and its negative repercussions, analysts and long-time CISOs suggest that security leaders spend time implementing new practices that can reduce the chances of occurrence. In addition, CISOs should know how to identify and dissolve the freeze response if it does occur during a security incident.

In-depth insights

Any person or team can experience what is known as ‘cognitive narrowing,’ where they are so focused on the present situation that they cannot contextualize the event. In short, cognitive narrowing prevents people from thinking in the way that they usually do, creating the ‘freeze’ response. It’s just part of human nature.

Cyber security leader Neil Harper, who now serves as a board director with ISACA, observed a team freeze in response to a ransomware attack. Says Harper, “They literally did not know what to do, even though they had some experience with [incident response] walkthroughs…They were in panic mode.”

In some instances, teams that freeze are afraid that their actions will come across as overreactions. In other cases, teams are paralyzed by the fear of being blamed. In yet other situations, no team members have had real-world cyber event experience, meaning that no one feels sufficiently confident to lead an attack response.

Actionable takeaways

Prevent the freeze effect. Here’s how:

1. Examine your drills and add components that can better enable teams to prepare for real cyber attacks. As you team moves through drills, bring up new things that aren’t normally in your playbook. For example, ahead of time, discretely request for an employee to deliberately make a wrong move during the drill. This will help your team work through an unexpected or deteriorating situation.

2. Try out a countdown clock during drills. This forces teams to make progress against adversaries under intense pressure – the kind of pressure that they would feel during a real cyber security incident. While it might feel like an uncomfortable exercise, it builds muscle memory that can help incident responders swiftly squash an actual cyber attack.

3. Consider involving enterprise executives in cyber security drills, as they too are liable to experience the ‘freeze’ phenomenon during an incident. For example, you may see your CFO withhold financial information that is needed as an incident unfolds.

4. If possible, you may want to hire cyber security staff members who have experience working through breaches and hacks. Alternatively, consider a contract with an outside incident response team that does this type of work on a routine basis.

5. Further, consider creating channels that would allow for security employees to suggest creative solutions to problems during a live incident. Employees should feel comfortable enough to suggest solutions under even the most stressful of security situations.

For more cyber security insights, please see CyberTalk.org’s past coverage. Lastly, unpack transformative insights, and learn about how to make your organization more agile and secure when you subscribe to the Cybertalk.org newsletter.

The post Must-know ways to overcome the much-dreaded ‘freeze’ response appeared first on CyberTalk.