Human Capital: Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Controls over Recruitment, Relocation, and Retention Incentives

GAO policy authorizes the use of recruitment, relocation, and retention incentives either to encourage individuals to accept a position that would otherwise be hard to fill or to retain an essential employee with unusually high or unique qualifications who is likely to leave the agency without a monetary incentive to stay. For calendar years 2009 through 2011, GAO used this authority for recruitment and retention purposes and made incentive payments of more than $1.8 million. Our audit of the internal controls and oversight for the incentive payment award process identified opportunities to strengthen controls, including the need to maintain appropriate supporting documentation; provide additional guidance to human capital staff to ensure proper, timely, and accurate execution and recording of administrative actions; and provide effective monitoring and oversight. In addition, we identified an opportunity for GAO to help ensure that incentive payments support agency recruitment and retention goals by establishing a clear agency-wide strategy and results-oriented performance measures for these payments.