Uncharted. Unprecedented. Understaffed.

A Letter to Federal HR Operations, Nearly a Year and a Half Later.What the 2025 Federal Workforce Reduction Revealed — and Where We Go From Here.

🍵 Sip this slowly. This one has been a long time coming.

Nearly a year and a half ago, the federal government undertook the most unprecedented workforce reduction in modern history. Not a department-level reduction in force. Not an isolated program affecting one agency.

A government-wide, administration-driven directive to downsize the federal footprint — handed to Executive Branch HR operations offices with little warning, no established playbook, and in many cases, not enough people to execute it.

And HR showed up anyway.

This is that conversation. Not the one that happened in the situation room or the press briefing. The one that happened at the desk — in every HR office that absorbed the impossible and kept moving.

What did it reveal? What did it cost? And where do we go from here?

FIRST — THE APPLAUSE

Because It Has to Be Said Before Anything Else.

Federal HR operations pivoted. Fast. Under conditions that had no precedent, no roadmap, and no room for a learning curve.

Executive Branch agencies that had never processed a government-wide RIF were executing one. Benefits teams that counseled employees one at a time were running mass sessions. Retirement specialists who normally managed individual cases were processing them at a volume that would have been unimaginable twelve months prior.

Staffing implemented RIF protocols under close hold orders — while fielding calls and complaints from employees coming in from every direction. Benefits ran counseling sessions back to back. Retirement specialists calculated estimates, processed packages, and built assembly line workflows on the fly. Payroll processed lump sum annual leave payments in mass, auditing records before each departure to ensure accuracy. HR teams built separation packets — one after another — for employees who needed them to be right.

And they did it understaffed. Overworked. In many cases without contract support. In some cases without the systems to track it all. In virtually every case — without enough time.

That is not a small thing. That is what HR operations looks like when it serves the mission under fire. And it deserves to be named before we talk about anything else.

So before we go any further — this letter starts here. With acknowledgment. With respect. And with the honest recognition that what federal HR operations absorbed in 2025 was extraordinary.

WHAT HR WAS ACTUALLY ASKED TO DO

All at Once. With Skeleton Crews.

Let's be specific. Because "the workforce reduction" as a phrase does not capture what HR operations actually experienced. Here is what landed on HR desks — simultaneously — across Executive Branch civilian agencies:

Staffing implemented RIF protocols agency-wide — under close hold orders, before a single notice went out. Competitive areas established. Competitive levels defined. Retention registers built. Bump and retreat rights calculated. Notices issued. And through all of it — phones ringing, emails flooding in, employees calling every department from every angle, looking for answers HR was not always authorized to give yet.

This was not issuing RIF notices. This was managing a full-scale workforce reduction while holding the line on confidentiality, accuracy, and employee dignity at the same time.

Benefits and Retirement absorbed the counseling load of a workforce making some of the most consequential decisions of their careers — often in days, not months. Retirement eligibility confirmed. Estimates calculated. Options explained. FEHB conversion, FEGLI continuation, TSP withdrawal — all communicated clearly and accurately to employees who were frightened and depending on HR to get it right.

And behind the counseling sessions: the processing. Retirement workflows built. Assembly lines created. Cases tracked. Reports pulled. Data validated. The volume did not stop when the counseling session ended — it was waiting on the other side of it.

Separation PAR Processing at scale. Every separation required a personnel action — processed correctly, documented completely, submitted on time. Separation PARs. Severance pay PARs. Voluntary Separation Incentive Pay PARs. Each with its own requirements, its own legal authority, its own downstream implications. All of them, processed in volume, by teams that were not staffed for it.

Payroll took on one of the largest financial undertakings in federal HR operations: lump sum annual leave payouts for a departing workforce at unprecedented scale. Every record audited before the employee left. Every balance verified. Every calculation confirmed. Because getting it wrong — in either direction — meant either an underpayment the employee couldn't absorb or an overpayment the agency would spend months recovering.

Offboarding Counseling and Separation Packets built in mass. Every employee deserving a session that honored the career they were ending. HR doing its best to deliver that under conditions that did not allow for it.

Probationary Employee Separations processed simultaneously — with counseling on entitlements, appeal rights, and next steps. A population that required its own set of actions and conversations, layered on top of everything else.

And then there were the court cases. Umpteen decisions — back and forth, reversed and reinstated, hope extended and then taken away. The yo-yo effect of litigation that left probationary employees seasick and HR offices recalibrating their guidance in real time. Every ruling a new direction. Every direction a new conversation with an employee who just needed a straight answer nobody could give them yet.

And hovering over all of it — every function, every counseling session, every personnel action — was one word: eligibility. Who qualified. Who didn't. Who met the threshold and who fell just short. It felt, at times, like an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show — everybody gets a car — except the stakes were someone's livelihood, someone's retirement, someone's federal career. The requirements were met. The determinations were made. And still, the uncertainty was overwhelming. Employees frightened. HR exhausted. And somewhere in the middle of all of it — the very real sadness of not being able to fully serve the people who needed us most.

Sadly, some agencies didn't make it through intact. The volume was simply too much for what they had.

And let's be clear — nobody asked HR if we could handle it. There was no survey. No readiness assessment. No conversation about capacity. The directive came down and HR was expected to execute. Full stop.

And the worst of it? I recall being told to advise my team not to answer the phones.

Let that land for a moment.

Don't answer the phones. While everything around those employees was crumbling. While fear had engulfed them — and us. While our entire role and reason for being is to serve them. The instruction wasn't cruelty. It was triage. Getting organized enough to actually be useful. Silence in service of something better on the other side of it. But that doesn't make it easier to say to a team that chose this work because they wanted to help.

HR was not exempt from the devastation. We watched our colleagues pack their things and say goodbye. Emotions colliding with resilience. Grief operating alongside duty. Sleepless nights. Exhausting days. The weight of holding everyone else together while quietly carrying the same uncertainty ourselves.

We want you to feel it now — the weight of what that was — because feeling it is what makes the commitment to do better mean something.

Case Tracking in systems that were never built for this volume. Spreadsheets where there should have been platforms. Manual processes where there should have been automation.

This was not one thing. It was everything. At the same time. With the same teams that were already stretched before the first directive dropped.

And in the middle of all of it — one bright spot worth naming.

THE BRIGHT SPOT

It Came Right on Time.

OPM's long-overdue online retirement application launched in the middle of the chaos. For a workforce processing retirement applications at unprecedented volume — in offices already buckling under the weight of everything else — this was a welcomed and needed modernization that arrived at exactly the right moment.

It did not solve everything. The OPM adjudication backlog did not disappear overnight. But for HR offices submitting packages at scale, and for employees navigating one of the most disorienting career transitions of their lives, the ability to submit a retirement application online was a meaningful step forward.

Progress, even imperfect and long overdue, is still progress. And in the middle of 2025, federal HR needed every bit of it.

THE AGENCIES THAT GOT IT RIGHT

They Built the Assembly Line. And It Held.

Some agencies rose to this moment in ways that deserve to be recognized. Not because they had more resources — many didn't. Not because they had more time — none of them did.

What made the difference was collaboration from unfamiliar faces.

Teams that had never been in the room together suddenly were. Training and Development stepped up. Talent Management showed up. Employee Relations and Labor Relations leaned in. Executive Resources coordinated. HRIS and IT built tracking systems from scratch — in some cases overnight — so the work could be managed, monitored, and handed off without losing anyone in the process. And Staffing — before a single RIF protocol was implemented — stepped forward and made the journey a little less impossible to take.

No single person. No single team. No assigned lead. Just people who saw what was needed and moved toward it.

And somewhere in the middle of it — a good leader asked the question that changed everything: What do you need to make this happen?

When the word went out that bodies were needed — a great leader mobilized. Not a memo. Not a task force. A decision. People moved. Lanes opened. The assembly line became possible.

But let's be clear. Getting it done does not mean the gap doesn't exist. It means your team knows how to get behind their leader and do what it takes to move the mission under fire. That is not the same thing as a system that was built to handle it. That is people carrying what the system couldn't — and doing it anyway. The gap is still there. The people just refused to let it show.

Email inboxes became command centers. Someone was acknowledging.

Someone was tracking. Someone was logging. Someone was passing the baton to retirement — who determined retirement eligibility, VSIP eligibility, severance eligibility, computed estimates, and coordinated the communication back to the employee. An assembly line for every aspect of the process. Multiple lanes running simultaneously.

All of them managed.

Scripts were drafted so every employee heard the same accurate information.

Data calls were fielded and responded to. FAQs were created — updated in real time as the guidance shifted. Dedicated resource websites were built, sometimes overnight, so employees had somewhere to go when the phones weren't being answered and the uncertainty was swallowing them whole.

Tracking systems were stood up — in some agencies from scratch, in some agencies still relying on the most manual of methods — because the alternative was losing someone in the process. And losing someone was not an option.

And through all of it — briefings. Exhausting, back-to-back briefings. Delivered with a strong face. With confidence. With empathy. Walking employees through every detail of the DRP — the options, the timelines, the implications — while quietly carrying the same question those employees were asking themselves.

Is this worth it? Should I take it?

The strength it took to hold that space — for them, while carrying it yourself — does not have a line item. It does not show up in an after-action report. But it held the process together when nothing else could.

That is what getting it right looked like. Not a perfect system. People. Showing up for each other — and for the workforce that needed them most.

Those agencies know who they are. And every team — HR, HRIS, IT, Training and Development, Talent Management, ER, LR, Executive Resources, Staffing — that showed up when it mattered deserves to be recognized.

But not every Executive Branch agency had that experience. And that is the honest conversation this letter is asking HR leaders to have.

THE HONEST QUESTION

This One Is for HR Leaders.

You got through it. But what did it expose?

Nearly a year and a half later — with the immediate crisis behind you and the rebuild beginning — this is the question every HR leader owes their organization an honest answer to. Not for an after-action report. Not for a congressional briefing.

For the practitioners on your team who absorbed what 2025 asked of them and are still standing.

What did the surge reveal about your HR operations that you already knew but hadn't addressed? What broke first? What held longer than it should have because your team refused to let it fall? And what are you doing differently now?

Here is what the visible gaps looked like across Executive Branch HR operations. Not every agency experienced every one. But if you are being honest with yourself — you will recognize at least some of these:

Staffing shortages that predated the surge — exposed the moment volume spiked. Yes, there were positions that became single points of failure. But let's be clear about the other side of that coin.

In many cases, it was never about vacant positions waiting to be filled. There were no positions to fill. No FTEs authorized. No budget allocated. HR offices supporting thousands — sometimes tens of thousands — of employees with a team of five specialists. Not because someone forgot to hire. Because the funding was never there to begin with.

HR is consistently one of the most underrepresented, underresourced, and underappreciated functions in the federal government. Expected to equip, process, counsel, and sustain an entire workforce. Funded as an afterthought. And still — the work moved.

No surge plan. No documented protocol for what to do when volume exceeds organic capacity. No pre-established support that could deploy quickly. No cross-training that would have allowed functions to flex when the need arose.

Systems that were not built for this. Case tracking in spreadsheets. Counseling scheduled manually. Separation packets built one at a time in shared drives that were never designed for the volume.

Communication gaps between functions — not because people weren't trying, but because the volume and pace of 2025 outran the coordination systems that existed. Staffing was moving. Benefits was moving. Payroll was moving. Retirement was moving. All of them simultaneously, at scale, without always having the infrastructure to ensure each function knew where the others were in the process.

The result, in some cases, was employees receiving information that didn't fully align — not from negligence, but from a system that was never designed to move this fast, at this volume, all at once.

Training gaps the volume made visible. Practitioners who had never implemented RIF protocols at this scale. Benefits specialists who had never counseled employees on separation options in mass. The gap between knowing the work and doing it at volume — exposed.

Budget constraints that limited the response. Agencies that needed support and couldn't get it fast enough. HR leaders who watched their teams absorb what should have been distributed across a larger, properly funded workforce.

Here is the truth federal HR leaders need to sit with: the 2025 workforce reduction did not create these gaps. It revealed them. The gaps were already there. The surge just made them impossible to ignore.

The question is not what went wrong in 2025. The question is what you are doing about it now — while there is still time to build before the next one arrives.

WHERE WE GO FROM HERE

You Are Hiring Again. Is HR Ready?

Agencies are backfilling. The talent pool — many of them experienced practitioners who left under the DRP or through a RIF — is returning. New hires are coming in. The federal workforce is rebuilding.

And HR operations is being asked to absorb the onboarding surge on top of everything it is still recovering from.

This is the moment for HR leaders to make deliberate decisions about positioning their departments for what comes next. Not reactive ones. Deliberate ones. Made now.

Build your HR Surge Readiness Plan — before you need it.

Not a COOP. Not a contingency document that lives in a drawer.

A living, actionable plan built specifically for the reality that federal HR now operates in — where administrative shifts can reshape the government overnight, where the unthinkable can become a directive before the end of a business day, and where HR is expected to execute regardless.

And let's be clear — surges do not only come from administration changes. They are already here. Ambitious hiring goals. Mass onboarding. Workforce rebuilds. The wave of employees returning to federal service right now.

HR surge is not a future threat. It is a present reality. The HR Surge Readiness Plan is not built for the next political moment — it is built for every moment that demands more than your current capacity can absorb.

This will not be the last time the unthinkable becomes a directive. That is not cynicism. That is the lesson 2025 just taught us — in real time, at scale, with your team absorbing every consequence of being unprepared.

Build the plan now — while the memory is still fresh, while the gaps are still visible, while the people who lived it are still in the building. Document the assembly lines. Map the functions. Identify your surge support. Build the blueprint before the next wave arrives. Because it will arrive. And when it does — your team deserves to be ready.

Equip your HR office with the right people and the right support.

Bring your technical expertise to the table. Ask the people who did the work what the blueprint should look like. Identify contract support from firms with direct federal HR operational experience — practitioners who have managed these exact moments, who know the work from the inside, and who can be useful from day one. Not after a ramp-up the moment cannot afford.

And when we say equip your HR office — we mean the whole ecosystem. Not just your staffing team.

Recruitment is the entry point, but everything filters down from there. The divisions that are most often overlooked are the ones responsible for managing an employee through every stage of their federal career — from the moment they walk in the door to the moment they walk out. Compensation. Benefits. Retirement.

These are not peripheral functions. They are the operational backbone of the federal workforce lifecycle. And they are consistently among the most underresourced, underrepresented, and least understood functions in the building.

Not because the work isn't critical. Because most people don't fully understand what that work actually is — until something goes wrong. Equipping HR means funding and supporting the entire operation. Every division. Every function. Every stage of the lifecycle. Not just the ones that are visible at the front end.

And dare we say it — the reason some agencies succeeded is because the leader behind the wheel — a benefits and retirement division chief, a branch chief, a team lead, a staffing supervisor, a first or second line supervisor on the ground — got it done. You know who you are. And so do we.

You're welcome.

Invest in your systems.

Did the spreadsheet get you through? Maybe. Did it capture the right numbers? That is a harder question — and if you are being honest, you already know the answer. The spreadsheet was the best available tool in a moment that deserved better.

Build the real systems now, while there is still time. Case tracking. Counseling coordination. Separation packet management. Retirement processing workflows. These deserve infrastructure, not workarounds.

Advocate for the budget. Get in front of decision makers now.

It is in our nature to move forward like nothing happened. Do not let that be the story of 2025. The urgency is real. The memory is still fresh. The gaps are still visible.

Use that.

Get in front of your decision makers. Today. Not next quarter. Not after the next reorganization. Now. Show them the plan. Show them the gaps. Show them what it cost — in hours, in errors, in employees who deserved better. Make the case while the people who need to hear it still remember what happened.

HR cannot drive the mission forward without the resources to do so. The 2025 surge made the cost of an underresourced HR operation visible in a way it had never been before. Use that visibility. Because if you wait — it fades. And the next surge arrives to find the same gaps, the same skeleton crews, the same teams absorbing the impossible with nothing but their own commitment holding it together.

On the oath — and speaking truth to power.

You took an oath. Not to an administration. Not to a directive. To the Constitution of the United States and to the mission of public service. That oath does not have an asterisk.

It does not pause when the political winds shift. It does not exempt you from the obligation to speak truth to power when the people you serve are depending on you to do exactly that.

We cannot be cowards. We cannot be so afraid of the conversation that we stay silent while the gaps widen and the workforce suffers the consequence of our silence. HR leaders — you have the data. You have the receipts. You lived it. 2025 gave you everything you need to make the case.

Speak up. Show up. And get what your team needs to be ready.

THE MISSION DEPENDS ON THIS

HR does not exist to process paperwork. HR exists to build, sustain, and protect the federal workforce that serves the American public. Every retirement processed correctly. Every separation handled with dignity. Every new hire onboarded accurately. Every SCD established right. Every benefits election administered on time.

When HR operations is under-resourced, understaffed, and under-supported — the mission absorbs the cost. Not in a line item. Not in a report.

It shows up in the work. In the actions processed under pressure that didn't get caught. In the employee whose retirement package arrived at OPM incomplete. In the employee who was RIF'd based on a retention standing that was never corrected. In the new hire whose benefits enrollment was wrong before their first day of work.

These are not hypotheticals. They are the predictable result of an HR function that was never resourced to match the weight of what it carries.

And through all of it — payroll kept the checks moving. Every employee who separated, every employee who stayed, every employee in transition continued to receive a paycheck. It may not have always arrived on the timeline you were accustomed to. But it came. And that is not an accident — that is payroll doing its job under the same impossible conditions every other HR function was navigating.

And as a reminder — no, you do not get paid on Saturday. That is just your bank being generous.

The 2025 workforce reduction made that cost visible. Nearly a year and a half later — it is still being paid in some agencies.

HR leaders: this is your moment. The rebuild is happening. The decisions you make right now — about how you position, resource, and train your HR operations — will determine whether the next surge breaks you or whether you absorb it.

The way your teams absorbed 2025. With professionalism, with accuracy, and with the kind of quiet commitment that never makes the headlines but always moves the mission forward.

T

he mission is counting on you. And so are the practitioners on your team.

AND TO THE HR SPECIALISTS —

This Part Is for You.

I don't know if your leadership paused long enough to say it. I don't know if your team was recognized, elevated, or even acknowledged for what you carried. But on behalf of 4T Training & Consulting Solutions, LLC — and for every leader who was moving too fast to stop and say it —

Thank you.

Thank you for the late cases. The back-to-back counseling sessions. The separation packets you processed one after another. The retirement estimates you pulled at volume. The RIF protocols you implemented with professionalism when the moment called for anything but. The employees you walked through the hardest career transition of their lives — with accuracy, with care, and with the kind of quiet commitment that never makes it into a performance review.

You did not have enough staff. You did not have enough systems. In many cases, you did not have enough time. And you showed up anyway.

You moved the mission forward when the mission was on fire.

That matters. You matter. And 4T sees you.

This is how we get it back.

Mickey Theall is the President & CEO of 4T Training & Consulting Solutions, LLC and a former GS-15 Division Chief, Compensation & Benefits. She built practitioner capability at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, the Department of Defense, and the Executive Office of the President — at the desk, on live federal casework, in real agency systems.

AHROT™ Applied HR Operations Training™ is 4T's proprietary performance methodology. The BOSS Framework™ — Build · Operations Support · Sustain — is how AHROT™ is operationalized across every engagement. The HR Surge Readiness Plan described in this newsletter is exactly the kind of operational foundation AHROT™ and the BOSS Framework™ are built to develop — before the surge arrives, not after.

4T Training & Consulting Solutions, LLC

mtheall@4TConsultingLLC.com  ·  571.207.5434  ·  4tconsultingllc.com

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