Under Section 1067 of the Dodd-Frank Act, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is required to submit a report to the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee, highlighting the skill and technical expertise needs and actions taken to meet those needs, the steps taken to foster innovation and creativity, the bureau’s leadership development and succession planning, and the employees’ effective use of technology.
“This report shows the process made in building the bureau and developing the workforce needed to successfully accomplish the bureau’s mission,” the report said.
In its initial years, the CFPB focused on defining key jobs, skill requirements, and core values as well as conducting effective hiring. Now the CFPB is turning its focus to growing and retaining its high-performing workforce.
The CFPB’s strategies will include refining the bureau’s organizational design, analyzing job competencies along a career continuum, encouraging ongoing performance feedback between managers and employees, implementing high-priority learning programs, and creating career development resources and opportunities.
To foster innovation and creativity, the CFPB offered approximately 50 educational sessions on topics of cross-functional interest, launched a program to collect employee ideas for improvements to existing projects, promoted data sharing through the utilization of data visualization and business intelligence software by the CFPB’s Office of Technology & Innovation.
In shaping the design of the CFPB’s succession planning program, the CFPB developed a Succession Management Guide.
As of September 2014, the CFPB’s workforce consisted of 1,419 employees.
“Over the past three years, the bureau has made considerable progress in building out its human capital policies and programs. The bureau will continue to evaluate employee needs to enhance or modify existing programs going forward, in order to optimize the employee experience and ensure we are delivering the very best service possible to the American consumer,” the report said.