HR is mission critical at the FBI: thirty years of corporate HR experience helps the FBI's new HR chief revamp an organization that is changing to meet the challenges of the post-Sept. 11 world

HR Magazine, June, 2006 by Ann Pomeroy

"This job is a higher calling," says Don Packham, SPHR, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) new assistant director and chief human resources officer. Though he grappled with many difficult business challenges during 30 years in the private sector, they "pale by comparison" to what the FBI deals with daily, he says. "If you have a bad quarter in the private sector, you can make it up the next quarter. Not so at the FBI," he adds, referring to the life-and-death matters this agency deals with on a daily basis.

For Packham, the journey to the FBI came in what was supposed to be his quasi-retirement from an illustrious career in corporate HR.

After 21 years at global oil giant British Petroleum (BP), he retired but looked for a way to stay connected to the HR profession. He realized that the concept of retirement was being redefined by his generation of baby boomers, and he knew he wasn't interested in spending all his time on the golf course.

As he looked around for "what I wanted to do next," Packham founded BridgeHRO, an HR consultancy. Then, within a few months, he received a call from the FBI with an exciting job offer.

In October 2005, Packham took on the task of creating a state-of-the-art HR program for the FBI, becoming the bureau's first professional HR head.

"When the director [of the FBI] asks you to do it," he says, "how can you say no?"

A Corporate HR Background

Though Packham says his new job is "way beyond anything I've done in the private sector," his industry experience is extremely valuable in his new public-service role. That experience includes such areas as mergers and acquisitions (M & A), outsourcing, global operations, and compensation and benefits.

When Packham graduated from college in 1975 with a bachelor's degree in management, the HR field was expanding. With new federal laws, such as the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, on the books, he says, there was plenty for HR to do.

His first job, as a wage and salary administrator at Central and Southwest Corp., now American Electric Power, led to increasingly responsible positions at Pennzoil, NL Industries and BP, where he was hired in 1983 to manage compensation and benefits at the British firm's Houston headquarters.

The early 1980s were an exciting time to be in the oil business, Packham recalls. He became an M & A expert as he worked on BP's mergers with Amoco, ARCO, Castrol and Vastar, and the successful integration of HR in all these merger activities was one of his most satisfying accomplishments at BP, he says.

He also looks back with pride on BP's decision in the 1990s to outsource HR, which Packham remembers being a difficult one. "We were pioneers at the time, and some people told me I was nuts," he says, when he advised BP that the time was right to outsource.

Packham says he was right and "the prize" was the cost savings the company achieved. By outsourcing a full range of HR services in the largest countries served by BP, the organization was able to reduce the HR head count by half and cut HR baseline costs by $65 million annually.

"BP is very interested in how to derive value," Packham says. "The leadership was visionary," and it was an intellectually challenging place to work, he observes. The company was focused on corporate governance and ethics well before the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in 2002, says Packham. And the experience of working in a global environment and leading virtual HR teams remotely was an opportunity that was "too good to pass up."

In hindsight, Packham says he wishes he had hired more college graduates with HR degrees at BP. Lamenting HR's "stepchild" status in many organizations, he came to realize that people with HR training are "fundamental to the vitality of HR." The function needs a common language, he says, and it needs to encompass the business dimension.

Not That Different

When Packham left the corporate world and went to work for the government, he made a switch that, at first glance, appears to be as different as night from day. In fact, he has found many similarities.

He has found that working for the federal government isn't that different from working in private industry. The government faces many of the same challenges he faced in the private sector--challenges in organizational design, in finding and hiring talented people (and then training and keeping them), and in moving people around to different locations.

And the government is moving more toward the arena of shared services, Packham says, which he likens to a "within-government" version of outsourcing. For example, "We are preparing to move our payroll to the National Finance Center, which is located at the Department of Agriculture" and which handles payroll for many government agencies.

Packham views the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which designs policies and benefits programs for the government, as "our outsourcing partner." OPM handles pensions and other benefits, says Packham, "so we don't have to worry about them."