Recruitment, Relocation, and Retention Incentives for VHA Positions Need Improved Oversight

To address occupational shortages and support hiring efforts, VA leverages federal regulations that allow agencies to offer recruitment, relocation, and retention incentives to encourage candidates to accept positions that are difficult to fill or to keep high-quality staff. The OIG conducted this audit to evaluate VA’s controls over and governance of the use of these incentives for VHA positions. Although these types of incentives were used mostly for positions on staffing shortage lists, VA did not effectively govern the incentive process to ensure responsible VHA officials consistently captured mandatory information necessary to support an incentive award. The OIG team estimated 30 percent of incentives paid during fiscal years 2020 through 2023 were missing forms, lacked a sufficient justification, or were missing signatures. As a result, VHA paid employees about $340.9 million in incentives that were not adequately supported. Furthermore, the OIG team found VHA did not consistently include sufficient workforce and succession plan narratives for an estimated 20 percent of retention incentives, note employee performance ratings for 7 percent of relocation incentives, or obtain self-certifications for about 71 percent of employees who relocated. The team also identified 28 employees who received retention incentive payments up to an additional 11 and a half years after their award period had expired. VA improperly paid about $4.6 million to these employees for incentives that should have been terminated. The OIG made eight recommendations to improve the oversight of these incentives.