Fundamentally, I’ve found that in government there’s often a lot of noise — various extraneous factors, such as the fact that our people aren’t always the best people; and a lot of amplitude, insofar as the performance average in government agencies all to often is not a bell curve.  That is, in too many agencies the modal average performance can often be quite low.  That said, there are a number of problems plaguing government in general. 

The root casues of the problem are threefold:

1.  The ability of government to set and pursue a talent mangement strategy is often quite limited - agencies struggle to “build talent within the ranks” and certainly suffer from problems attendant to recruitment and marketing.  Common refrains I hear are, “How do I judge talent?  How do I set clear, measurable goals and expectations?  In short, how does “performance government” translate into human resources policy, investment and practice?”   Many of us are still at an early stage.  

2.  Unions and collective bargaining units create complexities in extending our strategy.  This can be deconstructed as two basic issues:  how do we create the right value proposition over time, for our employees?  Again, not a lot of constructive thinking here and second, how do we set the right proposition in the workplace day to day.  Do we truly understand what triggers employee engagement? Performance?  Satisfaction? Many of our recent posts have been related to this — poor perceptions of leadership, comfort speaking up and perceptions related to how we tolerate poor performance create a drag on performance and reduce engagement and morale.  We know this intellectually, but are we doing enough to improve it?

3.  This is closely related to, but separate from, the problem with the complete imbalance in the control / empowerment set.    Government doesn’t often get the belief system, forget about the dashboard, and struggles with balancing control and empowerment.    Civil service rules were put in place to avoid the abuse of discretion, union rules were added to them, and you now have a system where risk aversion rules.  Unfortunately, the detailed rules do everything to limit performance and practically nothing to really limit waste, fraud, and abuse.

A recent  White House webinar on Big Data helped launch a major campaign on big data in government.  Studies from the McKinsey Global Institute show that government has much to gain as a sector, from getting the right returns in big data, but an open question remains.  Is ‘big data’ going to stitch together disparate agencies, siloed information systems and distinctly different ways of thinking about mission? Is data, in fact, the solution, or is it actually the problem? 

This is a key conclusion of an article CEB just published in the Harvard Business Review. In previous posts we described how IT should respond to this insight deficit . For example, offering a choice of BI tools, targeting the design of dashboards and reports, and making information easier to aggregate and filter. But as the article makes clear, this is not just an IT problem. Better tools and usable data must be complemented by employees capable of “big judgment” when using information to make decisions. So what should government leaders across the rest of the organization be doing in addition to providing and linking big data?  They need to bolster training for data analysis.  In a recent cross-industry survey , we found that 82% of employees conduct at least some analysis as part of their jobs. Without adequate training, agencies need to invest not only in PhDs and those schooled in advanced analytical methods, but they need to find individuals with those skills who can also coach and teach.   Most importantly, agencies should encourage collaborative decision-making processes.  The processes must encourage critical and non-linear thinking, make biases and assumptions explicit, and acknowledge and account for unknowns. Processes that encourage collaborative (not to be confused with consensus-driven) decision making often share these traits.

Government executives and managers alike are concerned about losing their millennial workforce, and for good reason. In 2011, US government employees under the age of 30 quit their jobs at a rate 5x times higher than their counterparts over 30. And while 13% of twenty-somethings left the Civil Service in 2011, many more are at risk of leaving. Nearly 1 in 3 employees under 30 considered leaving their organization in 2011 according to the Federal Viewpoint Survey.

High turnover of young employees pose significant costs and risks to Federal agencies. First, vacancies hamper team effectiveness, as new hires commonly take months if not years to reach full productivity. Second, recruiting and onboarding new employees costs agencies thousands of dollars per hire, and considerable hours from managers and L&D staff to train new employees. Finally, with the looming retirement of the baby boomers, agencies cannot afford to lose more institutional knowledge.

Some believe that Millennials are fundamentally different than previous generations, and that they need to be managed differently to be retained. But is this really the case? To test this hypothesis, the Corporate Executive Board used regression analysis to determine which workplace characteristics have the greatest impact on US Federal employees’ intent to stay with their agency.

For purposes of this analysis, we tested the impact of different workplace characteristics on two age segments – those aged 20-29, and those aged 50-59.

Analysis

Our investigation showed that both age brackets shared 7 of the 10 top drivers of intent to stay – demonstrating that these groups are not so different after all. Three themes permeated the top drivers for both generations:

• Employees want to be positioned for success – Employees need to feel that their talents are being used in the workplace, and that they have an opportunity to acquire a better job in the organization.

• Employees want capable managers – Managers should involve employees in decisions that affect their work, demonstrate competence and work well with employees of different backgrounds.

• Employees want a learning environment – Employees must feel that there are opportunities to improve their skills in their organization, and that their managers are committed to their development.

That said, there are some subtle differences between the two age groups.  Development opportunities and recognition are more important to young employees, while more experienced employees places greater value in expectation clarity and communication from management.

Interestingly – pay satisfaction is less important to both groups. As resource constraints tighten, it is nice to know that the things that matter most are those that leaders and managers have at least some control over.

For more information on what government employees value, how to position and rebuild the employee value proposition (EVP), or how to deliver on the EVP promise – contact us.