Beware and get ready - The Government Workforce of the hereafter

A crisis is looming in governments across the nation and yet few are taking heed. The crisis is one that, in hindsight, would have been easy to predict and relatively easy to address. However, few jurisdictions are taking the time, energy, or political risk to put in order for the storm that is about to hit. The unbelievable crisis results from changing employee beliefs, and wavering workplace values, coupled with remarkable demographics that will alter the face of the government workforce. The time is now for government agencies, small and large, rural and urban, to begin analyzing and making ready for the future. This narrative will discuss some of the most important issues facing government workforce planners, offering strategies for addressing the issues and for adapting to the new beliefs within customary civil aid systems.

Changing Workplace Attitudes

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More and more employees view their connection differently than their counterparts did thirty years ago. Many reveal themselves as whether "renters" or "owners," terms that originate vivid distinctions in the permanency of the work relationship. Changed perspectives on the employment connection have led to new expectations of what the owner is supposed to provide in terms of extrinsic and intrinsic benefits. Much has been written about these military in the work environment. The following four trends have reshaped the employment ageement and are forcing collective sector employers to reexamine customary employment practices:

Trend #1: Shorter career Lifecycles

Traditional career management programs teach that the career lifecycle is a linear process. Typically workers begin their careers in the exploration phase, studying the skills important to be victorious in the work world. Then they move to stage two where they are unbelievable to be more efficient as they become proficient at their trade or skill. Maintenance comes next, where workers whether become carport in their work, more productive, or less productive. Finally, employees are unbelievable to hit the final stage of their career, in their mid to late 50s, when the personel whether chooses full-time or partial retirement.[i]

For government employers, this typical career path has been made even more inescapable by predictable pension programs and loyal workers. However, the current cheaper and an increase in independent thinking among younger workers challenges the linear career path premise.

In fact, some scholars[ii] have unbelievable that the typical 20-year career construction cycle has morphed into a twenty-month skill construction process. Likewise, workers are entering the workplace with technological skills that examine pay above the entry level. These military are causing collective sector employers to wake up to the fact that the employees being hired today will likely not be the same workers they will see retire in twenty or thirty years. In fact, the idea of "retirement" as we know it today may become extinct, supplanted by self-driven speculation opportunities that allow the employee to take their savings with them from owner to employer. The promise of seclusion will no longer lure workers to the government sector.

As the average age of the workforce shifts upward, the average distance of time an employee stays in a job keeps shrinking. The employee habitancy is rapidly changing to a free agency, temporary work, consulting, and project workforce. By the year 2005, the U.S. Agency of Labor predicts that self-employment will be the largest work category.[iii]

Trend #2 - increasing acceptance of technology

In 1995, only about 50 million habitancy had Internet access. Today, the Internet reaches over 200 million habitancy worldwide[iv]. Technology has changed the way we do business in terms of procedures and processes. More importantly, however, technology has changed the way we reveal in the workplace. Electronic mail, business Intranets, voice mail, personal digital assistance, and other devices have changed the way we change data and originate bonds with co-workers. In the process, employers are beginning to comprehend that there are cultural costs associated with these benefits.

With the explosion of technology in the workplace have come new issues associated to employee communication, trust, and the employment relationship. The community for Human Resources Workplace Visions newsletter cites four involving technological issues to watch, as they reveal to the culture of the future workforce. [v] First, computer safety is becoming more and more of a concern as organizations face the threat of computer viruses and hackers. Some organizations are reportedly installing fingerprint readers to their keyboards and other devices that will require fingerprints to be scanned and beloved before an employee can access business files.[vi] These new measures will no doubt have an impact on trust levels in the customary work environment.

Second, remote access is increasing the employees' potential to work at home. As access continues to expand, organizations will be faced with new issues associated to which employees will be eligible for the access and under which technology will the society best allow remote access.

Third, communications systems are facilitating communication across country borders at levels we never imagined. At&T is developing on a phone that will automatically translate calls from Japanese to English and vice versa. agreeing to the community for Human reserved supply Management, "Universal translating systems may never be able to capture cultural differences, but they could enormously aid in international business transactions."[vii] For collective sector employers, the technology provides new options in communicating with populations who have traditionally been out of reach.

Finally, governments are forced to observe new technologies associated to employee monitoring. Guard methods, including the monitoring of Internet and e-mail use has seen explosive growth, with 54.1 percent of private sector companies now monitoring employee Internet connections and 38.1 percent reviewing e-mail messages.[viii] And, in some cases, the ethical issues associated to privacy in the workplace are being challenged in the courts.

It will be some time before these technological issues become clearly resolved. In the meantime, collective human reserved supply managers must stay abreast of issues and be aware of how their workforce is viewing these important changes.

Trend #3 - Increased examine for studying at Work

According to a 1998 study by the American community for Training and Development, 99% of workers surveyed wanted more training from their employers.[ix] The study was a strong message that pay and condition benefits are not the only hypothesize workers come to work. Before accepting a job, today's workers are asking, "What will I learn in this job that will help me perform my future goals?" The examine proves a important one for employees and is prominent to employers who are finding for a strategic benefit in hiring and retaining top talent.

The availability of training, whether through seminars, conferences, tuition reimbursement, or computer-delivered training modules, is a important element in becoming an owner of choice. Coaching, mentoring, and career development programs have become appropriate fare in progressive organizations interested in retaining star performers. A 1999 study revealed that 81 percent of the Fortune top 100 companies to work for offered career counseling to their employees.[x] collective employers are offering to train employees on job skills that will help them best associated to the communities they serve. For example, the City of Phoenix recently debuted a ample language development program to sustain English speaking employees to become more proficient in communicating with the region's Spanish speakers. The program includes an immersion program in Hermosillo, Mexico for those employees who make the most progress.

Education is no longer in case,granted solely by trade schools, colleges, and universities. Employers are beginning to identify that workers value continuous studying and that the workplace, perfect with its resources and connections to the community, provides an ideal venue to pursue such studying opportunities.

Trend #4 - Increased Focus on Lifestyle

An increased focus on work/life equilibrium and lifestyle lead many organizations to look for new ways to satisfy employee needs. collective employers, in an effort to boost their contentious edge in the recruiting market, turn to new benefits to appeal to workers' desire to best blend work and personal time. The most inescapable trends are in the areas of telecommuting and alternative working hours. In a new study of the best 100 companies to work for, 87 percent narrative that they offer some form of telecommuting.[xi] Over 89 percent offer compressed workweeks or alternative working schedules. These numbers have increased considerably in the past five years.[xii] collective employers are adjusting policies and customary ways of working to accommodate these trends. In addition, new benefits have appeared on the scene to appeal to the diverse needs of government workers. Such benefits contain pet insurance, domestic partner benefits, and adoption aid. And, as the employment store continues in its contentious mode, collective employers are searching for more and more creative ways to attract and withhold employees.

New Generations of Workers

Many long-time government leaders are asking, "Why are we offering all of these new benefit packages? We've never had to do these crazy things before. What's going on?" The write back to these questions is simple: demographics. Peter Drucker said it best, "The dominant factor in the next two decades is not going to be economics or technology. It will be demographics."[xiii]

The first major demographic blow came with the entrance of Generation X to the workplace. Generation X is defined as those employees born between 1964 and 1977. They are characterized as being latchkey kids who thrive on independence and speed. They have been heavily influenced by the media, as evidenced by the proliferation of television during their youth. Xers have been described as self-reliant, informal, and skeptical. Some reveal them as having a nontraditional orientation about time and space and a casual advent to authority. Many authors have associated these attributes to seminal events in their youth, including the Watergate scandal, the Challenger disaster, and the beginning of immense layoffs in U.S. Corporations.[xiv] As a succeed of these attitudes, employers are finding themselves and their customary systems and processes challenged.

The generation that follows Generation X into the workforce is also causing collective employers to rethink customary methods. The Net Generation, also known as the "Nexters," "Generation Y," or "the D (digital) generation" are bringing new perspectives associated to technology and communication to the workplace. These workers and future workers were born between 1977 and 1997. Donald Tapscott, in his book, "Growing Up Digital" calls this the first generation to "grow up digital,"[xv] because they are the first generation to know more than their parents (and their bosses) in terms of computers, the Internet, and technology in general. In mass, this cohort group has had more exposure to technology and its discrete purposes than any other group in history. They have learned the uses and possible of technology in school and at home and are now entering the workplace expecting the highest levels of technological innovation possible. The Net Generation has been characterized as being fiercely independent, comfortable with inclusion, and extremely investigative. Like their Generation X counterparts, they have a strong sense of immediacy and expect that things will move rapidly in the organizational environment.

These two entrants to the collective sector work environment are beginning to have impacts that will change the face of employment for decades to come. These factors, in increasing to the sheer demographic impacts of these two generations, will cause collective employers to rethink their employment strategies and practices.

Demographics and Aging

Why are demographics suddenly having such an impact on workplace attitudes? Birthrate patterns over the past fifty years make the story clear. Baby-boomers, the core of our current workforce make up approximately 78 million workers. As they are beginning to enter the seclusion ranks, the Generation Xers are close behind to fill their shoes. However, with nearby 58 million Xers in the workforce, there are less habitancy ready to fill a growing whole of positions. Finally, the Net Generation is larger than Generation X, at approximately 60 million workers and future workers. Nevertheless, the reality was made clear by Sam Ehrenhalt, Senior Fellow at the Rockefeller institute of Government, when he said that the reality is that we will soon, "be fishing in a pond with fewer and fewer fish."[xvi]

Overall government employment extensive by 14 percent in the 1990s and that five in eight government jobs are at the local level.[xvii] Indications are that the government labor force is aging more rapidly than the collective sector work force. The proportion of older government workers aged 45 to 64 has risen from 36.8 percent in 1994 to 41.7 percent in 1998. In the same time period, private sector proportions are up only from 25.3 percent in 1994 to 27.8 percent in 1998.[xviii]

Clearly government, particularly at the local level, can expect to be more strongly impacted by retirements in the near future and will have a proportionately larger examine for workers to replace those who leave the job market. This translates into a more urgent need to put in order competent new staff to take over the leadership of our collective sector organizations.

William Byham, Ceo of development Dimensions International (Ddi) contends that the leadership gap is pervasive and creates the biggest threat to organizations since Y2K.[xix] Byham expects the average society to sense at least a 33 percent turnover at the menagerial ranks in the next five years. One third of those organizations surveyed said they are not inescapable that they will be able to find suitable replacements.

The Need for Succession Planning and Talent Management

Enter the newest buzzwords in government human reserved supply circles today: succession planning and talent management. Today, more than ever, collective sector human reserved supply professionals are realizing the possible challenges they face in filling positions when there are fewer candidates to select from in the labor pool and more vacancies due to retirements and resignations. Now more than ever, human resources must help current collective sector leaders, both political and managerial, take the lead in identifying these issues within their organizations. Additionally, they must institute strategies to ensure the future leadership capacity of the agency.

Succession Planning: Two Dirty Words

For years, marred by the goals and guidelines of civil aid systems, collective sector human reserved supply professionals shied away from any form of succession planning. If it was conducted at any level, it was ordinarily done on the back of an envelope and then thrown away for fear there would be allegations that the merit system system were not being enforced. The focus of such "succession planning" efforts was on the immediate needs of the work unit and was ordinarily focused on filling one position. The success rate of such planning efforts remained relatively low because the focus was on the short term (filling the position) rather than making ready habitancy for the new assignment. Those were the days when there were ample candidates and the skills required to do the job were not as diverse. Today, back of the envelope staffing is no longer sufficient.

Many organizations have used change planning techniques that focus on near-term needs and ordinarily consist of back-up charts. In the making ready of such charts, some employees benefit through cross-training efforts, making ready them to fill in for their change when the change whether left for a short-term basis, or when the change left the position. Again, this formula is relatively short-term and does not reflect the strategic needs of the organization. Instead, it focuses on the needs of specific positions, which may or may not be important to the organization's health. Some organizations have feared more proactive techniques to filling positions in light of long-standing civil aid rules that require all candidates be given "fair and equitable" opportunities to compete to all candidates.

Talent Management: A New Day in Government

Times have changed and so has the atmosphere of the workforce. No longer can collective agencies afford to fill positions with reactionary measures. Short-term approaches will only continue to dig a deeper hole for those agencies using such antiquated systems. Today, progressive collective employers are finding ways to modify (or even throw out altogether) the customary approaches to succession planning. In their place are new and progressive approaches that will ensure the future leadership compel in the society for the future. Talent management focuses more on the strategic needs of the organization. Working as a continuous process, it provides a form of organizational development that takes a proactive advent to making ready individuals to take the leadership reins of the society in the future. In doing so, the society also contributes to a higher keeping rate by creating a work environment where employees feel promise and future opening with the organization.

Talent management consists of six key elements, all of which are important if the society expects inescapable results for the effort. The following six crucial factors in managing talent will be discussed:

o alignment of the organizational strategy with the core values

o top management leadership

o line management ownership

o large and frequent talent reviews

o a focus on development from within

o incentives for speculation in development.

For talent management to be effective, it must be a religious doctrine aligned with the organization's goals. If the society does not value the development of staff, and if the core values of the society do not focus on people, talent management will not be supported. Likewise, top management, both elected and appointed, must adopt the idea that the compel of the society lies within its habitancy and that when the habitancy become more skilled, the society benefits. The efforts will fail without top management support. Line management staff, including first line supervisors, must withhold the idea of talent management and must be held accountable for the development of their employees. Without supervisory involvement, the society will be without leadership development at the most important place: the front line.

For talent management to be effective, the organization, along with the front line supervisor, must escort quarterly and meaningful talent reviews. In this process, studying leaders, as well as management must compare current talent levels, by evaluating the important talent needs of the future and identifying the gaps in talent. From there, the leaders should institute processes and systems for fostering personel development opportunities that are ready to employees. Of course, personel development is only victorious if the employees are interested in their own development. For that hypothesize development plans should be ready to all employees, but not required by the organization. Finally, for those employees willing to pursue development opportunities, there should be incentives for taking such steps. Front-line supervisors should be rewarded for supporting employee development efforts.

Talent management in Action

Talent management can take on many forms. Governments across the United States are experimenting with a variety of new and innovative methods for retaining and developing their talent. A few examples of the steps being taken include:

o improving job experiences through job rotation and new staff assignments for long-term employees

o Creating "Top Gun" academies that offer formal training and coaching for a prime group of star performers

o Utilizing 360 degree feedback tools to help employees institute their own personal development plans that are actively managed by a talent coach and the employee's manager

o Using personal coaches to provide withhold to current or possible leaders

o Establishing co-managers in important functions to ease older leaders into seclusion and to put in order new leaders for their new role

o Outsourcing hard-to-fill functions and diverting existing staff to more strategic roles.

Beyond Talent Management

While talent management and the development of staff remain the customary advice of this article, several other measures must be mentioned to fully observe the issue of talent drought. Many collective sector organizations are finding success with active talent management to withhold their best workers and to put in order them to lead the society in the future. However, talent management may not be sufficient to win this war. Therefore, four other recommendations will supplement talent management efforts.

First, organizations must do their best to withhold older workers and maximize their contributions. Efforts including phased seclusion programs and hire-back programs prove that organizations identify that a great reserved supply is lost when the long-time employee leaves. In addition, knowledge management efforts, a planned advent intended to capture the organization's memory, may be appropriate for those organizations implicated about losing data when a long-time employee leaves.

Second, some organizations are rekindling the idea of the estimation center, but not for selection purposes. estimation centers are now being used to help employers identify their worker's current development needs. Termed "acceleration pools" by William Byham,[xx] estimation centers can also help the society identify possible talent in an objective and defensible way and it can help employees decree their own areas for development.

Third, traditional, civil aid government systems must begin to look for flexible ways to adjust old rules that are no longer applicable in today's labor market. For example, some personnel rules state that the society cannot fill a position until it is vacant. Many collective sector agencies are bending this rule to allow the new leader to work side-by-side with the outgoing leader in order to learn as much as possible. The idea of using a co-manager for any distance of time has been rebuffed by some agencies because the fiscal system will not allow two habitancy to fill one full time equivalent position. Progressive human resources leaders must begin to ask, "Why?" in the face of such system roadblocks to find ways to accommodate the important studying of individuals.

Finally, while talent management and development planning are the recommended policy of performance in today's work environment, some organizations are turning to outsourcing as a way to address the staffing drought. San Diego County recently outsourced all of its data technology work.[xxi] agreeing to Carlos Arauz, San Diego County's Human Resources Director, County data technology workers were given the opening to apply for work with the society that won the bid. Many workers found an opening to enhance their skills by working for a separate employer, yet under the same separate umbrella society and in the same work setting. Most experienced a win-win outcome through outsourcing.

Summary

Public sector human reserved supply professionals must wake up. Current economic conditions, along with shifting demographics, will no doubt impact their society in the next five years. Those professionals who anticipate these changes and suggest solutions to these issues will become the heroes of their organizations. The crisis can be diverted and collective sector organizations can prosper, but only through proactive staff development and keeping efforts.

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[i] Certo, Samuel C. Modern Management. Upper Saddle River, Nj: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1997

[ii] Stern, Brian. Hr Update: News that Works. Hr Magazine (42)12: 26-27, 1997.

[iii] Pritchett, Price. Carpe Manana. New York: Pritchett, Rummler-Brache, 2000

[iv] Ibid.

3 community for Human reserved supply Management. Workplace Visions 3: 4-5, 1999.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Boehle, Sarah. They're Watching You: Workplace Privacy is Going. . . Going. . . Training (37) 8: 50-56,

2000.

[ix] Ibid

[x] Branch, Shelly. The 100 Best companies to Work for in America. Fortune (139) 1: 118-144, 1999.

[xi] Levering, Robert and Milton Moskowitz. The 100 Best companies to Work for in America. Fortune (141) 1: 82-110, 2000.

[xii] Ibid.

[xiii] Tapscott, Donald. Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, 1998.

[xiv] Zemke, Ron, Claire Raines, and Bob Filipcazk. Generations at Work. New York: doing investigate Associates, Inc., 2000.

[xv] Tapscott, Donald. Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, 1998.

[xvi] Ehrenhalt, Samuel M. Government Employment Report, 4: 8-11, 1999.

[xvii] Ehrenhalt, Samuel M. Government Employment Report, 6: 19-22, 1999.

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] Grossman, Robert J. Heirs Apparent, Hr Magazine (44) 2: 36-44, 1999.

[xx] Byham, William. Ddi factsheet - Succession Management, Pittsburgh, Pa: development Dimensions International, 1999..

[xxi] Walters, Jonathan. The employee Exodus. Governing 3: 36-38, 2000.

Beware and Prepare: The Government Workforce of the Future

Beware and get ready - The Government Workforce of the hereafter