The post-pandemic workforce looks much different than before 2020. Every aspect of our work lives has become more fluid, from the hiring process to work hours to job requirements. And while private enterprises have quickly adapted to these new flexible market needs, government agencies, on the other hand, have experienced challenges in adapting to the new work climate.
Employers have enabled workers in the private sector to have remote and hybrid schedules, prioritizing efficiency over traditional work hours. People have collaborated virtually for years, and many claim their effectiveness in solving problems is unaffected, regardless of geographical distance. However, many public sector jobs, such as those in Human Resources or legal departments, require meetings with clients in person. Other government jobs, especially those in transportation, transit, or healthcare, will probably never become compatible with remote or hybrid-type employment.
Nevertheless, American workers openly show their increased desire for a better work-life balance. If government employers fail to keep up with the evolving workforce, the public sector might lose employees to private organizations.
Putting People First: Redesigning Fluid Workforce Models
In 2024, we’ll see more boundaries lifted between separate government departments, allowing employees to move more freely between roles and agencies. New, fluid workforce models enable qualified professionals to develop in-demand skills more effectively, while employers can easily find the needed talent. Managers are now open to hiring part-time workers to ensure they get the skills they need quickly, which opens more opportunities for fluidizing and empowering the workforce. Inexperienced applicants can get the break they are looking for if they possess the vital skills needed for the job.
2024 Government Trends: Remote working in state vs local administrations
Traditionally, state-level government departments offer more fluid work options, with 83% of state employees working virtually. On the other hand, only 68% of employees in local government work remotely. When it comes to local governments, remote work is not that accessible. Its availability depends on population size, according to CivicPulse statistics:
- In cities with over 500,000 people, 79% of people have the option of remote work,
- In places of between 100,000 and 500,000 people, about 71% work from home,
- Where there are between 25,000 and 100,000 people, around 58% have flexibility,
- And in smaller places with less than 25,000 people, 59% work remotely.
These differences in flexibility that directly depend on the population could be due to a need for more personnel. Smaller government departments have reported asking their employees to fill multiple roles. Also, less populated areas might have a limited broadband connection.
Furthermore, some departments, such as Human Resources and Finance, are usually more open to fluidizing the workforce. In contrast, others, who are traditionally stricter, have fewer remote work options, such as Health and Transportation.
Adapting Public Agencies: Embracing Private Sector Tactics
We are witnessing a significant shift in public agencies, which have mostly stuck to the old ways. They deal with outdated infrastructure, budgetary constraints, and increased state regulations. On top of it all, they also face substantial pressures of skilled worker shortages. Many public sectors are embracing private sector tactics to overcome said challenges:
- They are shifting to a system focusing more on skills-based hiring and fluid workforce models than college degrees and job titles.
- They offer employees more training opportunities and a better understanding of their skills (especially in cybersecurity and climate domains).
- They are pushing for more flexible working methods, fostering employee collaboration, and creating cross-functional teams.
By the end of this transition, we should have a public workforce that is more adaptable and collaborative.
Benefits of Prioritizing Skills-Based Hiring in Government Agencies
In 2023, LinkedIn published an exciting statistic report. Their numbers show a trend in US job postings emphasizing skills and responsibilities over qualifications. Employers have relied on job requisites and specific years of experience to assess applicants for decades. But lately, they’ve noticed such an approach inadvertently disqualifies many talented candidates who lack the resume points but who would, if given an opportunity, have a strong skill set to match.
This approach has had a particularly negative impact on women and minorities, who not only have difficulties acquiring the same level of education and experience as the average white male applicant but also often encounter additional obstacles in pursuing traditional career pathways.
Research also shows that women doubt their skills more and choose to only apply to positions if they meet 100% of the requirements posted in a job listing. Consequently, maintaining rigid job criteria limits the applicant pool and fails to account for the evolving workforce landscape.
By allowing modernly trained HR personnel to reassess these rigid requirements and create new, fluid ways of assessing candidates, employers can finally focus on hiring people based on what they are capable of instead of arbitrary years of experience. In a recent study funded by Walmart and conducted by AIR, most employees claimed that they would prefer a hiring process that focuses on skills rather than experience:
- 79% of people are open to having their employer capture their skills data to match them to more suitable work.
- Creating skill-based profiles also helps organizations who want to invest in their employees.
- By capturing data, they can focus on the most critical skills and reassign team members and teams according to the skill set needed for the project.
On a grander scale, employees can use their profiles to move to different jobs or grow within their organization. Businesses that participated in the survey used innovative measurements. The most prominent one was creating “gig” assignments, which were short-term projects employees could take to build skills. Besides the accurate assessment of the capabilities of the current workforce, the most noticeable benefit of this skill validation system was the improved employer resilience in the face of crisis. Employers who tracked and validated employee skills felt confident in their personnel and could delegate tasks accordingly.
The Skills-based Hiring Process in Action
One of the most popular hiring platforms for job seekers also reports favoring this positive shift. LinkedIn’s recent statistics show that skills-based hiring is prevalent in the market. More and more job descriptions focus on capabilities and duties rather than educational credentials and arbitrary years of experience.
Adopting skills-based hiring is gaining momentum across both public and private sectors. For instance, the US Office of Personnel Management‘s recent endorsement of skill-based hiring is a significant departure from the conventional approach to federal recruitment. The agency is willing to prioritize applicants with the skills needed to complete their dynamic missions over the candidate’s experience in the industry.
At the state level, pioneering initiatives such as the Indiana Office of Technologies skills first hiring program and Merryland’s revision of job requirements are great examples of the skills-based hiring process in action. In 2019, the Indiana Office of Technology was the first State agency to see the need for this shift. Since then, they have become leaders in adopting a skills-first recruitment process for technical roles.
The US Department of Defense has created an AI-powered GigEagle platform for skills-based hiring. They realized they were overlooking competent candidates and now want to override the damage they might have caused with their traditional hiring practices. The DoD created many short-term projects to attract people with the necessary skills, hoping to create an agile work environment.
Even the Central Intelligence Agency embraced mobility between the public and private sectors by establishing a technology fellowship program. They want to enable remote sector employees to work at the CIA on short-term projects for one or two years, and that way, both parties benefit from exchanging skills and resources.
“We’re never going to be able to match in the US government the kind of salaries or economic benefits you can find in many parts of the tech sector. What we can offer, though, are fascinating problems to solve.”
—CIA director Bill Burns, on the agency’s Technology Fellows program.
Similarly, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission gives junior and mid-level workers chances to try different roles, much like many private companies do.
Conclusion
The job market has experienced a major tectonic shift. While the private sector is constantly adjusting, there is an increased need for the public sector to catch up and restructure its hiring traditions. Even though they have shown some positive changes, government agencies must continue reevaluating job requirements and focus more on the applicant’s needs and capabilities when looking at the talent pool.
Sometime in the not-so-far-away future, skill-based hiring might not just be enough. We are heading towards a unified, global, fluid, and agile workforce. So, if the public sector doesn’t adapt, it will disappear. Instead of trying to copy the to-do list of the job requirements and paste it onto a formally educated applicant, agencies now need to organize work into a dynamic portfolio of tasks and delegate them to an employee who has the best skill set match.
Finally, agencies should remember that fostering collaboration comes before data collection and number crunching. Nothing would be possible without teamwork. One person may have thought of the wheel, but it took two or three humans to finish making it. HR doesn’t exist only to hire or fire. Fluid workforce management should focus on fostering teamwork as part of their winning business strategy in 2024. Allowing individual team members to recognize they don’t have the skills needed for the task helps them to delegate it to another team member who does. This process is essential if government entities want to compete with the private sector and retain a diverse talent pool that will better serve the needs of their communities.
