Human Resource Futurity in the Federal Sector – Does the Government Have a Fighting Chance in the Talent Wars?
The American workforce is becoming older, more educated, more independent, and more diverse—and its expectations are changing. Workers seek different benefits and characteristics from employment in an economy where jobs are viewed as temporary. Jobs are viewed as seminars where you learn for your future advantage. Jobs are seen as adventures where you don’t know what’s going to happen next. By the way, jobs are cobbled together for a lifetime in which you are responsible for your own retirement. Today’s jobholders look for more satisfaction in the work itself, rather than in a promotion, raise, or some other reward which may not materialize anyway.
Today’s workforce is seeking greater job customization and enriched social ties in well-run enterprises that allow greater self-management, clear added-value, and rapid learning. As Generations X and Y become more numerous participants in the workforce, they will have different, faster, more complex and higher expectations of jobs and enterprise leadership, based in part on having witnessed the downsizing that many of their parents experienced in decades past.
Today’s workforce is looking for something different than the model by which most federal organizations and employment were designed. The workforce increasingly seeks organizations that:
- believe that the organization’s vision should drive culture, strategy, and tactics.
- provide unfiltered information instantaneously.
- practice participatory decision-making.
- create flattened, networked organizations.
- stress results and outcomes.
- base compensation on skills, knowledge, and contributions.
- treat employees as valued assets.
- grant greater job "wingspan," where broad responsibilities are not fettered by narrow position descriptions.
- feature leadership that is grounded in genuine skills and knowledge, rather than, well, you know…