The arrival of a new presidential administration that actively supports reversing previous cuts to the civil service prompts consideration for the future of public sector employment. In this episode of SHRM’s All Things Work podcast, host Tony Lee speaks with Jason Briefel, director of policy and outreach for the Senior Executives Association, a professional association for the federal workforce’s senior executives. They consider new approaches to public sector talent acquisition aimed at making government employment opportunities more attractive to candidates.
The arrival of a new presidential administration that actively supports reversing previous cuts to the civil service prompts consideration for the future of public sector employment. In this episode of SHRM’s All Things Work podcast, host Tony Lee speaks with Jason Briefel, director of policy and outreach for the Senior Executives Association, a professional association for the federal workforce’s senior executives. They consider new approaches to public sector talent acquisition aimed at making government employment opportunities more attractive to candidates.
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Tony Lee:
Welcome to the All Things Work podcast from the Society for Human Resource Management. I'm your host, Tony Lee, head of editorial operations here at SHRM. Thank you for joining us. All things work as an audio adventure, where we talk with thought leaders and taste makers to bring you an insider's perspective on all things work. So today, we're going to be discussing the topic of public sector employment, especially under the new administration and how civil service jobs can compete with those in the private sector. Now, we know public sector employment faced a lot of setbacks and challenges under the last administration. Within many federal agencies, the total of number of jobs were reduced anywhere from 4% to almost 12% depending on the agency. So what's the result of that? More work to do and fewer people to do it. Now, President Biden has expressed strong support for restoring and expanding public sector employment, but what hasn't changed are the familiar issues that have historically discouraged job seekers from applying for civil service jobs, such as lower levels of pay, comparatively to, especially to, the private sector, cumbersome and sometimes even antiquated hiring processes, and other rigid prerequisites. Joining me today to discuss progressive approaches to public sector. Employment is Jason Briefel
Jason is a partner at Shaw, Bransford, and Roth in Washington, DC, where he leads the firm's government and public affairs practice providing legislative and organizational representation to nonprofits and corporations. He's also the director of policy and outreach for the Senior Executive's Association, a professional association of senior executives that represent more than 5,000 top administrators of the federal government. Jason also is a regular host of the FEDTalk podcast on the Federal News Network and editor of FEDmanager and FEDagent newsletters. Jason, welcome to all things work.
Jason Briefel:
Thanks for having me on the program, Tony.
Tony Lee:
Yeah, no, we're thrilled to have you. So, it's been a pretty tough year for a lot of federal agencies. I mean, we've seen quite a few kind of get hollowed out. In fact, over the last four years, it seems our audience is especially interested in the department of labor for obvious reasons. It feels like they were the hardest hit with their headcount falling over 12% since 2016. State department down 9%, interior education departments down 7%, USDA down 5%. So from your perspective, what's the status of public sector hiring as of today?
Jason Briefel:
Thanks, Tony. It's a great question. And an interesting one because obviously the world at work is changing. And so, knowing that there are organizations out there who have big missions that they've been assigned by the Congress and by the President that they still have to deliver upon when they've lost staff with the numbers that you shared, should be a concern and should be something to be thought about. But at the same time, work is changing.
The nature of work is changing, how organizations are structured and able to deliver upon mission and deliver services and benefits to the public are changing. And so I think that we're at a time of great opportunity. I think that there's a clear recognition from the Biden Harris administration that they do need to replenish and restaff federal agencies, but they also need to re-skill probably the entire workforces, and not only the workforce that are direct civil servants, but they have to think about the ecosystem that the federal government operates in as well, supported by contractors, grantees, et cetera. So where I think you'll see is definitely a push for hiring, and you have not seen this administration start off with a hiring freeze, which is something that president Trump did. And because of economic situations, many agencies were under hiring freezes for large portions of the Obama administration. So not having a hiring freeze in place, recognizing that numbers are down and capacity needs to be rebuilt, is where we find ourselves right now with the BI administration. And then where we go next is what we'll see in the coming months.
Tony Lee:
Okay. So you've painted a great picture of agencies that are eager to find qualified candidates and eager to fill positions that have been empty in some cases for many years. Yet, as I mentioned earlier, the federal government does not have a very good track record of identifying and hiring new talent. So where do you start? I mean, I'm not terribly optimistic that agencies are going to know where to find talent and convince them to come join their efforts.
Jason Briefel:
Tony, you said a word that really stuck out for me and that I think is an important distinction about the government's challenges around new talent. And then when you say new talent, I take that to mean fresh graduates from college, people early in their career, as opposed to experienced professionals. Because when it comes to experienced professionals, the government's doing a pretty okay job in terms of hiring folks that we're bringing on board, the government appears to be focusing on hiring folks in the mid-career and bringing them in sometimes. But where the real challenge is, where the real alarm bells are going off, is in that under 30 age population where the federal government has under 7% of its workforce under the age of 30. And that compares to about 24% out there in the private sector. So the talent pipeline of young talent, particularly new college graduates or other folks beginning their career is where the government really, really has challenges.
And this largely stems from a decision about a decade ago when the government's internship program was basically annihilated. We had a point in time where the federal government would bring on 100,000 interns annually. Since that program has been struck down and changed, that number is less than 10,000 interns per year, and I think I recall correctly that it was about 4,000 in 2020. So we really are not exposing young Americans to the opportunities within the federal government and the public service, because we simply do not have those opportunities through a viable, robust government wide internship program. And I think that's something that the administration is really, really going to have to draw its attention to in the near term.
Tony Lee:
Have you seen any indications that the administration is already thinking about that?
Jason Briefel:
Yes, absolutely. Not explicitly, but there have been several executive actions, executive orders, memos, you name it, that show a clear commitment from the Biden Harris administration around rebuilding the capacity of the federal workforce. There are several on day one and in the first week, but a couple weeks ago, there was one focused on the national security workforce. And there are several policy elements within that national security workforce memo that I think paint the road toward this issue.
One called for the administration to look at the recommendations of the national commission on military national and public service. That commission looked at, for over two years, comprehensively, these issues among others, including whether women should register in the selective service, and the national security workforce memo directs the administration to look at all of the recommendations of that report, which come with fully baked legislative language and other policy ideas of things that the administration can do administratively and reestablishing an internship program, revitalizing and strengthening the opportunities for young Americans to involve themselves in public service in other ways. For example, through AmeriCorps, through the Peace Corps, and similar programs like that, are strong recommendations within that national commission report that I know are getting a close look by the administration because they realize that those early career pipeline programs, those corps programs are a great pathway for Americans to expose themselves and start public service careers.
Tony Lee:
Yeah, no, that's great. Well, thank you for explaining that. So our audience are primarily HR professionals, talent professionals, primarily in the private sector, although I'm sure people who are working in the public sector around the country might be listening to this particular episode, given the topic. But help us all understand what it means when an agency loses 12% of its workforce. I mean, does that mean that 12% of the work isn't getting done? Does that mean that more senior level employees are just all doing more to get all the work done? How does that operationalize itself?
Jason Briefel:
Great question. So most agencies probably saw the vacancies manifest through attrition. The government does have authorities to do targeted buyouts and separations, but by and large, over the last four years, you saw just attrition decision by agency leadership, whether formally or informally, not to refill roles, not to backfill as folks left. And then there are a couple agencies where the administration made the decision to physically relocate the headquarters' location of the Bureau of Land Management and several parts of the Department of Agriculture, some of their institutes. And in those organizations, they lost more than half of their staff. I think it was up to 80% in some of those organizations. So those are kind of some big splashes in the pond in terms of employees presented a very challenging choice, and opting to take their career and their talents elsewhere.
Tony Lee:
And did they? So did they go, I mean, did you see a lot of federal employees jump to the private sector because they didn't like the environment anymore? Work wasn't getting done?
Jason Briefel:
Absolutely.
Tony Lee:
So how then does the government moving forward, compete with the private sector to get both experience and new employees to consider it as a career?
Jason Briefel:
I think it starts with brand and employee experience. The government writ large isn't held in great esteem by anybody if you look at the pew surveys, but when you ask members of the public about their views on specific federal agencies, almost all of them have a positive view because folks know what the postal service does, but they might not know what the government does. So I think talking about having the administration and the president and the vice president setting the tone of the value of public service, the respect for public service careers, certainly plays a big role. I think tapping into public service motivation. There's 30 plus years of research on the power of public service motivation. And I think companies, whether you're in the public or private sector have learned during this pandemic, that the intrinsic motivation of your employees, their desire to make a difference and often to make a difference outside of just the profit that their company makes, but to make a broader difference in the world, I think is the government's shining attractor.
Obviously it has relatively competitive benefits. Depends on what level you're at in terms of pay and benefits to make the employment equation and value proposition there. But I think it's really the opportunity to make a difference that is going to be the attractor. And then the focus on employee experience is what's going to enable the government to either keep employees that it is able to recruit and bring on board, or whether they decide to leave after a few years. And that's an area that I think we cannot discount because we have gotten better because of the attention around hiring and recruiting in recent years, but we're not necessarily in the federal government connecting the dots to retention. And so if we're hiring and bringing in that talent, but we're not keeping them because the culture is not lining up, because people aren't provided the technology and support they need to do their jobs, that's not a winning value proposition for the long term and something that I know a lot of folks are focused on.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. And frankly, I think that focus is mandatory. I mean, I talk to a lot of folks who run talent acquisition for federal contractors and other private employers, especially in the DC area. And frankly, they don't see the government as a particularly difficult competitor for talent, especially from a compensation standpoint, you hit on the point that there are folks who feel like they want to do well by doing good, by going to work for the government that can help change things. But there are an awful lot of companies that have that same message now, that we give back to the environment, we give back to folks who've been untapped and overlooked. I know there's no silver bullet, but is pay where you start to make government employment more attractive, or is there something else?
Jason Briefel:
Figuring out where to start is a bigger quandary than you might suspect, because many of these things are locked into place through laws that Congress passed often many years ago, the federal government, the civil service has not had a significant overhaul of the entire legislative structure since 1978. So we're currently working in a modern personnel system from 1978 with a personnel classification system that's 70 plus years old, and bases in a very bureaucratic structure, that's 100 years old. The pay system, the general schedule pay system, is 100 years old in the federal government.
Tony Lee:
Wow.
Jason Briefel:
So where to start compensation could be a good place. There's been a lot of discussion at the Senior Executives Association. We strongly support the government moving to an occupational based type compensation and employment model, as opposed to having 15 levels on the general schedule where your HR professional is making the same exact as an IT professional if they're both GS9's. That doesn't really make sense because those skill sets have different values in the marketplace and have different values for their criticality to our missions.
Tony Lee:
So let me ask you this. There are a lot of folks who work in talent for state agencies, for county agencies, for local municipalities. And some of them say that they have much better luck hiring, especially the new talent we talked about earlier, because they're not the federal government, because people who want to do well by doing good by giving back, see that they can have a more direct impact working on a more local level. So if you were providing career guidance to a new college graduate, or even a career changer, who's thinking about going into public sector work, what would you tell them about working at the local level versus the federal level?
Jason Briefel:
I think that's a great question. I think that it's true and knowing that you can make an impact for the things you care about at many different levels is really important. And I think that particularly in smaller organizations, perhaps even local and state government, where you may have to do more yourself, because you don't have the resources that the federal government might, having those diverse experiences and thinking about how you as a total person come and show up in that job and that opportunity to make an impact is really key. And I say all that, because research that has been done, some that I've been involved in, around kind of the skill sets for future public service leaders, really are grounded in kind of these interpersonal skills and are going to require high levels of empathy and emotional intelligence.
And so you find a role that's going to make sense for you and work. The pay may be better in the fed versus at state and local level, particularly given the pandemic. So there's a lot of compression and a lot of job loss out there in state and local governments. But I think that there are great opportunities to get your foot in the door. And like you said, it's in your community, it's with your neighbors. And I think that, often, that closer to the ground contact for public service is more meaningful. The people in your community often understand what those roles and those opportunities do, versus someone who works on housing policy, say, at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. So I think that it's a personal decision and we have to know that whatever job you begin with is almost certainly not going to be the job you end with.
I don't know what the number is up to now, you may know Tony, but I think the latest I saw is we should expect people to go through 15 careers by the end of their working life. Now kind of with folks entering the workforce and moving forward, I would expect that will continue to evolve and grow. So that's a really long way to say, grab your opportunity, find something that makes you happy and lets you pursue your passions and cultivate your skills, but know that you're not going to be there forever, probably.
Tony Lee:
Right.
Jason Briefel:
And that's okay. What you learn along the way is going to make you a better employee, hopefully a better public servant as folks continue through those careers.
Tony Lee:
Wow. That's that's great career advice, Jason, thank you so much. Unfortunately, we've run out of time, but I really appreciate your feedback and thank you. Thank you so much, Jason Briefel, who joined us to talk about public sector employment and sounds fairly optimistic that changes are afoot. That will make federal employment, a happier place moving forward. Before we get out of here, I want to encourage everyone to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, wherever you listen to podcasts. And while you're at it, be sure to give us a five star rating and leave a review. Also, be sure to check out SHRM on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And finally you can find all of our episodes and more podcasts from SHRM on our website at shrm.org/podcasts. Thank you for listening and we'll catch you next time on all things work.