Eighty-one percent of state and local governments are hiring new employees but face workforce challenges that are impacting total employment, according to a June 2022 research report from the International Public Management Association for Human Resources (IPMA-HR) conducted in collaboration with MissionSquare Research Institute and the National Association of State Personnel Executives (NASPE). The research also finds that despite more full-time employees hired in 2021, 69% of state and local government human resource professionals said more employees were quitting and 60% said more were retiring.
The state and local government human resources professionals surveyed for the research also reported the most difficult positions to fill are in health care (83%), policing (78%), engineering (78%), dispatch (75%), building permitting and inspections (73%), corrections/jails (72%), and skilled trades (71%).
The problem has become so acute that some governments have cut back on essential services, said Cara Woodson Welch, executive director of IPMA-HR, whose members have indicated that these cuts are particularly common in public safety roles.
These findings are detailed in Survey Findings: State and Local Workforce 2022. IPMA-HR has partnered with MissionSquare Research Institute and NASPE since 2009 to conduct this annual study on a range of topics pertaining to workforce and compensation changes, recruitment and retention efforts, and future public employer priorities.
Contributing factors include the available labor supply, fiscal uncertainty for coming years, compensation structures and the underlying demographics of the public-sector workforce, explained Joshua Franzel, managing director at MissionSquare Research Institute.
“There’s been an uneven recovery at the and local state level, by industry as well,” Franzel said, presenting the research that he co-authored. “For example, state education is more or less recovered, state hospitals have more or less recovered, but state general administration is well below pre-pandemic levels. On the local side, pretty much all major industry levels remain below peak February 2020 levels: education, utilities, transportation, hospitals [and] general administration all remained below where they were.”
Additionally, 53% of respondents indicated that employees are accelerating their retirement plans, the highest percentage to report this move since the survey began, likely influenced by the pandemic and the Great Resignation. Also, 41% of human resources professionals indicated that the largest portion of retirements will hit state and local governments in the next few years. Speaking of their workforce more generally, less than half (41%) of respondents believe employees are financially prepared for retirement.
Key highlights of the survey findings:
- 55% of respondents hired more full-time staff in 2021 than in 2020.
- Looking at 10 key positions, 65% or more identified them as hard to fill. Seven of those ten positions had fewer than 10% of respondents reporting them as hard to fill in 2015.
- While there has been a slight decline in full-time telework, 54% provide for regular hybrid staffing. Also, new policy approaches are supporting hybrid work with an emphasis on remote employee engagement, mentoring and performance appraisal.
- Social media is the top recruitment method.
- Compensation is the top concern in exit interviews.
- There has been progress toward achieving greater balance between their workforce diversity and communities served.
The survey was conducted from March 3 to April 24, 2022, with a total of 319 state and local government human resource staff respondents.
The Quiet Crisis: Survey Findings Point to a Worsening Public Sector Hiring Crisis
With many organizations already struggling with hiring shortages, survey findings released in July 2022 by NEOGOV, titled “The Quiet Crisis in the Public Sector,” shine a light on the dramatic decrease in the number of job applicants in the public sector.
The report points to a 56% drop in applications per open job from 2021 to 2022. About a quarter of all current public sector job postings are getting seven applications or fewer. As a result, nearly 20% of state and local government agencies have reduced services due to staffing shortages. If this trend continues over the next quarter, over 40% of public sector agencies expect to cut services to the public.
“The survey results indicate how organizations are coping with the public sector hiring crisis, the wide-ranging and severe consequences of unfilled job openings, and reveals key strategies to help organizations overcome these challenges in today’s new normal,” said Shane Evangelist, CEO of NEOGOV.
The report, based on data from NEOGOV’s jobs site GovernmentJobs.com, examines the opportunities and challenges of 299 public sector HR professionals and provides valuable insights from 609 survey respondents who applied to public sector positions via GovernmentJobs.com in 2019 or later.
Key findings include:
HR Survey Results
- There is a growing gap between job openings and job applications. 80% of those surveyed responded the number of job openings is higher than in an average year.
- Of those surveyed, 217 cited voluntary turnover as the number one driver of increased job openings. An inability to fill jobs over time and retirement are also having a significant impact. 76% of voluntary employee turnover was directly related to pay, with employees citing salary as the main reason for their exit. Opportunities in the private sector, opportunities in the nonprofit sector, the option for remote work, and greater work flexibility remain the other most significant reasons employees are departing the public sector.
- 79% of agencies cannot currently find qualified candidates for open positions, providing a clear answer from a competitive job market.
- 61% of public sector HR directors reported law enforcement as having the most difficulties with recruitment.
Applicant Survey Results
- 60% of respondents cited benefits as the primary reason to work in the public sector. Benefits far outweighed salary and stability when they responded to what attracted them most to public sector work.
- Transparency and clarity remain critical elements for public sector HR teams to maintain in recruitment. 555% of job applicants reported an appreciation for the clarity of requirements, the clear delineation of the process, and clear salary expectations.
- Survey respondents voiced the need for a more timely application process, the option for an online application, and better communication throughout the hiring process. 70% of respondees to an open-ended question listed process, communication and timeliness as extremely important.
Solutions for a New Normal
- Traditionally, the public sector has maintained a less flexible approach to work. But the needle is moving toward a more adaptable work environment. Of 241 respondents, 69% of organizations are changing job conditions to fill job postings. 41% are reducing the minimum qualifications for their jobs to attract more candidates, and 30% have expanded remote work options.
- In addition to making public sector jobs more attractive to applicants, today’s job market requires new methods for finding and recruiting candidates. Online job boards, digital ads, and social media are helpful new tools. Public sector HR directors able to speed up the hiring process will give themselves a significant competitive advantage. Conducting interviews virtually and providing a quicker turnaround time from application to offer are strategies agencies should consider.
Tech Trends 2022: A Government Perspective
Deloitte’s Tech Trends 2022 report spotlights a government-specific take on the accelerating technology trends most likely to cause disruption over the next 18 to 24 months. It explores which trends may be most relevant for governments and how ready governments are to take advantage of them.
In the report, Deloitte examines how early trend participants are taking advantage of new opportunities in automation, blockchain, data-sharing, and other areas to transform their organizations and engineer competitive advantage.
The report focuses on the following areas as being highly relevant to public sector employers (i.e., measuring how impactful it would be if government adopted the trend), while indicating a currently low readiness quotient (i.e., rating how ready, or unprepared, the government is to implement and adopt each respective change):
- Technologies that both preserve privacy and permit real-time data sharing for analysis and modeling
- New and increasingly powerful application programming interfaces (APIs via the Cloud)
- Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs)
- AI to automate cyberattack detection and response
- Automation at scale to eliminate all low-value IT activities, moving toward human resources managing code that manages environments and systems
- IT management of smart devices, standard-setting, security and support implementations
- Quantum, exponential intelligence, and ambient experience: three technologies that will likely dominate the digital landscape a decade or more from now.
09 August 2022
Category
HR News Article