I originally published this post on Medium. I copied it here in May 2024 to keep it alongside my other content.

Next week The Atlas is hosting a roundtable discussion focused on workforce retention and hiring issues facing local and state governments across the country. I’ll be participating, but with only 90 minutes, a broad topic, and lots of people with opinions I’d like to hear, I figured it might be easier to share my answers to their thought-provoking questions here rather than taking up time in the meeting.

With permission from organizer Gabby Manocchio, I’m sharing the discussion questions, with my own answers, based solely on my #localgov experience to date, combined with prior experience in nonprofits and for-profits.

Where I’m coming from

• I’ve worked in for-profits and nonprofits in the small/medium business (SMB) space for over 25 years, but local government has only been the last 3.5 years of that work, so my views may be skewed by my limited government exposure.
• I work in County government in central Ohio, with a metro population of about 2.2 million today, trending to 3 million by 2050. So my thoughts may not scale up or scale down to all other environments. For a sense of scale, I lead a team of about 60 infrastructure and software folks.
• I work in IT leadership, so my perspective is geared toward tech staffing rather than general government staffing.
• I believe the best-tasting steaks come from sacred cows. 🙂 Put another way, I take “that’s the way we’ve always done it” as fightin’ words — usually a sign that things are ripe for change. I’m also allergic to the notions that “government is different” and “we can’t do that here.”
• My opinions are my own; I don’t speak for my employer here on Medium.

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Government workforce questions from The Atlas

Below are the Q’s posed by The Atlas and the A’s I have to offer ahead of the roundtable discussion. If my commentary isn’t clear, you have an alternative view, or a question, please share your thoughts in the comments.

[1] What are your biggest concerns related to your IT workforce?

We’ve been pretty good at attracting and retaining talent since 2019, but we definitely have some concerns, mostly centered on ensuring we’re following a continuous improvement path. For example:

• We need to consistently foster a “growth mindset” culture from recruiting through employment — but this is very hard to teach and sustain in the face of Too Much Work and the “government” culture surrounding us. We know that people who grow professionally, while contributing to a larger mission, provide the most creative, most valuable results in a world of shifting priorities. And without a growth mindset, employees can stagnate and disconnect. So this is a big concern.
• We desperately need better work management and coordination tools, especially in an age of remote / hybrid work. We also need better work management methodologies to address visibility, agility, and product-focus needs. Models like Kanban, Lean, Agile, and Product Ownership have helped, but they still feel incomplete or poorly implemented in software tools. We’re hoping tools get better now that hybrid work is dominant in the industry.
• Finally, we’ve got to get better at building, sustaining, and evolving our culture to get the best out of hybrid working models particularly. We’re improving, but wow… this still feels like the “wild west” and we’re stumbling our way through it. I’m proud of what we’ve done, but I’m always worried we’re missing something.

[2] Have you experienced changing employee expectations since the onset of the pandemic?

• Employees immediately expected remote work, and we did it, like almost everyone else, in 2020. We also worked hard to extend remote work technologies to our customers very, very quickly. In 2021 we codified a “hybrid” working model for our staff (which I address in the final question below). Remote-first hybrid work is now a core expectation of staff, and it’s our baseline model.
• George Floyd’s murder in the midst of COVID-19’s ascendance launched a series of DEI efforts across all layers of our local government. However, there’s a broad spectrum of employee expectations about DEI ranging from “we need a transformative DEI program yesterday” to some staff dreading those three little letters as a veiled threat to anyone that isn’t an “other” of some kind. So DEI expectations are all over the map and are actually generating some amount of cultural friction, even amongst an unusually diverse / progressive IT practice like ours. Personally, I’m starting to think focusing lots of energy on identifying our differences is damaging our ability to see our commonalities as human beings and our shared public service mission.

[3] What strategies have you tried or found successful in attracting & retaining top IT talent?

I’ll address these in 3 sections: things we do to attract talent, things we do to retain talent, and more stuff we’d like to do but haven’t been able to get done yet.

ATTRACTING TALENT

• We completely rebuilt our job descriptions in 2019–2020, focusing on both tech skills and soft skills, with built-in growth paths (1–2–3) for most roles. This has allowed us to be specific about what/who we’re seeking, and to stratify our pay bands clearly.
• When posting jobs, we save the detailed job description for later conversations and instead use a marketing-style slide deck to promote the company, position, and the interesting challenges the job offers to prospective candidates. We are “selling” ourselves more than ever before.
• We specifically talk about how working here has a public service mission component, in the hopes of attracting talent compatible with our goals. That talent is more likely to stay longer and appreciate the intangible benefits of having a built-in Purpose.
• We’ve sped up our hiring cycles, despite having some structural barriers to hiring quickly. We can go from posting a job to screening phone calls in as little as 24 hours, and interviews can start in as little as a week. If the timing is right, we can go from job posting to formal hiring in as little as 2–3 weeks, which can be up to 4X faster than prior efforts. Candidates appreciate this, and it gives them a palpable sense of how we will respect them and treat them if they join the team.
• Hiring processes — including interviews — now include peer staff and a cross-disciplinary mix of managers. Interview panels can be a little daunting for candidates, but our approach captures more diverse perspectives and allows candidates insight into who we are and how we operate — openly and collaboratively. It also trains our team on how to run interviews and how to better perform in their own future job interviews.
• Most positions we hire are remote-first hybrid roles, which many candidates now expect as table stakes.
• Since we are now remote-first for most roles, we’ve been able to extend our geographical reach out to roughly 1 hour’s drive from our office. This gives us access to more candidates and allows us to hire staff from areas with lower costs of living, so we’re a premium-pay employer compared to small-town employers.
• We aren’t yet posting jobs via paid LinkedIn postings, but we do have the paid LinkedIn Recruiter service to scout for candidates and build future talent pools. We also post socially on LinkedIn and ask employees to help us spread the word.
• We now consistently post to Indeed for all roles. We’re only doing free postings, but that’s way better than what we did in the past, where all we did was post to NeoGov — which candidates never see. It’s crucial to meet candidates where they are.
• All job postings include pay ranges. And we updated and expanded pay ranges last year to stay competitive.
• Our pay is not market-leading, but we are fast-followers and do quite well in that department. Where we’ve got all our competitors beat, handily, are in healthcare and retirement benefits, which are nothing short of killer. Younger candidates don’t care as much about that, but mid-career professionals “get” the value immediately.
• We tout the fact we’re growing (doubling in the last 3 years), which creates growth opportunities.
• Finally, now that we’ve got a track record of quality hiring and a great culture, we’re getting excellent referrals to excellent candidates. Indeed, we’ve been known to poach multiple people from local companies. (Sorry, not sorry!)
• Oh… one more benefit: government job stability. Candidates are attracted to that. But it’s a double-edged sword. Because if job stability is a candidate’s primary goal, they probably won’t be a great fit. We want people that take risks and grow — stable employment should only be a side-benefit.

RETAINING TALENT

• To sustain culture despite the remote-first hybrid work model, we require each team to come into the office with their peers on the same day each week so they get face time, can get lunch together, attend meetings in person, and keep those human connections fresh.
• We keep our IT gear (laptops, etc.) relatively current. Because IT people know the difference!
• Our part of County government launched a 6-week paid leave benefit in late 2019. That’s had a huge impact on the perception of our culture.
• In addition to remote/hybrid work, we also support flex schedules (within limits). This accommodates everyone minor life events that pop up year-round.
• In cases where staff are called upon to put in extra hours for system failures or major deployments, and flex time doesn’t fit, we can provide “comp time” to be used as PTO in the future.
• As hybrid work took off, we invested in Microsoft Teams Rooms gear to smoothly unite in-office and remote workers during live meetings.
• We have a healthy training budget covering high-cost IT classes, certifications, and more. Everyone can get 1–2 “expensive” training classes per year. That’s pretty rare these days.
• Whenever possible, we promote from within — including across teams — as staff build skills and demonstrate their growing value.
• People in leadership roles at all levels are pushed to think carefully about our organizational and team cultures, and build sensitive but effective approaches to work management and people management.
• Part of building a positive culture that retains top talent means asking people that don’t fit the culture to leave. Employees know when someone isn’t getting the job done or is a drag on the culture. Managers must work to fix those problems by coaching up or coaching out. Every time we repel bad-fit talent, we make it easer for good-fit talent to stay and grow with us.

MORE WE COULD DO

Despite all the good stuff we’re doing today, we know we can do more. Here are some additional items I’d love to add to our repertoire:

• Our offices are dumpy, run-down, generic government spaces — they are uninviting at best. Tech people expect more. Additionally, our offices are setup for 100%-in-office work, not hybrid-work “hoteling.” We need to blow out the walls, redo the lighting and furnishing and create an attractive, professional coworking facility with a mix of solo and collaborative workspaces.
• We need to figure out an equitable model to support employees building out appropriate home offices, including monitors, laptop docks, better videoconferencing gear, and so forth. So far we’ve offered no support beyond laptops.
• We’ve never compensated for home Internet, mobile phone costs, or being scheduled for on-call duty. While not a top priority, it feels like these remain minor irritants we could address.
• We need a organization name change and a new logo to accurately reflect who we are today, not who we were in the 1990s. I’ve done some work on that with one team, but we need to do more.
• As fast as our hiring is today (compared to classic government), it’s still not fast or flexible enough.
• Letting people go remains far too difficult, and we’re not officially permitted to grant employees we’re asking to leave a “soft landing” via reasonable severance packages. This needs work.

BONUS: Check out the recent HBR article Rethink Your Employee Value Proposition for more ideas for attraction and retention. It specifically addresses the vital idea that it’s not just about material compensation.

[4] How are these programs funded? Are your current approaches sustainable?

• So far our County leadership has fully funded our operations and expansion in recent years, so it appears to be sustainable — so long as we continue to explain how we’re using these resources to provide tangible and intangible benefits worthy of the cost. Both pay and benefits are covered and in our growing region that should remain true for at least the next couple decades.
• In terms of paying for training, we have a history of paying for lots of it, and we’ve simply maintained that annual expense. I’m not really sure how that got started, but we’re thankful it’s here.
• We often tie staff expansions to specific efforts that are sometimes “pet projects” for elected officials and their appointees — the people with substantial sway over funding. Thankfully the projects are all legitimate (seriously… no pork barreling here), so we find it easy to prioritize that work and ask for funding and headcount.
• We often ask for forgiveness instead of permission when it comes to spending on pay. That’s wearing thin as the years go on, but every year we’re showing value for money, so it’s been okay so far.
• All our attraction / retention efforts are sustainable as long as we are fixing mistakes of the past, delivering results people care about, and outperforming peer government agencies.

[5] Are you investing in upskilling or apprenticeship programs to build IT capacity?

• We don’t do apprenticeships. Those tend to be drags on productivity, and we already have employees in-house that are growing, that we can support, so we avoid interns and the like.
• Our training budget is substantial, with a focus on relevant skills development and certification (to prove the training stuck).
• We invest in internal promotion whenever possible, upskilling in-place, so to speak.
• In 2023 I’m trying a new thing: a one-day, in-person, on-site custom “conference” aimed at promoting individual and team professional growth. We’re bringing in guest speakers, work style assessments, self-marketing training, and custom growth-mindset messaging to help grow our staff prospects over time.

[6] Does your government think about “employee satisfaction” or “employee experience”?

• We do employee surveys inside our own agency once or twice a year and pay more attention to the results than a lot of staff suspect.
• I just started a “GX” (Government Experience) practice in late 2022; it’s nascent and we’re learning, but our first major effort is to completely overhaul how the County presents itself to the public on the web, with a basis in government experience (user-centric) principles. So far this is focused on constituent experience, but many of our software products serve employees, too, and a focus on experience in one area should apply to all areas.
• Our particular County government is fractured over non-aligned electeds, boards, and budgets, so we’re really the only ones thinking about GX in a unified / uniting way, but we are trying to tell that story to get supporters and adherents.

[7] Do you think retention strategies used in the private sector could be adopted to the public sector?

• Sure, but what is the private sector doing that we’re not?
• We have one major barrier in retention. Any retention benefits we offer cannot look like we’re providing “gifts” to employees. For example, we can’t provide performance bonuses to staff. Elected officials are even unwilling to provide basic coffee service to employees because of the optics. Put bluntly, there is palpable fear of anything that could be construed as “fat cat government hacks stealing from taxpayers,” even if the benefits retain staff, improve efficiency, and boost public services.

[8] What kinds of technology are/should you be using to facilitate this workforce transition and meet new expectations?

• Hybrid-compatible conference rooms are a must to support in/out team meetings. Teams Rooms / Zoom Rooms.
• Digital collaboration tools like Teams, Slack, M365 offerings, third-party stuff like Miro, Mural, Trello, and more to enable work management and document sharing are crucial.

[9] What is the dominant type of workforce model at your organization today? What will it be in the future?

• Today most staff work under a remote-first hybrid model where they are expected to spend 1 day per week working in our offices, and other days can be remote. However, more in-office time may be needed to facilitate high-fidelity collaboration.
• Lately our leadership team has grown increasingly concerned around the visibility and coordination of work efforts, and we’re concerned 1 day of in-office may not be enough. We’re not ready to mandate more time in-office, and we have to consider the needs of our more far-flung employees, but it feels like more face-time would be beneficial. We’ll be discussing that with our teams this year.

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Talent attraction is not about tricking people into joining your team today; it’s about being worthy of that talent every day

Want to solve the attraction / retention problem in your local/state government agency? Then do it. (You can!) There’s absolutely not “one simple trick” to make it happen. There’s no magical amount of money, no fringe benefit, no location, no one thing that will make people want to work with you, pursue your mission, and make your organization better.

It’s impossible to make your workplace attractive — unless… you want it to happen so bad you’re willing to read books, read articles, watch videos, listen to podcasts, attend conferences, talk with colleagues ad nauseum, and make the case to yourself and others that your highest mission is to make the organization worthy of attention to new hires and the old guard.

For example, here’s just one book to consider: Why Should Anyone Work Here?: What It Takes to Create an Authentic Organization

It’s like losing weight. You can lose weight on a diet, but that weight will come back when the diet ends — you cannot diet your way to permanent weight loss success. Want to change your weight and health? You must change the way you eat. Forever.