While workplace flexibility is important to both, they have different needs. Image: Andrii Yalanskyi/Shutterstock.com
There are a half-dozen main reasons federal employees continue with the government rather than move on to other employers but there are differences between early-career and mid-career employees that agencies should recognize for retention purposes, says a report from the Partnership for Public Service.
The study focused on Generation X, born 1965-1980, and Z, born 1997-2012, who “are at vital points in their careers and occupy critical positions in the federal workforce.” The former “are coming into senior roles in greater numbers and are our future federal leaders” while the latter “are the future of the federal workforce and represent the next generation of public servants,” it said.
It noted that while Generation X makes up 41.6 percent of the federal workforce vs. just 31.6 percent of the overall workforce, Generation Z makes up just 1.6 percent compared with 9.1 percent. “The federal government has long struggled to recruit younger generations, and this trend has continued with Gen Z,” it said. “A high turnover rate for Gen Z employees has exacerbated this trend.”
It said for example that while workplace flexibility is important to both, they have different needs. Generation X employees are in the “sandwich” years, with responsibilities for both children and parents, while many Generation Z employees have known only flexible workplaces, have come to expect them and “see flexible work options as an indication that their leaders trust and value them.”
And while compensation is a motivator for all ages, Generation X is more focused on retirement benefits while Generation Z sees more value to incentive payments to help achieve financial stability, including to pay off student loans.
Similarly, while sense of mission is important to both, Generation X focuses on whether “their agency has the proper priorities and structures to conduct responsible work, and, to a lesser degree, that the government as a whole can conduct itself with integrity” while Generation Z sees the government “as just one of many possible ways to contribute to the public good,” making it a lesser retention factor for them.
Other main drivers of retention, the report said, include having an “inclusive, supporting and productive workplace culture”; having effective technology in the workplace; and opportunity for professional advancement.
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