Impact on Talent Strategy
Aligning private sector tech talent with government culture and expectations is crucial for onboarding, retention, and leveraging innovative practices for public good.
Importance of Culture and Engagement to Overall Talent Strategy
Hiring and onboarding tech talent from both the public and private sectors brings tremendous benefits and potential to the government by helping fuse the innovative spirit, practices, and approaches from both for the benefit of public good.
With the infusion of private sector thinking, it's essential to recognize that these hires come from vastly different operating structures, work styles, and organizational cultures than those in government. Understanding their expectations and aligning them with government realities is critical.
Government Culture and Learning Curves to Navigate
In a well-received blog post on transitioning from private to public sector employment, a highly regarded government leader and technologist pointed to the following findings from the Tech Executive Leadership Initiative (TELI) regarding the learning curves that technologists encountered when making the switch. These included:
In some cases, accomplishing what felt like significant achievements took years
Government culture could come across as a foreign territory with complex approaches and road maps to problem solving that are unparalleled in the private sector
Government language was very different and required learning a new vocabulary to be effective
Aversion to risk and a perceived compliance heavy culture left what seemed to be little room for experimentation
While there are many lessons to be learned from these findings, it is important to also acknowledge that it's unlikely to expect the culture of government to bend or shift dramatically in the coming years, even as small steps are continuously being taken to move the government towards modernizing.
Recommendation
In the initial 6-12 months, we recommend ensuring that hiring or designated managers take a lead role in grounding new hires from non-government backgrounds with realistic expectation setting, support, and guidance for these and other frequent pain points.
Influence of Organizational Culture on Attracting Tech Talent
The many components that comprise organizational culture (development & growth opportunities, values and ethics, DEIB approach and POV, etc) are all essential factors that play large roles in attracting and retaining tech talent.
For government organizations, ensuring that these elements are included and effectively communicated as part of their employer brand (and in job announcements) are important signals to send to potential tech candidates and applicants.
Specifically, organizations should be able to demonstrate the following to applicants:
An employee value proposition that resonates
Growth and development opportunities available to them
Potential career paths (and alternative paths/options for technologists who wish to remain hands on practitioners)
Their approach to DEIB within their organization
An understanding of the nuanced needs of tech talent
Role of Employee Engagement in Retaining Tech Talent
Employee engagement is widely considered one of the strongest indicators for predicting employee turnover. In addition to initiatives focused on learning and development, employee growth, DEIB, and performance management, organizations should also adopt the practice of soliciting feedback from employees regularly and consistently to help measure and optimize these efforts for impact and effectiveness.
Understanding the main drivers of engagement for tech talent within your organization is a critical must for building retention strategies. Consider this list of 45 employee engagement survey questions as a helpful starting point for measuring current levels of engagement.
Workday lists the following four drivers as among the most repeatable and consistent drivers of retention:
Recognition and Reward
Work-life balance
Professional Growth
Belonging and Diversity
Maintaining communication with employees
Building and designing methods of frequently checking in with your employees to get direct feedback on their employee experience can help create a roadmap for uncovering and understanding which areas of engagement may need the most attention.
Maintaining open and straightforward communication about initiatives targeted at addressing gaps and feedback are critical next steps after soliciting and analyzing feedback. This is an especially important practice to consider for tech talent who have no shortage of new opportunities constantly being presented to them.
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