Since 2009, MissionSquare Research Institute, the Public Sector HR Association, and the National Association of State Personnel Executives have been surveying local and state government HR managers about their staffing initiatives, benefits, and the feedback they’ve been receiving from employees. 

• Recruitment is improving. While most jurisdictions reported peak post-pandemic difficulties filling key positions in 2022, there continues to be improvement across the hardest-to-fill positions, including police, engineering, information technology, maintenance, corrections, and nursing.
• Federal agencies represent a new pool of potential candidates, with 24% saying they have hired former federal staff within the past year (beyond those separating from the military).
• Artificial intelligence is being used by HR staff, primarily for drafting interview questions, writing job descriptions, and identifying process improvements. Government wide, it is also starting to have an impact on overall staffing, with 3% reporting that due to AI, some positions have been left vacant.
• Compensation is competitive and improving. This year, 64% view wages as competitive with the labor market, while 92% say benefits are competitive. Broad-based pay increases are less common than they were (reported by 62% in 2023 vs 37% this year). Still, governments continue to implement across-the-board increases (see size breakdown in the graph below), along with 19% offering position-specific increases and 46% performing compensation or classification studies.

• Retirement readiness remains elevated. From 2013-2023, the share of respondents saying their employees were prepared for retirement averaged 36%. For the third year in a row, that total is now over 50%. However, some employees continue to experience financial pressure. Among those jurisdictions with 457 plans, more are reporting employees taking emergency withdrawals than not doing so, although only a small percentage say there are a significant number of such transactions.

• Generational change is not fast, but it is taking place. There are now 40% of respondents reporting that the largest anticipated wave of retirements has already taken place or that no such wave is anticipated. By contrast, 15% see the largest wave hitting now, and 44% say it is still coming in the next few years.
• Exit interviews point to retirement, compensation, advancement opportunities, and dissatisfaction with supervisors as the main reasons employees are leaving. Among those who cited organizational culture as an issue, the most common complaint was a lack of accountability or transparency.
• Succession planning is a priority, but more than half still do not have a process in place. Key reasons for that lack of planning include competing priorities and insufficient leadership support.

Additional questions in the survey dealt with flexible work arrangements, recruitment campaigns built around public service motivations, and the ways in which jurisdictions continue to address diversity, equity, and inclusion.

So, what are your next steps?

To optimize your recruitment and retention, you may want to consider:

• Adopt new outreach methods – Yes, web and social media advertising are great, but they are hardly innovative. If your government is not also reaching out via apprenticeships, appeals to federal workers, or college partnerships, or if you are not updating your job specs to reflect current skill and education requirements, you may be missing plenty of qualified candidates.
• Leverage data more effectively – Key metrics are often overlooked, either in collecting annual data or analyzing whether your initiatives are achieving the desired results. Look beyond the total number of applications to the outreach methods that were most successful, the demographics and tenure of those leaving, the reasons behind their departures, and what might have helped them continue and grow within the organization.
• Invest in training and engagement – Communicating just once is almost as ineffective as not communicating at all. For 30% of respondents, onboarding is a process that goes beyond a first-week orientation. In last year’s workforce survey, 59% said they re-communicate about the full value of salary and benefits at least annually. And in last year’s employee survey on AI, 15% were not sure if their employer had a policy limiting AI usage. Continue engaging via mentoring programs, employee development, satisfaction surveys, and stay interviews, and provide frequent refreshers on key policies so ‘don’t know’ is an exceedingly rare response.
• Maintain a strategic focus – Lots of issues are identified as ‘very important,’ but that doesn’t mean they are necessarily prioritized. With the looming wave of retirements, succession planning is probably the most overlooked of these. Having a plan in place five years ago would have been the best option, but setting one up now can help you transition more smoothly as institutional knowledge needs to move from one generation of staff to the next without being lost.

The full report, including breakouts by local vs. state government and FTE count, will be available later this summer through the MissionSquare Research Institute website. For updates, subscribe to the institute’s e-newsletter.