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Main introduction page THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT
Introduction: 50-State Average Grade: B-
There’s nothing mysterious about this. The better the national economy, the harder it is for government to hire and retain qualified workers. Rare is the state that can compete with private-sector salaries, and when unemployment is at 3 percent or less — as it has been in many states the past couple of years — it’s not just a question of hiring the best and the brightest; it’s an issue of finding bodies to fill jobs.
Utah, which has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, recently assessed the quality of its newly hired applicants by rating them at 4 on a scale of 1-10. It’s true that Utah managers tend to hold themselves, and their workers, to high standards. But that’s still a discouraging figure. “We are getting more and more reports from agencies stating that positions are staying vacant for longer periods of time, not for lack of applicants, but for lack of qualified applicants,” the state reported to us in its GPP survey.
Just like the old fairy tale of the man who was so skinny he didn’t have the strength to eat, some state personnel departments can’t hire enough people to effectively hire people. In Vermont, says HR official Rosamond Noyes Conklin, “we need to focus on compensation issues, where we have big problems. And the job heading up that area was vacant for about a year [when the state gave up]. I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to work for this money.”
Two years ago, the worker shortage existed mainly in information technology. Now the list of problem categories has grown. Along with IT workers, nurses, engineers and corrections personnel are at the top of the list, followed by accountants, auditors and other financial managers. In some spots clerical workers — particularly those who don’t run screaming from desktop computers — are in very short supply.
Of course, the private sector is the most significant competitor, but for some jobs, states are busily poaching on one another. Colorado, for instance, has residency requirements for its employees. But it’s been hard-pressed to find correctional workers and it has some prisons right near its borders with Nebraska and Kansas. So it lifted the residency requirement on correctional workers and now raids Nebraska and Kansas. Similarly, buses from Oregon travel across the border to Idaho to provide transportation for prison workers. “Our main prison is in Boise,” says Ann Heilman, administrator of Idaho’s division of human resources. “The state of Oregon has opened a prison 50 or 60 miles away and they are intent on getting our trained correctional officers. They are at every job fair, competing side by side with us for employees.”
But poaching can only get you so far. Most states are trying to deal with the tight job climate through innovation of one kind or another. Traditional civil service practices worked under the assumption that state jobs were a prize to be offered to the best competitor. Changing that mind-set is at the core of many improvements in HR practices.
New Mexico, Washington and a number of other states, for example, are shifting away from so-called “minimum qualifications” to “desirable qualifications.” The idea is extremely simple: Don’t screen out workers who can do a job just because they don’t have the formal credentials. They can always be trained. “You don’t want to be screening people out that could be good candidates,” says Doug Pine, director of recruitment services in Vermont. “I’d do away with minimum qualifications altogether if I had my druthers.” New Mexico has done just that.
Other states have stepped up their advertising and marketing (although many still report that advertising is an area for which dollars are scarce). Maryland plans a campaign highlighting jobs in state government that few people think about, such as geologists, archaeologists and helicopter pilots. “That will get people’s attention,” says Andrea Fulton, executive director of Maryland’s Office of Personnel and Benefits. Indiana hired an ad agency to develop a “brand-image campaign” to use in advertising the state as an employer; rather like those ads that run during the Super Bowl that don’t actually sell products, but hype the corporate sponsors.
Once a state has actually hired someone, the next step, of course, is to keep them on the payroll. In Pennsylvania, when new personnel workers are hired, they find themselves introduced to the civic equivalent of Big Brothers and Big Sisters that colleges have long assigned to freshmen. The idea is to ease the new folks into state employment with a guaranteed friendly face. Massachusetts has focused on family-friendly policies — for example, vouchers for child and elder care.
Another significant trend in many states is for central HR offices to shed their old control orientation and become consulting operations — there to help the line agencies when they’re needed. This goes hand in hand with efforts to give agencies more flexibility in making their own decisions — whether in hiring, pay levels or rewards for superior performance.
It should surprise no one that there are risks attendant to every reform. Even the rigid, much-hated civil service regulations of past decades served the purpose of stamping out the worst abuses of political patronage. And although there’s no sign that patronage is on the rise these days, that’s always a chance the states take when they loosen things up. What’s more, devolution of responsibility to the agency level often means that wealthier agencies can “pick on” their punier counterparts. “There are ‘have’ and ‘have-not’ agencies,” says Norma Middleton, director of classification and management training in Utah. “That’s a problem with our compensation system. Agencies that are ‘haves’ have been known to take employees from agencies that aren’t.”
In virtually every state, however, the demand for reform currently outweighs the risk. Classification systems in some states are being winnowed down from thousands of titles to hundreds. Pay for performance, although still controversial, is a hot topic. Improved performance appraisal is a common goal. And aggressive use of probationary periods has helped some states to hire more freely, with less fear of saddling themselves with incompetents. (Of course, there can be hitches. In both New Jersey and California, it is very difficult to terminate anyone during probation).
Through all these efforts, two major trends have emerged as dominant over the past couple of years: work-force planning and improved training.
Two years ago, work-force planning — making some effort to predict future needs and changes in the employee base and then to prepare for them — was barely recognized in many states. Now fewer than 20 states say they have no work-force plan. Of those, the majority identify it as a need. “Everyone I talk to is seeing the same thing, this baby boomer turnover and the short labor market,” says Julia Graham, special assistant to Washington’s director of personnel. “Work-force planning is on everyone’s mind and they’re working on it.”
Training is somewhat harder to get a handle on because data is so poor, but anecdotal evidence indicates that almost every state has used fast-growing tax revenues to boost its training capacity. Missouri is a good case in point. It has more than doubled its investment in training, from 1 percent of general fund revenues to 2.5 percent. As one official there comments, the days are gone when “training was perceived as an expense, not an investment.”
Don’t misunderstand. The states are hardly moving in lockstep toward some generally agreed upon human resources system. This is an area in which there remains a real diversity in practice and philosophy. Some states, such as Illinois, continue to believe that one of the best ways to allocate new positions fairly is through tests. Others, including Georgia and Iowa, are just as convinced that tests are counterproductive. There’s no nationwide agreement on whether to accept applications on an ongoing basis or just for positions that are open. Iowa, for example, recruits only for open positions, while Washington is moving toward more continuous recruitment activities.
Such differences of strategy are probably good news. Managing finances, capital and computers can be a daunting task. But there’s nothing quite as tricky as working with people. The more variation and experimentation, and the less adherence to strict principles, the greater the likelihood that states will hit upon genuinely good ideas. The hope is that those are the ones that will become popular.
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In most areas of government, economic boom times make all sorts of desirable things possible. States put money away for a rainy day. They make long-delayed investments in capital construction and technology. Only when it comes to human resources is there a troubling price to be paid for prosperity. In human resources, good times tend to create crisis.