10 Key Takeaways from the Latest Public Sector Hiring Trends Report

ICMA is pleased to present this online program entitled Ten Key Takeaways from the Latest Public Sector Hiring Trends Report. We are very pleased to welcome all of you to this presentation. I'd like to draw everyone's attention to the links box located on the left of your screen. This area contains links to handouts and resources related to today's program. When you click on a link, a separate web browser window or tab will open, allowing you to view, save, or print each item. The webinar evaluation link is also in this area. You must be logged in to ICMA University to access the survey from here, but you can find on your dashboard after today's program by clicking on the program title. It is my pleasure to turn the program over to our moderator, Alex Overheid. Alex, welcome to the program. Thank you, Darian, and good morning and good afternoon depending on your time zone. Thank you for joining us for the second webinar in neogov's recruitment research series, the ten key takeaways from our twenty nineteen hiring trends report. A couple of our own housekeeping items before we get started. Forgive if some of this is a bit redundant, but webinar is being recorded. I know you've got resources to gather what you want, Johnny, on the spot right now. However, it will be on NeoGov's website tomorrow, w w w dot neogov dot com, well as the other reports that we've published. The presentation is going to run for about fifty minutes. We've ten for a Q and A at the end. And we encourage you to ask questions. Please participate. This only helps us sharpen the presentations we give you guys going forward. And as mentioned by our comrade Darian a moment ago, please type your questions in the questions bar to your left and we'll address as many as we can during the Q and A. We're also going to be launching polls during the presentation where you can share your opinion and we can see, if what we are sharing is actually aligning with your experience in the present tense. Alex, good morning everyone and afternoon for everyone in the East Coast and the Midwest. I am Phil Duigne, Sales Director here at NeoGov. I am actually from South Africa, not to be confused with our Australian convict cousins that live on the other side of the ocean. In the land of Nelson Mandela, Charlize Theron and Safari now probably a U. S. Resident I've spent about eight years in the public sector in South Africa and now two years with NeoGov and started working in the talent management space back in two thousand and six. And in my tenure here at NeoGov I've had the opportunity to connect with probably around one thousand HR directors and city managers just to understand some of the challenges and also look at how to maximize their talent and better serve the communities and citizens. And I am his less attractive counterpart to your right that shows a gray backdrop for his headshot instead of the sleek forestry background. I'm Alex. I'll be moderating today's presentation. I've been at NeoGov for about five years as an account executive in the Midwest and Great Plains region. Just presenting NeoGov as a partnership opportunity for cities, counties, and special districts, all shapes and sizes. I've always been a US presidential history buff and have always been interested in the intricacies of federal and local government. And I am particularly fascinated with the hiring evolution I've been able to witness firsthand over my career at NeoGov. So it's exciting to be a part of a company that actually offers concrete data to support our own customers' strategic decision making. As for our agenda today, I'm going to do a really quick high level overview of just who we are as a company just to offer some clarity and credibility to us as an institution. Then we'll introduce the research, of course, the ten key takeaways from the twenty nineteen report, and then that Q and A session as I mentioned. So without further ado, just a quick overview of who we are as a company before we get to those research findings. Name says it all really. We are a government specific HR software company. We offer a fully integrated HRS platform to keep the entire employee life cycle under one roof. So our vision is to maximize the talent in the public sector workforce, which in turn outwardly will result in better service for your citizens by offering the highest quality and easiest to use talent management system platform. However, NeoGov started as a company about twenty years ago as the job board governmentjobs dot com. So our bread and butter as a company has always been in the space of recruitment and more specifically recruitment in the public sector. Now the data presented in today's report as well as the two other reports NeoGov has published this year is based on an analysis of seven eighty three agencies. So cities, counties, special districts, all public sector, seven eighty three with over thirty eight million applicants and five hundred and fifty thousand hires since two thousand and three. So that's our sample size that we're working with here. The first report that we presented in the webinar series, it was this past summer, titled Job One Reimagining Today's State Government Workforce, where we actually got to partner with NASCA and Accenture for analytics and input from state chief administrators on the direction public sector employers need to pivot to tame the looming hiring crisis. The twenty nineteen JobSeeker report called attention to the alarming gap between job openings and applicants in the public sector. And today's presentation is the sequel to the Job Seeker Report, where we're going to wrestle with understanding why this gap is occurring and how to actually approach the problem. So while the Job Seeker Report strove to understand the motivations of candidates, this report is going to dive a little deeper into the data behind the state of the hiring in the public sector. And in the next episode, to accompany this trilogy you're looking at, is along the lines of the subject of time to hire. So just a little sneak peek preview there. Stay tuned for the fourth installment of the NeoGov Webinar franchise. We're going to continue to add episodes as we move forward. And that being said, I'm going to mute myself for a few and let a much more enthralling accent take the mic for today's presentation of the ten key takeaways from NeoGov's hiring trends report. Phil? Thank you, Alex. I want to take a minute just to give a little bit of context to how we got to today's session and NeoGov as an organization diving into this type of data and trying to assist the public sector. As Alex mentioned we've been in the public sector specifically focusing on HR for about twenty years and through conversations with cities, counties and other government institutions and also just looking at our data we found some alarming facts and felt that it was our duty as an organization to speak to the people who serve the people. One of the other factors is that we what we often see is from an HR director perspective they may see some trends. They don't always have the data to back up what they seeing in terms of hiring, retaining employees or attracting applicants that they're able to communicate with city managers or city councils. So from a NeoGov perspective we decided to really take a closer look at the data that we have in our system, publish these reports and today's intent really is to facilitate a conversation between city managers and HR directors and give you some takeaways that you can go back to your respective cities and understand what's happening as far as hiring and retention is concerned and also what are some actionable items that your HR directors can go ahead and execute. So the first takeaway from the hiring trends report is that we've seen a significant reduction in the number of applicants over the last five years, five going on six years. Now there are a number of contributing factors. One of the main ones we all very aware that unemployment is at an all time low of three point five percent. The other major contributing factor is that government just isn't as attractive as it was before. We'll touch on this as we go through the webinar today but it's really alarming just seeing some of the positions that we had a significant number of recruits for previously but we just don't see today which then leaves us with a challenge in terms of actively serving our citizens and being effective in the delivery of those services. If we take a step back and we look at some of the positions that we find in our report to be the least impacted, we see that nurses, IT and law enforcement are probably the three with the least amount of applicants actually shifting. We still a healthy number of applicants for those rather. So we'll dive into the reasons why we're these positions specifically still receiving significant amount of applicants and then we see the most impacted correctional services, legal professionals and just in some conversations I had at a recent roundtable with some cities and counties. One of the major things that stood out for me was that the positions like engineering, legal professionals where you've got the ability to move to the private sector, we've seen a significant shift. So the big question that we hopefully you're able to address today is how as the public sector are we able to turn this around? What can we do from a strategy perspective or what can we do from a technology perspective to make sure that we address this? The other major contributing factor in this is the fact that we currently have between thirty and forty percent of all public sector workers being eligible to retire and that's a significant amount of employees. So you'll see on this graph that the top line we've got more and more positions opening up. I'm quite familiar with the fact that public sector employees often stick around and have long tenures with their respective cities and counties. But the fact that we've got this massive wave of retirees happening today government isn't able to fully position as quickly as we should or would like to. Some of the other factors that we see is things like benefits, how secure people feel in working in the government, how that's impacted the perception and getting those applicants in the role. So that's just a broader view on this. In terms of the data that we're presenting today, it's very important to note that this is a national average. So when we have conversations in different cities across the U. S. I often come across cities that say Phil we don't see this drop in the number of applicants but we're definitely seeing retirees or other agencies saying well we have seen a reduction in the number of applicants but we're still pretty good in terms of the positions that we have. So we've got a fair amount of applicants and position. So again this is broader data sets. I think the key takeaway is that we want to make sure that we present and get ourselves ready and ready to go when we need to take action rather than wait for something to happen. Alex? So the number two key takeaway from our hiring trends report revolves around the topic of the most attractive aspects of public sector employment. So in other words, what do we as public sector offer that speaks to the modern job seeker and to get to the facts we surveyed two thousand job seekers nationwide to find out from the source what they want. But before we reveal the empirical data from the research, it is time for our first polling question. So first polling question for our audience today. What is the most attractive aspect of working for your agency? So there's that polling box in your screen right now. If you'd be so kind, just take that mouse and click on the appropriate checkbox. What your agency leans on the most to promote your agency as attractive to your applicants. Very interesting thus far. We'll let it keep going. If you need a couple minutes to kind of look over the facts of the case for your own respective community. But yep, pretty unanimous. Interesting to marinate on that visual right there. You can see an overwhelming majority right now. Lean on that benefits package as the most attractive aspect of getting your applicants these days. So just merited on that while we present the findings from the research, I'll pass it back to Phil to find out what we discovered as the most attractive aspects of public sector jobs. Thank you, Alex. Very interestingly when we did our research and our surveys from the job seekers perspective they definitely stated that job security and benefits package are the number one and two aspects in terms of why they would want to work in the public sector. We are however seeing that this is eroding in terms of what's available in the public sector. We've got meaningful work serving one's community straight on their heels. I'm going flip over to the next slide that's going to give us a little bit more granular data just in terms of what we see per position. In terms of nursing, we can see that job security versus meaningful work. It's pretty close but meaningful work taking the lead on the nursing side. So benefits package is not necessarily the way to go. So what are we doing in terms of communicating with the respective roles based on what they would like. If we look at a equipment operator we can see that job security by far weighs meaningful works at sixty eight percent. So what we want to do is as we think about the positions that we're trying to recruit for do we understand why they want to work in our city. Next up I'm going to take you through a actual agency focused job description that we find online And if you look at this specific example you'll see that it's written from the employer perspective. There's no value proposition. It's highly rigid. It's micromanaged. It's far from desirable. So it says the Department of Mental Health is a drug free workplace. All candidates will require to pass a mandatory pre employment drug test and the clinical supervision of medical directive provides direct patient care and evaluations etcetera, etcetera. So it doesn't really sound very appealing. I always like to have these analogies in terms of like purchasing a car or purchasing a home and if you're going to go out and buy a house or you're to advertise your home are you going to say I've got a four bedroom house with a massive lawn that requires a lot of maintenance and will put a roof over your head? Are you going to talk about the area, the school district whatever it is right? So we want to make sure that we start changing the way we approach our job postings. Let's go ahead and look at an actual example of this job's description rewritten. So in this instance, we've touched on meaningful work, having a real impact on the community, very tenured nurses, so this experience so you'll be able to learn from them, benefits the community etcetera, etcetera. So we really want you to take a step back when you go back to your respective cities engage your HR departments and see how they approach recruiting for these positions. In terms of that and some tangibles that you can take back to them and as Alex said this will be available in the presentation that's been sent over to you or that's downloadable. First off is write ads not postings. Use promotional language. You've voted on some of the key elements that you see applicants looking for working in the public sector be sure to utilize those. Lead with the most appealing aspects of the job, right? So what will they enjoy about their line of work? Be sure to include that. Don't just assume that it's a given. And then share some of the unique benefits of working in your organization. Again in some recent conversations I was speaking to some cities around this and they had the benefits of being close to the mountains or next to the ocean or maybe you've got Fridays off, you've got a you're promoting work life balance in terms of your city. So be clear to in terms of communicating this in your job descriptions. And then your last two, treat the candidates like a professional. I know this also seems like a given but we want to make sure that we are seen as an employer of choice and how do we go about that. Emphasizing opportunities for growth. This is something that we touch on also a little bit later on in the webinar but making the applicant feel like there's an opportunity to grow with the organization especially when you can't compete with salaries that they have in the public sector, it's critical to do that. Next up we're going to touch on the public sector losing appeal. So we mentioned job security and the benefits packages not being what it's been before. So let's dive into that. So as it stands with benefits, Pew Trust did a report and research paper back in twenty sixteen where they found that out of the four trillion dollars that was promised in terms of pensions through government agencies they are only able to pay out two point eight trillion So that's a significant delta. So the result of that is that a lot of these pension funds have now had to be frozen. Again this is a national average. I know that for example in the states of Ohio benefits packages are alive and well and still very attractive to government sector employees. But we really have to take the approach of how do we address this today. How do we shift the conversation from that the key areas that we're able to provide is just benefits and look at some of the other areas that might attract employees. So what this has caused is that employee and employer contributions have gone up. The benefits have been reduced for new hires. Future benefits are also being reduced and then some agencies are having to increase the retirement age. The second part of this is job security. So in terms of this traditional value proposition, NASB has stated that in twenty nineteen we have seen a five point seven percent drop off. So this has happened over the last ten years and this was straight after the recession that we saw this reduction in number of states and government employees. So this was the first number that we've seen that's really changed the perception of job security within government. And then the other element that stands out is the fact that we had the freeze period towards the end of twenty eighteen, the beginning of twenty nineteen with I think was fifty five days of that period where employees were not paid. They were retro paid but about eight hundred thousand government employees were impacted. So how has that changed the perception? So again we're having to move away from this. We've got to find some other tangibles that will attract talent. Alex? And this quote summarizes the thesis statement of that last slide best from a published report from Arts and Kaya. Dire fiscal states of government institutions as a result of the great recession mandated that public agencies continue their operations with fewer public employees. As a result, workers in the public sector may face risk of job loss more frequently worsening their perception of job insecurity. So just to sum it all up beyond the necessity to include more technology and our respective long term strategies wherever we are in the nation, our challenge as public sector employers is to offer securities from a different angle. It's going to be necessary to focus our energy and initiatives on what we can offer not what isn't available anymore. And back to Phil for key takeaway number four. So number four is the opportunity to promote career mobility. So if we look at this head to head comparison between the private sector and the public sector we've spoken about job security, we've spoken about the benefit package, we know that salaries just don't compete. We've spoken about serving one's community and meaningful work. The next one in line that we want to focus on is career advancement and career mobility. So what are we doing when we are speaking with applicants around letting them know that this is something that we'll be able to provide to them. Parts to leadership, org charts, do you have them visible in your organization? Do you give them some examples of promotions happened internally so that they feel that it isn't just lip service but we're actually able to act on that and provide them a career path? It's really critical to take up this opportunity and really the next logical elements in line after serving one's community and meaningful work that we need to tackle. So here we see a job description again speaking specifically to that. So make sure that when you advertise for these positions that you include exactly that. So you see whether you're joining our team for three or five years or twenty you will have the opportunity to grow your career with us. Make sure that that's included. Next up, make sure that you go and find the talents where they're looking. This has been a really interesting conversation over the last two years and cities maturity really varies in terms of their readiness to adopt technology. The one thing that is very clear is that all cities eventually will need to move to technology. So I suppose the bigger question is like what are we doing in terms of our cities of implementing these strategies putting these plans in place. If we look at where talent grows to find work first of all we have online job boards and state government portals a very close second. And then some of the more traditional means at the bottom there friends, family, recruiters, job fairs which has been fairly utilized well utilized by governments governments is far less attractive. We've got social media in there in terms of where applicants go and look. So what we need to do is as we see these retirees happen or retirements happening rather, we need to prepare ourselves for the next generation and the next wave of job applicants. So what are we doing to make sure that we go and find them? So in terms of our research we see that seventy nine percent of job seekers go to Indeed, government jobs sixty eight percent and then USA jobs at fifty one percent. The main stand up for me on this was that again from a talent perspective what we often see in government is opportunists And that is especially if you go to the more private sector focused job boards people that just possibly can't find work or just going to put their resume out there and see what happens. So versus a government specific job board we understand that these people are looking for career in government. They are either focused on entering that job market or they've been in the job market for a significant period of time. So when you get those applicants you're to have less opportunists, begin to have a better quality applicants and you're going to make sure that you deliver better service to your community and citizens. Alex. So next quote that is very apt for the occasion. Part of the problem is that government for the most part doesn't recruit because they typically don't recruit. You won't find them placing jobs on things like LinkedIn or tweeting about vacancies or using Facebook to find passive candidates. That one's from Jeff Neal who comes from the DHS. So another very credible source. So just the rhetorical challenges from this quote that all tie in to that key takeaway. Are we maximizing the potential and or our resources to reach our applicant pool? Some of the most effective ones you just saw in a previous slide are free, utilizing social media, Facebook, Twitter, etcetera. And beyond identifying and using the most effective job boards for your agency, do you guys have a mechanism in place to start attracting attention to your community and or your jobs even when you're not recruiting? Are you collecting that standby pool of passive applicants that wanna be informed of when you have openings available? And now for another polling question on the subject. Poll question number two, what best describes your application process? Online inefficient? Online but kind of tedious, paper and email, and the old Fred Flintstone routine. Carving in stone. Okay. Okay. Okay. Alright. This is this is very encouraging. So for the most part, the two lead horses in that race, so we are at least online. That is good. That is good. And then there's that tediousness. And I don't know if Phil's mentioned it already, but there's some magic, some golden rules and expectations that can help you quickly correct going from tedious and putting into the efficient category. Very interesting. It's good to see a lot more people online. Phil? Thank you, Alex. That is very interesting and it seems like a lot of people have taken the first step which is getting that application process online. Online I suppose is a pretty broad term. I find that a lot of cities are still using a fillable PDF as a mechanism to go online. We've definitely seen the need to improve on that and move it to a more fluid engagement from the applicants. What you really want to do is be and how you want to be seen as an employer of choice. So that all starts with when these applicants go on your site and they have to apply for the job. So some of the statistics around that is telling us that if an applicant has to spend more than twenty minutes to sixty nine percent likelihood that they're going to abandon the job application. If it takes fifteen minutes longer to complete the more experienced job seekers will drop out. And then lastly if you have too many screening questions but eighty eight percent of people opting out. So what are you doing in terms of making sure that you ask the right screening questions and spending more time with the quality applicant and screening through them and it'll being that thing a little bit more effective. And then on the front end of that what are you doing to make sure that these applicants have very, smooth engagement in terms of uploading their resume, capturing the data, the job boards that you're utilizing and where your applicants apply. Are they able to go in there, fill in most of the information like personal address, their education, job and employment history and in the future when they want to apply simply able to utilize that for the next application and the next application. So we want to make sure that we streamline this as much as possible since this is the first engagement that we'll typically have with these job seekers. Alex? And here's a tidbit from another credible source, Paul Darcy, an SVP of the senior vice president over at the largest job board in the US indeed dot com. Keep your application process simple. Otherwise, you are not going to be able to choose from top talent. You're just going to be choosing from people who are desperate enough to go through your application process. So brevity is the soul of wits and especially with the attention spans of the younger generation job seekers that will keep getting more and more, you know, smaller and smaller in terms of their ability to kind of hold the attention, simple and faster is going to be the most effective choice for an application process. Let's have a look at key takeaway number seven. Fantastic. Thank you, Alex. So next up, we are looking at applicant volume and then how you are able to use technology to be smarter about spending your advertising dollars. So just to take a step back in terms of the evolution that we've seen in terms of technology and governments the first step really that we saw was automation. So that's taking a day in and day out processes moving them over into a system to automate them to make sure that you free up the time of your HR departments and your hiring managers to be more strategic. The evolution of that was integrations. We are seeing more and more especially in your smaller cities that they don't necessarily have the resources to man an extensive number of integration. So it's how do we move this to a flat platform where everything is integrated, there's less duplicate entry and it just allows for more of an effective day in and day out operations. Then the third element around that has been data. So this that ties in with us. So how do we use data to be more strategic? I know that data obviously appeals more to city managers than HR directors and that's again, at the beginning of this conversation I was like well what can we do from a city manager perspective to engage our HR departments? How do we provide them the tools to make sure that they're able to address this talent gap? So based on historical applicant levels on average there are more than enough applicants to generate a qualified candidate about sixty three percent of the time. But that leaves about thirty seven percent of the time where these pools are below healthy levels. So that's what you're seeing over here, right? So and this has been this data comes from about one hundred and sixty thousand public sector positions when we pull this data. So what you want to do is you want to go and determine what does a healthy applicant pool look like for a specific position. So the data element then kicks over into the next tier which is artificial intelligence. So looking for a system that can provide you this artificial intelligence and say based on the position that you are trying to fill and the timeline and the time to hire that you've given these are the number of applicants that you are going to need to be effective in this recruitment. So the question is in terms of advertising dollars do you just advertise continuously? Do you maximize it specifically when you're short and how effective are you in addressing that? The challenges that we see is if you have too many applicants then you're going to spend way too much screening these applicants which will then lead to your most qualified applicants opting out. If you don't have enough applicants you end up with situation where you are probably not hiring the most qualified employees again to serve your citizens. So we want to make sure that as a takeaway from this slide we set these benchmarks. We understand from a hiring perspective what we need and we engage companies organizations with a tool set that allow you to be more strategic and where you spend your advertising dollars, how you spend them to achieve your recruitment objectives. So as we see here, use a more targeted recruitment strategy by using a tool that allows you to see what where you're trending real time. That's really the key takeaway in this. Alright. Think And it's time for another poll question. And it's getting a little bit mushed at the top there, but I think everybody can see it so far. So poll question, simply put, how do you currently communicate with your applicants? Is it a, automated communication through a system, through a vendor you're currently using? You're doing the email thing? You're still snail mailing? And I I I hope somebody answers a d. This is mostly so I know who to invite to my birthday party this year. A lot of email. Yeah. Pretty predictable thus far from the the general stance. Good to see that we're we are utilizing systems though, so we're trending in the right direction there as this data is suggesting or necessitating for us. Good. Good. Good. Okay. Alright. So fairly predictable responses fluctuating between the automated systems and just utilizing email, and the two can work concurrently together. Let's go ahead and bounce over to a key takeaway number eight though while we marinate on those data points. Thank you, Alex. Those numbers probably pretty much expected in terms of what we see in the industry. We do see a lot of cities still utilizing mail to communicate with applicants. So it's interesting that the lower number they actually email obviously being the most well utilized form of communication. Now again in terms of communication with applicants, it's really critical to ensure that we are communicating with them effectively throughout the recruitment process. So first off we've already spoke about being seen as an employer of choice and this ties in with that. So during the recruitment when they actually need to go online and schedule a recruitment. I hear this all the time that it's really tedious. The applicants have to call in and then they've got to call multiple applicants make sure that everyone can make that time slot that's been given or provided. So are you ensuring that when they've got to come in for their first interview that all of that communication is seamless that they know they can go online and apply that they don't necessarily have to pick up the phone and call you. The next step in terms of communication is during the actual recruitment And this is probably the biggest pet peeve in terms of any HR director that I've spoken to is just the telephone tag that happens between that initial interview and then getting the applicant in or giving them feedback whatever their disposition was. So how are you communicating with them? Do they have to call in? Do you have to let them know or do you have some sort of seamless communication to again ensure that the applicant knows exactly what their status is where they're at in the process so again your HR team doesn't have to spend time calling back and forth trying to connect with these applicants. All the way through to we spoke about the scheduling and then lastly the offer letter. You want to make sure that in those final stages of communicating with the applicant especially the new generation and new wave employees that we want to attract that they feel like they're moving to a city that is tech savvy using tools and a way to do that is for example an electronic offer letter. So that's that's the main areas. Let's jump into the next slide and we've got a few there just touching on this. So are you using email or text? It seems like a lot of you are using email but an automated email from a system or automated text message. We're definitely a lot more prone to look at our phones than we are at our email. So are you leveraging technology that allows you to do that? Are you allowing the candidates to self schedule their interviews especially if you have group sessions of group testings that need to happen? And are you using social media? Again that new wave of recruits social media is probably overused today but are you utilizing that to be effective in your city in terms of communicating with these applicants? Alex? Yes, I'm very sorry about that. I was just typing a personalized response to James Davis. But we have our last polling question of the day. Last polling question of the day. Our beloved audience. What are you currently doing to avoid turnover? A, we have development plans in place for succession planning purposes. B, we provide in class trainings, keep people around. C, we train our employees based on their evaluation and skills, strengths, and weaknesses. D, they just don't leave. Couldn't get rid of them if we tried. Interesting. Kind of excited about the d response. Got a lot of d's in there. And then pretty even race between B and C and class trainings and then training employees more strategically on their evaluations and skill strengths. Okay. Development plans in the I have development plans in the workplace. Sixteen percent. Interesting. I I knew the number was gonna be low. I expect it to be single digits though. Okay. Let that poll keep playing out for a couple more seconds here. And then we will segue over into key takeaway number nine as we get to the pen ultimate key takeaway here. Feel like those numbers are going to hold steady there in the pool. Interesting. All right, good deal. Phil, take it away from number nine. Thank you, Alex. It was interesting just in the chat text box on the left hand side that there were a couple of people commenting that they're not doing anything to avoid turnover. So that probably would have been a good one to include. But in terms of trainings and learnings and making sure that we reduce the turnover, we want to make sure that we keep employees engaged. That is our key takeaway number nine. So employee engagement is definitely something that's historically mainly thought about during your check ins, your quarterly check ins, your monthly check ins whatever that cadence might be. Onboarding is something where we've seen a significant shift in terms of making sure that employers and cities don't lose new hires within the first sixty to ninety days when they are most probably susceptible to jump ship or go to other organizations especially in the job market that we're facing today. So do your employees have some sort of structured check-in in those early days where you want to make sure that they're happy, that they're connecting with your culture, maybe they need to receive some mentoring or guidance, but that check-in is critical. So that's where it starts. But then moving forward into the actual performance management side of things, we're to look at that a little bit today. And one of the key elements that we've really seen is making sure that you've got continuous feedback. Let's jump into the next slide. In terms of your continuous performance evaluations and performance managements are you having positive conversations with your employees? I know that it's sometimes more focused around what they're not doing but we really need to change the narrative. We need to make sure that we focus on the positive that we have goals and objectives for them and talk about their accomplishments. Make sure that we've got structure on this. The other thing that we see is the good old halo effect where we leave evaluations till the end of the year but this is probably the time where everyone's starting to think about those end of year evaluations. And then when we get feedback or provide feedback to our employees, it really only contains feedback from what we remember from the last six weeks as opposed to continuous feedback throughout the year. So are you making sure that you've got check ins with your employees throughout the year structuring these with a specific set of questions so that you can continuously monitor how they answer those to see if there's improvements or if they're digressing that's really, really critical. And make feedback event driven make sure that the employee understands what that cadence looks like. When they feel like there's more of a structured engagement throughout the year you will see an increase in their performance and they'll also be more prepared and ready for these conversations and make sure that they put in the time and the effort to make sure that when they arrive to these chickens that they bring something to the table as a way as opposed to waiting for the whole year and leaving it up to chance. Alex? Perfect. Thank you, Phil. Okay. So I'll give everyone a moment to soak this one in just because there's a lot of stuff to look at. But to to some of what you're looking at, as the workforce demographics shift to the millennial and subsequent generations, the performance feedback needs to become more frequent and directional. So it's referring to that bar graph on the left. Now the clearest example of what's being explained by the SAP at SAP and Gallup here is social media behavior. So if you think about it, especially if you have, like, the the millennial generation, whatever in mind, why do why do most people post anything on social media? Their lunch that day, the vacation spot they're at, they want likes. They want the thumbs up. They want the pat on the back. They want the comments and the feedback. And the younger the individual, the more constant that attention getting practice is becoming. Right? So that bar graph on the left is the concrete data point just indicating that the younger workforce does desire a more frequent performance feedback protocol with monthly seemingly being the sweet spot. And to the right, we can just see by the numbers that there's a clear correlation between the frequency and quality of the feedback and the overall engagement of the employee on the job. And if we go ahead and ping over to that next to last slide here, Quick quote here that'll kind of sum that one up here. This is from another Gallup report twenty seventeen reengineering performance management. Quote, in the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work, end quote, is responsible for a ten to twenty percent difference in productivity. And for the finale, it's time for the number ten, key takeaway from our hiring trends report. Thank you, Alex. And our last takeaway is use development plans to groom high performing employees. As mentioned earlier the reality of the situation is that by twenty twenty six millennials will make up seventy five percent of the workforce. So are we preparing ourselves for this? Are we moving towards that? So in terms of setting up development plans let's look at a couple of things that we can do in some of that. First of all, you want to identify the employees who are likely to retire in the next two to five years. Now there's two parts to this. You want to identify who these employees are number one so that you can plan from a succession perspective who their successes will be but you also want to make sure that you retain any valuable knowledge or intellectual property that these lifelong government employees have gathered over the years and that now is going to walk out the front door. So are you making sure that you've got a system in place, or some sort of training around whatever their job duty of job function is that you do not want to lose and what we see often is people retire, agencies have to wait until that retiree is no longer with the organization or the city and at that stage they're able to recruit or hire and replace that person. And what that leads to is exactly that you see all of this intellectual property or their knowledge or their experience walk out the door. It's very seldomly where we see someone be able to start. Now if you are able to identify employees within the city that maybe that successor that's definitely the approach you want to take in terms of looping them in, having them work with a person but it really helps if you can make that concrete in some sort of learning platform and start creating trainees with the employee that will leave. Then you want to go ahead and implement standard processes across the organization. So again people need to know what it looks like to grow and develop within your city. So again those developmental plans, do you have training courses that follow each other sequentially. So after you've done X do Z or whatever that looks like. So that there's a clear path in terms of that growth and also to fill that role at a later stage. And then we've touched on the learning management system but that's probably the biggest key takeaway. Again in this and in identifying the employees that will meet the requirements and meet your succession planning requirements? Are you using some sort of evaluation process where you can identify your strongest employees? Performance evaluations often gets used to again find where the challenges, what's not going well. But do you have insights across departments, divisions and the city to see where your strengths are and your strongest employees are so that you can take them and develop them into leadership. Alex? And finally, we will end with this. Beyond simply replacing positions that become vacant, effective succession planning is an ongoing process of identifying, assessing, and developing talent to ensure leadership management and supervisory continuity throughout an organization and moreover to sustain its performance. And that's from why governments need to ramp up succession planning from governing. And at this point, it is time for the q and a session. So we've been getting some good feedback. I've been keeping an eye on the audience questions and we've had a couple of good ones in here. So feel free to keep cranking those out guys if you want to start a dialogue here. Phil, did you take a look at any of these? Want me to kick this off? All right, cool. So the first one I took a look at was from Janie McAulister. So Janie asked something by the way, if you guys want to submit feedback, go ahead and type that into the audience questions bar as well. I like taking a look at all that. So Jenny asks, well she starts with a statement. Supplemental questions are an efficient way to validate knowledge and experience. If we use a brief application process, so going back to that keeping it under twenty minutes bit. Will candidates be able to answer more in-depth questions at step two of the process? I would submit that yes. I think that's the most effective way to go about it because if you think about just go into the simple psychology behind somebody that's that's a job seeker. Somebody that needs a job. They are applying a lot and it is exhausting and you don't see any fruits of your labor. So if you keep your initial application process shorter, then once they are delivered that good news, that little nugget of positivity is delivered that the simple notion that progress equals happiness kicks in. So you get back to them faster if they are able to submit it faster. Once they get the good news, of course, they're gonna wanna participate in even more intensity as the the levels of the application or the hiring process continue. So I would I would I think that that is the most effective way to do it from the modern application stance. Shorter in the beginning, and then as the stages continue to grow, you can add more intensity because of course, the suspense is gonna build on if they're gonna get that job or not. And you're gonna lose you you run less risk of losing that applicant A, initially and B, to another employer that offers an easier application process? Yes, Alex, just like to question I agree with that and I don't think you have to compromise your supplemental questions. The numbers that we're seeing as in forty five supplemental questions that's pretty extensive. So as long as it's if you're looking at what are the key requirements that you have for this role. So you can use them as screening questions because I know the concern is often if we reduce the number of questions are we going to allow a less likely to get the job type of applicant into there and are we going to waste our time. So you can structure it in terms of well I need this and that for them to qualify in terms of being eligible to move forward and get into the interviewing process. There are other mechanisms out there where you can use some sort of scoring to rank your applicants. So even if you get in this instance a fair amount of questions out there you either be able to screen out the ones or identify the ones that are most suitable and get to them immediately which I think is really what we're trying to move towards in twenty nineteen is because it's so competitive. As soon as people are putting or qualified applicants are putting their resumes out there they're getting swooped up. So those are a couple of things to consider. Good deal. Okay, next one that I saw here was from Georgia Ragland. Georgia said, Increasingly, we see people agree to an interview and not show up. What should we be doing to reverse that trend? So right off the top, George, I would want to ask you in person what your communication protocol is before the interview process and how many different angles are you taking? Because if it's just voicemails and perhaps the email that we're leaving, there are other options that are, I guess, a bit more viable in this day and age. So I would ask you, are you texting? Do you have the ability to text the individuals for the interview? And then how many reminders are you sending? Would be my first question to you. And then I guess have explored maybe a progressive interview process? Something that starts simpler, that's a little bit less intimidating and or daunting even from like a travel perspective. So instead of meeting somewhere on-site, have you explored do do phone interviews or even maybe something like a Skype interview? And then if they pass that round, then they'll be a little bit more comfortable because they've spoken to you before. They've kind of broken the ice in that regard. The sometimes a progression of interview processes just leads to a buildup of of anticipation and a higher attendance rate. So to sum that up, communication, are you texting? How many reminders? What's your reminder protocol? And have you explored more of a progression within your interview process? Alex I just like to add to that and I think those are all excellent points. I also think how are you differentiating your application and your position versus your neighbors? Why would they want to arrive? I mean it is unfortunately just with how competitive the job market is something that we're seeing that's trending where people don't arrive for interviews, people get job offers and they ghost us. So those confirmations are critical number one and number two you want to differentiate yourselves understand what employees and applicants are looking for in that specific position and make sure that you articulate that really well so that if they get an offer from a neighboring city or county or another government agency that there's a reason for them to show up. Cool. All right, guys. Moving on because we are running a little bit low on time here. Melissa, I just saw a comment from Melissa that I kind of wanted to comment back on here. So this is my quote unquote retweet to you, Melissa with no last name. You mentioned at some point about fifteen minutes ago, we had drastic turnover because we don't pay. It's unfortunate. We cannot retain talent. And while yes, there's always going to be that crutch that we get to lean on that we don't have the resources private sector is going to be able to offer in way of salaries. I did want to kind of throw up an idea to anybody who's facing a similar situation as Melissa. Now granted, you'd have to have a good evaluation process in place and be able to track this kind of data. But there is a concept that my customers are kind of taking to called stay interviews. So if you find yourself in a community that's experiencing heavy turnover or just not able to get a lot of applicants or etcetera, etcetera, if you have stay interviews, stay interviews are where you're able to see your top performers in a given position, given job description, and then you interview them. So you do a complete profile on the individual, like what kind of a personality is this? What do they enjoy about that job? So that's gonna lend itself to actual advertising. Where did they find out about that job initially? So you're gonna be able to develop an overall profile of your ideal personality for a given position. So although you might not be able to attract all the talent in the world, you can at least target specifically who you would like to have in that position based on people that are already at your organization. So stay interview is what that's called. It's a very effective method just identifying an ideal person that's already a top performer at your agency. Alex? I have a question that I'd like to answer that I just saw from Alita Lopez that I thought was a good one. It says, does turnover necessarily create a talent gap or does it allow new perspectives and new generational talent to come in? So that's a really good question. So I mean there's two parts to it. Mean when you lose people through turnover it depends how long they've been with the organization. There's always the onboarding of the employees and the new staff and making sure that they get productive. So if you've got something that's set up where that onboarding process is effective and efficient to make sure that there isn't too much of a gap between when you lose an employee to getting the next person up and running through learning systems or whatever it might be then I mean it could be a positive. It's really it's a case by case scenario. So if you have an employee that isn't performing super well but they've just been there and they just hang around to wait till they retire well then it's a positive. If you are losing employees continuously then I would almost take the approach that Alex has in terms of the previous conversation around interviewing employees that do while understanding when people leave making sure that you have a good follow-up process and a good exit interview. Understand why they're leaving. If you're losing them because of something that you're able to change in terms of work life balance, the hours, their job duties whatever it might be then that's something that you can do. If it's something else then that's maybe a conversation that you need to have as a city council or to the HR department in terms of how you approach that. So I would say it's a case by case basis but it's not always a bad thing when you're losing those applicants. The talent gap is two parts. It's firstly people retiring and people leaving and then lastly it's unfortunately just that government isn't as attractive as it used to be. So try some of the things that we've given you today to see if that affects the turnaround. Good deal. Alright, guys. Well, we're just about wrapped up here. So I got us a lot of good questions too. I'd love to get to all of them. And I tell you what, if we get your contact information, I've got some points. I'll send to you guys individually. However, if we to be so kind to go to that final slide, Libby. Just wanna make sure that the audience has the opportunity to connect with us. So we would love to just get to know you more personally as well. We're always available to hear about your challenges and happy to provide whatever insights we can. So please connect with us on LinkedIn and feel free to get on the NeoGov website, w w w dot neogov dot com, to download not only this actual report that we presented today well as the others that we published this year. So until next time, happy holidays everybody. Take care. And with that, we must conclude today's webinar. A special thank you to our presenters and to everyone who joined us today. Please take a moment now to complete a brief evaluation of today's program by clicking the evaluation link to the left of the screen. Your comments and suggestions are important to us as we plan future events. The survey must be completed in order to receive a certificate for this program. You can also access the survey from your ICMA University dashboard by clicking on the program title once you are logged in. Thank you for your participation in today's webinar. We hope you will join us again soon. Today's program is copyright twenty nineteen by the International City County Management Association with all rights reserved. And this concludes today's program. You may now disconnect.