In the government context, modernization almost always focuses on technology, but the skills employees need also evolve. With people changing jobs every few years—the median employee tenure was about four years in January 2024—it’s crucial for workers to know what skills employers are looking for and for employers to know what skills they need to retain the workers they have.
Pete Blank, Training and Organizational Development Manager for the Personnel Board of Jefferson County, Alabama, says there are five in-demand skills that modern workers in government need. He shared them during keynote remarks at the October 23 NextGen virtual summit.
Creativity
Creativity is the foundational in-demand skill, Blank said. For instance, learning to use generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot falls squarely in the creativity category, he said. “We’ve got to figure out how to be more creative in interacting with our citizens,” Blank said. “How can we use Twitter or X? How can we use social media?”
He pointed to a change that Jefferson County recently made to its process for business licenses. Now, people can get them online, whereas before, they had to go to a courthouse in person. The point, Blank said, is that being creative doesn’t have to be complicated.
The traditional mindset of government work being mired in inflexible processes because of regulations and policies harms the potential public-sector workforce, he added.
“I’ve been raising my kids around innovation and creativity…and then we put them in our government settings that say, ‘Don’t be creative, don’t think outside the box. Work within this framework. This is the red tape and bureaucracy,’” Blank said. “And we wonder why there’s no employee engagement.”
Flexibility
Things change on a dime, and technology emerges at lightning-fast speeds. Governments need to be ready, which means workers do, too. “You can also call this adaptability,” Blank said. “We’re talking about being business-savvy enough that you can flex. If you don’t get your people to be flexible, your department is going to struggle, your processes are going to struggle, your citizens are going to struggle because everything is changing so stinking fast.”
One way to be flexible is to embrace creativity by changing the standard way of doing things: “I’ll just do it the way we’ve always done it,” he said. “I think we’ve got great employees who want to do the right thing, who are maybe stuck in a process-driven department that really isn’t allowed to flex, so we always get blamed for having low-morale employees.”
Teamster
Not to be confused with the labor union, this is about teamwork, being a good team member. “We need [to know] how to lead a team, how to lead hybrid teams, how to be a good team player,” Blank said. It’s about “making sure people aren’t out for themselves. Go ahead and align it to athletics: It’s not the name on the back of your shirt, it’s the name on the front of your shirt — this whole idea of working for a team.”
Coach-Centric
The teamster idea flows right into being coach-centric to support those teams. He likens it to the transfer portal now available for college athletes that lets them put their name in an online database declaring their interest in transferring to another place.
“The same thing is happening here in government,” Blank said. “Employees are going, ‘I could work for your department, but this department looks a little better. This one might offer me more money. I thought I’d stay here, but there’s this retention bonus over there.’”
Organizational culture is key to making and keeping employees happy, and government needs to get creative here, too. Nationwide, employee engagement has hit a record low, and among reasons for that, the common thread is an organization’s culture.
“You cannot not coach your employees, you cannot not give feedback, you cannot not hold them accountable,” Blank said. “Coach, coach, coach and be coachable.”
Empathy
This is about connecting with your team. You can get creative about how you do it, or you can keep it simple. But don’t say, “If you don’t hear from me, you’re doing a great job,” Blank said. “The employee is walking on eggshells because every single time the supervisor addresses them or calls them in, they know it’s for something bad.”
Blank also cautioned against staying stuck in the old mindset of separating work and home life. “It’s a different time and a different age, and if people are having personal issues, if people are having family issues, they’re not going to leave those at home,” Blank said. “They just need us to be a little more empathetic, to be a little more connected to them, to just ask, ‘Is there anything I can do to assist you today?’”
For an on-demand version of his remarks — and of the other NextGen virtual summit sessions — click here.
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