Data Is the Key to Unlocking Tomorrow’s Workforce

Among the vulnerable federal programs and challenges on the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) latest high-risk list, more than half stem from issues related to mission-critical skills gaps. And according to a GAO report, “Skills gaps, both within federal agencies and across the federal workforce, pose a high risk to the nation because they impede the government from cost-effectively serving the public and achieving desired results.”

And it’s not a new problem: Addressing skills gaps has been on the GAO list since 2001. With over two decades of inconsistencies and inefficiencies in holistically and capably managing federal workforce gaps, it’s time for a new and more thoughtful strategy. 

The Biden-Harris administration acknowledges the issue in the President’s Management Agenda (PMA), stating, “As our government faces increasingly complex challenges, the need for federal leaders, managers, and frontline staff with the right skills in the right jobs has never been greater.”

Enter skills-based hiring and promotion—the practice of considering soft and hard skills rather than overrelying on college degree requirements. A skills-based approach to talent can increase both workers’ and employers’ ability to respond more nimbly to shifts in the economy, while expanding important employment opportunities for diverse and underrepresented candidates. 

Research from McKinsey shows that the skills-based approach is “five times more predictive of job performance than hiring for education” and that “workers without degrees tend to stay in their jobs 34% longer than workers with degrees.”

Advancing Skills-Based Hiring and Promotion

Many federal agencies and state and local governments are making headway in this area. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) released guidance on skills-based hiring, and ten states, from Alaska to Virginia, have adopted skills-based hiring practices. And the recently published “National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy” recommends skills-based hiring and timely, accessible upskilling and reskilling to meet the increasing demand for critical cybersecurity workers.

Successful skills-based hiring programs require agencies to collect and understand granular and timely data across the enterprise to direct resources where they’re needed the most. In fact, data is so critical to managing the entire employee life cycle, from recruiting to employment to retirement, that the OPM developed a comprehensive strategy designed to “foster a stronger governmentwide data-driven culture, deliver high-quality human capital data products, leverage technology to improve data collection and integration, and strengthen data governance and management.” 

The strategy addresses skills gap analysis, workforce planning, data democratization, updating classification standards, and more—all in support of the federal agency mission.

Unfortunately, more than half (56%) of survey respondents say access to data is poor or below average at their organization, dramatically impacting decision-making. Even the most basic questions can be hard to answer when legacy technology systems are cobbled together and manual processes are still part of the equation.

The Key: Unifying Data to Help with Decision-Making

At Workday, we employ an intelligent data core to simplify the process of bringing key operational and people data together in one place so it can provide the most value—to senior executives, mid-level managers, human capital officers, and to employees themselves. This single data model creates a seamless source for detailed data and rich dimensionality, relieves constrained IT resources from managing data, and empowers everyone with role-based insights for better decision-making. 

With all employee data in a central location, managers have real-time visibility into their teams’ existing skills so they can make better, faster hiring and promotion decisions. They can identify competency gaps and implement better processes, such as finding the right skills-based assessments to screen applicants. And, crucially, agencies can leverage key data elements to track employee training and upskilling to enable more effective mission outcomes.

Workday invests heavily, with both time and resources, to drive home the importance of secure, quality data in any conversation around recruitment, skills gaps, workforce planning, and career advancement. In fact, in May 2023, nearly 22% of all job postings in the United States were on a Workday platform, which gives us one of the most expansive, real-time views of global hiring trends playing out in the market today.

Modernizing the Federal Government’s WLMI System

From an advocacy perspective, there is growing awareness of the need to modernize the Department of Labor’s workforce and labor market information (WLMI) system to provide more real-time, granular labor market data. Modernizing the WLMI will help ensure workers can navigate the future of work through lifelong learning and identifying new and valuable opportunities for career advancement. 

Additionally, it will help education, training, and career services organizations and state and local leaders identify changes in demand for skills; better connect workers to suitable job opportunities and employers to candidates; and target services to workers and employers in the event of an impending layoff, unemployment episode, or hours reduction. 

We have been advocating for legislation to modernize the WLMI for the past few months on Capitol Hill, specifically addressing some of these critical issues through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). We’re also pleased to be working with the Department of Labor—as Chris Kim, Workday’s senior director of product strategy for talent and skills, was recently appointed to serve on the federal Workforce Information Advisory Council (WAIC), which advises the secretary of labor on workforce and labor market information systems. 

As governments at all levels continue to grapple with a litany of workforce challenges, Workday is eager to deepen our partnership with public sector organizations through our advocacy on modernization of labor market data and our leadership on delivering cutting-edge capabilities to help agencies address their most pressing skills gaps.

To learn more about how Workday helps government leaders, visit our website.