Federal agencies facing an accelerating retirement wave can attract and retain new talent through a modernized employee experience. But first they need to say goodbye to legacy systems. To learn more, we talked with Matthew T. Cornelius, managing director for federal industry at Workday.
Rapidly deploying remote work solutions and digitalized public services has been a tall order for U.S. federal agencies in the last few years. Though there were some initial bumps and bruises at the start of the pandemic, the years of investment in modernizing legacy IT systems made this seismic transformation possible.
But those changes were just a prelude to a massive workforce shift headed toward the federal government: 28% of federal employees will become eligible for retirement in the next five years, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The sheer size of that generational turnover creates the necessity for agencies to recruit new talent into public service—and a potential moment of reckoning for legacy human resources (HR) systems that can’t deliver the superior experience younger employees expect.
Thankfully, expectations of federal leaders have been changing. They need meaningful, real-time information about how many employees they have and employees’ disciplines, skill sets, and proximity to retirement age.
Modern cloud-based systems support agility and flexibility as customer expectations and regulatory requirements rapidly evolve. These systems also offer solutions tuned to helping solve today’s talent crunch and to lighten back-office responsibilities such as running a data center. And while agencies have invested billions in modernizing program-specific and customer-facing technology systems, the same cannot be said for important HR systems that empower excellence in the current and future federal workforce.
Amid upcoming budget uncertainty and rapid evolution, federal agencies need to deliver modern recruitment and employee experience capabilities to fulfill their important missions, says Matthew T. Cornelius, managing director for federal industry at Workday. In a recent conversation, Cornelius discussed what the sector’s transformation can and should look like.
The largest hurdle to agency workforce transformation is legacy HR systems. Some federal agencies still run on old technologies that can be challenging to use and may not integrate well with other systems. These systems weren’t designed to provide the kind of value employees and employers experience in every other part of their daily lives.
Thankfully, expectations of federal leaders have been changing. They need meaningful, real-time information about how many employees they have and employees’ disciplines, skill sets, and proximity to retirement age.
28% of federal employees will become eligible for retirement in the next five years.
Today’s government leaders realize they should be driving the organization to be more efficient—and they expect HR applications to be an engine of change. That’s just one example of what people mean by “digital transformation.” It’s not just about streamlining processes, it’s about unlocking insights to keep pace with a changing world—and a changing workforce.
Leaders need to create targeted recruiting plans, ideally driven by data pulled from HR systems that detail specific looming role vacancies and skills gaps. That’s for starters. They also need to overhaul the job application portal.
When a recent college graduate applies for a job in the federal government, they apply through USAJobs. But feedback on applications is so slow. The government’s inability to react quickly drives strong candidates to accept other roles that are offered in a more timely manner. Millennials and Generation Z applicants expect to move through the hiring process seamlessly.
The federal government needs a modern recruiting framework with data visibility governmentwide and within individual job series so agencies can stop losing top candidates. Moreover, HR leaders need capabilities to integrate recruiting and employee experience to attain a holistic view of their key human capital assets.
Federal job seekers and current employees want—and frankly, deserve—visibility into how to build a rewarding career in public service. Agency leaders are doing a better job of promoting the mission-driven work that younger generations want, but those messages must be bolstered by agency capabilities that make it easy for those inspired job seekers to apply and accept roles in public service.
Workday Government Cloud offers solutions spanning the entire employee lifecycle from job postings and applications to onboarding, benefits management, career path navigation, and training and development.
It’s not just about streamlining processes, it’s about unlocking insights to keep pace with a changing world—and a changing workforce.
Our solution supports the entire employee experience and provides critical governance capabilities that allow chief human capital officers to drive strategic human capital priorities across their agencies. Workday’s integrated platform offers seamless, automated capabilities to improve the full range of employee life cycle opportunities and provides key data insights to improve retention, training, and collaboration opportunities between employees and managers.
One of the reasons Cornelius is at Workday is because when the company commits to a market, it goes all in—hiring people who know the market deeply, evaluating the industry’s specific requirements, and then building out a product that anticipates customer needs and delivers solutions to those challenges.
Workday Government Cloud brings the most innovative, market-leading HR solutions to the agencies that impact our lives and our families. Whether it’s onboarding more nurses and doctors to staff our Veterans Affairs hospitals, or training our future air-traffic controllers to keep our skies safe, or enabling all agencies to recruit vital cybersecurity talent to meet the National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy, Workday has helped solve comparable challenges with our commercial customers. And we are empowered, committed, and capable of delivering those same scalable solutions to our agency customers.
To learn more about how Workday helps governments drive digital transformation, visit our website.
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