Generational stereotyping seen as barrier to recruiting

Workforce planners should avoid stereotyping the needs and expectations of different generations of federal workers, experts at the Human Capital Management: Federal 2007 conference said on Wednesday.

Younger workers "want to be challenged, and they like to be treated with respect," said John Allison Jr., deputy director for human capital at the Defense Intelligence Agency. "They don't like to be lumped into this category, Generation Y, because it's made up with individuals…. If I address them as a generation, they turn me off."

Their aversion to being treated as a phenomenon rather than as individuals may stem from some of the assumptions about younger workers, including that they are self-centered or lack commitments to organizations or jobs, Allison said.

"Any generation that comes forward, a lot of people think they're the center of the universe," Allison said. "That group of people that marched into the workplace in the '70s was not humble, was pretty sure that long hair and bell bottoms were the way to dress; was pretty sure we had to give peace a chance."

In fact, the latest generation may not differ from their predecessors in terms of the things that attract them to federal service, said John Crum, acting director of the Merit Systems Protection Board's Office of Policy and Evaluation.

According to an upcoming MSPB study that will include a review of hiring records and a survey of 2,000 federal employees who were hired in 2005, young employees say they valued the stability of federal government jobs and the pensions and traditional benefits that come with those jobs as highly as their predecessors, and they value these even more highly than workplace flexibilities.

Younger employees also do not leave the government at higher rates than their predecessors, according to Crum.

"When we look at loss rates, the pattern has not changed in 50 years," he said. "We don't have an expectation of increased loss rates in the future. If you treat people well over the first three to five years, you're likely to be able to keep them."

John Palguta, vice president for policy at the Partnership for Public Service, said he was concerned that focusing too much on young, entry-level hires would leave the government short of mid-level employees who could step up and take on leadership roles.

"Part of the problem is, how deep is your bench?" Palguta asked. "If you've got great players on your bench and someone goes down, no problem. In the federal government right now, I think we have a very thin bench."

Crum said MSPB found that many new federal employees were not recent college graduates, and the government should consider the diversity of age in its incoming workforce.

"We do very diverse entry-level hiring," Crum said. "They're not so young, they're not so inexperienced. The average age of a new hire for an entry-level position in the federal government is 33. In 2005, we hired someone for an entry-level position at 84."

Ultimately, Crum said, age can tell agencies only so much about a potential federal employee.

"This generational perspective has some value, but it's been oversold," he said. "It's like taking a Myers-Briggs personality test, and you come out with a type, and you know all about yourself. It's not so predictive. It's not so prescriptive. But it's useful in understanding that people are not always the same as you."