Public Sector Futures: Workforce and Workplace Sustainability

This is the final post in the "Nobel" series of posts with some initial ideas around the future of the public sector.  This post looks specifically at issues of workforce and workspace, linked closely to the rising imperative for sustainability across the public sector...

The assumption that the public sector has to embrace changes to its structure and operating model carries considerable consequences for recruiting and retaining a requisite workforce, and creating more effective workspaces that keeps them motivated and productive.

The new model must integrate mobility and social networking paradigms to attract and retain today's multi-generational workforce.  This whole new workforce and workspace model for the public sector will be enabled by new tools and capabilities of communication and collaboration to deliver personalized citizen services at their point of need.

We have a multigenerational society that continues to diversify and be more distributed geographically.  In many fields of activity, people who are strangers to one another are gathering in virtual communities to produce value for each other. The volume of data, information, and ideas that we produce and consume is rising exponentially.

At the same time, our carbon footprint and energy costs are rising. Expectations of service and response times and communications have radically increased. All the while, the financial, cultural, and human capital resources available to the public sector continue to be flat.

Attempts to simply replace people and upgrade facilities are becoming more difficult from both an cost and sustainability perspective. To deal with this gap today and the growing collaborative culture of information, people, buildings, and devices, we need to integrate technology, a dynamic workforce, and work environments, perhaps with a Workforce and Workplace Sustainability (WWS) strategy.  WWS applies technology as a strategic tool and enabler for public service innovation, productivity growth, and reduction in the environmental footprint of government.

This new model aims to help public sector organisations to 1) improve citizen service; 2) improve workforce quality, satisfaction, and performance; 3) reduce costs; 4) become more responsive to citizen and employee concerns; and 5) reduce their environmental footprint (including carbon emissions and energy use).

Often, senior public executives treat the challenges implicit in these aspirations as compartmentalized and disconnected.  The ambition is to fashion a response that that feeds off their interdependency.

Government resources and budgets are flattening or even shrinking and senior staff are retiring. New employees see government as one of several careers and may not have mentors to support them. Government needs to connect its new civil servants to their peers, to their public service mission, and to the customers (citizens) that they serve. They also have to learn to facilitate, and sometimes lead, more complex communities of influence whose skills and expertise, either inside or outside of government, they will rely on to be successful.

And then, into the bargain, they need new work models that take into account facility and infrastructure costs, CO2 emissions, traffic congestion in large cities where government employees are clustered and a range of other social and management factors to deliver services in more cost-effective, socially responsible ways.

Through effective networking efforts, senior officials can design new approaches that are better and more cost-effective. The outcome will be a management-driven strategy that employees and unions can support as well. It can be an “all win” strategy that reduces costs, improves employee options and lifts performance. Demonstrated results can replace old models such as “telecommuting,” which are seen as employee benefit programs rather than taxpayer and management benefit strategies.

WWS is not just about government employees, their needs, and offices.  It’s about “Us,”, a smart, secure human network of citizens, knowledge workers, governments, & other stakeholders utilizing various work styles and spaces to achieve desired government outcomes.  WWS is enabled/ accelerated by:

·         The pervasive use of collaboration tools and platforms;

·         A virtual Workspace,” embracing new models and styles of work, focusing on “everywhere, anytime­,” not time or a single place;

·         Recalibrated talent strategies to support strategic business competencies (i.e. delivering the expertise, skills and experience of people to the needed roles and functions of the organization.  This involves a new development and application of learning and skilling of the workforce)

The pervasive use of technology inspires deeper engagement for a growing segment of the workforce.  Using technology to create modern, flexible workspaces and work practices that suit a workforce looking for a working experience that is less hierarchical, gives them some autonomy, reflects their mobility and need for flexible work/life balance and offers them challenges for growth and performance