Incentives for IT Workers
Federal agencies must beef up incentive payment programs in order to recruit and retain future federal information technology workers, according to a new report by the Federal Chief Information Officers Council.
Federal agencies must beef up incentive payment programs in order to recruit and retain future federal information technology workers, according to a new report by the Federal Chief Information Officers Council.
The report, released Friday, found that agencies must make major institutional changes in order to attract the younger, "Net Generation" of workers to federal IT jobs, particularly as the increasingly senior federal IT workforce enters into retirement. While agencies are making use of incentive payments, such as student loan repayments and recruitment incentives, there is still a need for additional incentives to effectively attract the younger workforce, the report states.
For example, the report found that federal agencies provided student loan repayment benefits to 6,789 employees in 2008, with an average annual payment of almost $7,511. But only 6 percent of overall recipients of student loan repayment benefits were members of the major federal IT community. This could pose a greater challenge for federal agencies to compete for IT workers in the future, as private benefit specialists speculate that a new trend in private industry student loan repayment programs might develop as the business world begins to compete for Net Generation workers, the report concludes.
Agencies also can pay out recruitment and retention incentives to IT workers in exchange for a service commitment, but most organizations do not use such incentives on a wide scale, in part because of a lack of funding. "This lack of resources, coupled with a lack of systematic planning and targeted application within most agencies, dilutes the effectiveness of these federal-wide flexibilities," the report states.
Still, agencies should caution against looking to monetary incentives as a cure-all for attracting and retaining Net Generation workers, many of whom are attracted by nonmonetary benefits, such as work/life balance, career development opportunities, mentoring and state-of-the-art technology, according to the report.