Public Sector HR News

As impressive and robust as HR technology has become, leaders need to consider the implications and fallout of relying too heavily on data-centric programs. On the contrary, if you fail to leverage the software readily available to “meet your employees where they are,” you risk being tone-deaf and out of touch with your employee population.

Organizations need to move to a comprehensive employee experience (EX) platform that provides access to everything needed to be successful on daily basis in the hybrid or remote work model. To accomplish this, various HR and EX elements need to be seamlessly integrated with each other to develop an employee-centric culture.

An employer’s decision to use AI or other automated decision tools is actually quite complicated. There are a whole host of considerations to field before pressing the AI button. Using AI or other automated tools is also fraught with risks, especially in the absence of recognized industry standards or more clear guidance for employers. And, in this environment, employers should ask themselves if the risks are worth the reward.

Teaa Allston-Bing found time recently to speak with IPMA-HR about her experience as a leader, a learner, an educator and a motorcycle-riding mother of five, as well as what the past two-plus years have taught her about leading through disruption and change.

Women in the Workplace 2022 Report suggests that employers seeking to make meaningful and sustainable progress toward gender equality must focus on two broad goals: Get more women into leadership and retain the women leaders they already have.

This article highlights survey results that identify the impact of mental-health related exposures on executives, directors and managers, what their workplaces have done to address these exposures, and preferred future efforts. It emphasizes the importance of opioid-related issues compared with problems in health, stress, burn-out, depression and fatigue, as well as alcohol and other drug issues.

To help employees overcome adversity, the city of Coral Springs, Fla., created a safety, health and wellness committee as part of a behavioral health access program, which brings city workers and management together in a non-adversarial, cooperative effort to promote safety and health in the workplace. The city also has a clinical response team that acts almost like an onsite EAP.

It is imperative that public sector officials avoid the "bury their head in the sand" approach when it comes to navigating California and federal employment laws. Rather, employers should be active participants and remain in the know on the broad employment law landscape by investing in reliable resources and advisors. Otherwise, they expose themselves to costly litigation where ignorance of the law is never a valid defense. 

HR leaders shouldn’t be afraid to honestly assess themselves, to give themselves some space and time to process all the changes and new ideas they’ve had to absorb in the past few years, and to adjust, accordingly. Kai Kight offers nuggets of wisdom at the 2022 IPMA-HR annual conference.

The labor force has transmuted from a buyer’s market to a seller’s talent market, in which the employee is acutely aware of the value of the talent and innovation potential they bring to the job market. This new market is predicated on job satisfaction, value, holistic balance, and an equitable division of resources and opportunities. In other words, the U.S. labor force is revolutionizing and seems more likely to hold the values held by our public sector employees. That is perhaps why the federal workforce has begun outpacing American job satisfaction.