The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) conducts a survey to check the pulse of the workforce in terms of the Government’s performance, but does the Government know what its workers really need. Is the Government engaging the employees and creating the kind of environment that makes workers want to stay in the Federal service?
Recently data was collected from a number of workers across agencies and jurisdictions to determine whether they felt the Government cared about their needs as employees. The information is being collected for an impending book examining the value the Federal Government places on its employees.  Many HR professionals believe that people simply work to get a paycheck and not because they have a passion for what they do. If that is the case, how is passion for work developed? Is it innate or developed?
Another question came up while doing research for the book. Will retirement still exist in the workforce 50 years going forward?  A number of individuals in the Human Resources field believe the new generation of workers will not stay on any one job long enough to retire; certainly not in the sense we have come to know. Working for an organization for 30 years will seem like something out of the dark ages 50 years from now. How will organizations structure pension and retirement plans? There will have to be a complete overhaul of rules, regulations and policies specifically in the public sector. The overhaul will be massive and the 5 year rule relevant to so many aspects of the Federal service might be more applicable than imagined.
Five years on the job might become the standard. After working five years on a job, you might be qualified to receive some kind of pension. I think what might be innovative is instead of a particular company carrying a pension plan, it might be that the country will be engaged in a universal pension plan that allows individuals who have worked 20-30 years total in a U.S.. based job where taxes and other employment deductions were made will be eligible for a pension. The employers as well as the employees will pay into a universal plan that does not obligate the worker to spend a life-time on one job.
This is certainly not to minimize the importance and value of longevity but rather to say that the world is changing rapidly and we cannot and should not expect retirement 50 years going forward to look like what it looks like now.  Circumstances, people and demands are changing constantly and our world is moving in a completely new direction. It is mind-boggling for me to think about what is going to happen to all the massive building used for housing government agencies in the future. They certainly will not be housing employees because they will be working from home or centralized locations close to home.
Our roads and highways will last much longer without having to expend millions of dollars on road repairs due to day-to-day traffic. People will be less frustrated because they will not have to travel so far to get to their jobs. The flexible schedules will allow them to raise families and get to know each other and not pass like ships in the night. Parents will be able to drop their kids at school and pick them up – the old fashion door-to-door nurturing that will hopefully eliminate children from being snatched by strangers as they walk to school alone and defenseless.
Road-rage will have a slow death. The heavy weight of over-stressed bosses and employees in the workplace will be eliminated while productivity and creativity will increase because workers will be happier. Now with all of this futuristic thinking, I don’t believe the Federal Government as a whole or individual agencies have really ever asked Federal workers about their needs.  Although telework exists currently in the Federal service, many supervisors take drastic measures to prevent employees from taking advantage of teleworking. Remember, I said I didn’t know what would happen to all those massive buildings used to house government agencies. How about using them to house homeless people, not like some huge open arena, but to create private, supervised low cost units that belong to people who need a place to stay.
There is a wonderful model that could be used called Hyacinth’s Place located in the nation’s capital. It is a transitional housing program for women who have a mental health diagnosis and are making tremendous strides to reclaim their lives as productive citizens. The structure contains a number of “efficiency” type apartments.  Each woman has a key to her unit with a unit number where she receives mail to her home inside of this supervised, monitored structure.  The structure and the approach to re-introducing these women to a life where they see value in themselves is esteem-building.  Hyacinth’s Place is transitional because these women are healed to move on so that another might reap similar benefits.  Bet you never knew an old dusty Government building had so much potential to strengthen humanity.
P. S. Always Remember to Share What You Know.
Dianna Tafazoli
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