Posted by: In reading the Unleash the Monster blog posts lately, one thing has struck me as peculiar — the sheer amount of government vacancies. Just this month, I saw the Partnership for Public Service’s Where the Jobs Are report, which found tens of thousands of vacant, mission-critical jobs at the federal government and agency level.
Aren’t we in a recession? The news that I’ve been reading lately has highlighted one of the highest unemployment rates seen in years. So it leaves me wondering why so many government jobs are still unfilled.
At TANDBERG, we’ve noticed a shift in employment and have seen that flexibility and the ability to telework have become increasingly important in the today’s job market. In the past, the focus may have been on benefits and salary exclusively, but today’s employees are looking for the better work-life balance and improved standard of living that telework brings.
This is especially true as the government workforce “grays”. Experienced leaders in government agencies and organizations are getting older and preparing for retirement. Many of these individuals would be willing to continue working until experienced employees are prepared to replace them in the workforce if more flexibility and the ability to telework were available.
Unfortunately, the government has been slow to embrace telework. In fact, a recent article in ComputerWorld reports figures from the US Government showing that only 5.24% of the federal workforce teleworks.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has taken notice of this and is currently working to not only encourage telework among its staff, but also get other agencies to play along. OPM sees telework as not only a way to lure top talent away from the public sector, but also as a way to increase productivity and expedite processes, such as granting security clearances.
But why have government agencies outside of OPM been so hesitant to embrace telework? The problem most likely lies in its perception. Many government agencies fear allowing their employees to work out of sight and “unsupervised.” They also fear that the lack of face-to-face communication will significantly hamper cooperation and communication.
Luckily, new technologies have become available to government employees and agencies that can assuage these fears and allow them to embrace telework with little to no reservations. One of these technologies is video teleconferencing (VTC). VTC allows employees to communicate as if they’re in the same room, regardless of how far apart they are. Teleworkers utilizing VTC solutions can be supervised and still collaborate with their coworkers in much the same way people in the same office could.
By embracing VTC and teleworking, the government can offer the flexibility and improved work-life balance that potential employees are looking for and gain an important leg up on the private sector when it comes to hiring top talent, all while making its workforce more flexible, more efficient and more productive.
David Moss is the Senior Director, Eastern Region for TANDBERG Public Sector. David and TANDBERG’s thoughts on government adoption of VTC can be found on the TANDBERG Public Sector Blog at http://blog.tandberg.com/publicsector/.
Thu, Oct 1, 2009
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