CHAPTER 4

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The Special Case of Public Service and How This Affects Engagement and Efforts to Improve It

I began this book by emphasizing that this is a particularly tough time to work in government. Persistent attacks on government can’t help but affect the morale and engagement of public-sector employees. Despite well-publicized private-sector fiascos such as Enron, the BP oil spill, and the subprime mortgage meltdown, we don’t see similar attacks on rank-and-file private-sector employees.

I’ve worked in or with government for almost 40 years, at federal, state, and local levels, and now at a major public university—the University of Wisconsin. I’ve devoted my career to public service because I believe in government and the ability of government to help the people we serve improve their lives. Even at the University of Wisconsin, our teaching and research mission is grounded in the “Wisconsin idea”: Our university should be a resource for the public and enhance the quality of life in our state, nation, and world.

In my view, very few—if any—other careers offer the same kinds of opportunities to make a difference as careers in the public sector.

Yet public opinion surveys clearly show the negative impact of attacks on government. According to the Pew Research Center, in April 2012 the favorable rating for the federal government fell to just 33 percent, the lowest in 15 years, with nearly two-thirds of the public having an unfavorable view.¹ Ratings of state governments remained barely positive (52 percent favorable). The public’s opinion of local government was more favorable (positive by a roughly two-to-one margin).

While state and local governments polled better than the federal government, the trend for these sectors has been steadily downhill since 2002. At that time, roughly two-thirds of Americans had favorable opinions of federal, state, and local government.

Digging deeper, the 2012 Pew survey showed that most Americans believed their state government was not careful with their money (56 percent) and was generally inefficient (51 percent). While more said their state government was honest rather than corrupt (49 percent versus 37 percent), a majority (54 percent) said the federal government was mostly corrupt—not just inefficient or ineffective or bloated, but corrupt! Very disturbing.

According to Max Stier, CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, as a result of attacks on government, “employee morale is in decline, the desirability of public service has diminished and trust in government is at an all-time low.”²

Consider this other evidence:

• According to an article on the Society for Human Resource Management website, the criticism directed at public servants—and its impacts on government budgets—is leading to a “storm of disengagement” among government employees.³

• In a 2012 survey by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence, state and local government officials reported that the number one issue they faced was the public perception of government workers.⁴

• According to an online survey of state and local government agencies conducted in 2012 by the payroll firm ADP and the International Public Management Association for HR, nearly all survey respondents reported that employee morale and engagement have sharply declined in the last few years.⁵

• A 2012 survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) revealed that just 6 percent of college students surveyed plan to work in local, state, or federal government. This is the lowest percentage since NACE first started asking this question annually in 2008.⁶ This result clearly shows the harmful impact of government bashing on the public service’s ability to attract talent.

MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT GOVERNMENT

The criticism of government has also resulted in (or perhaps resulted from) some fundamental misconceptions about the size and function of government. For example, as President Obama noted, “I got a letter the other day from a woman. She said, ‘I don’t want government-run health care. I don’t want socialized medicine. And don’t touch my Medicare.’”⁷

Here’s another example:

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A 59-year-old man who earns $39,000 a year said he does not need any help from the federal government. He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. Yet for four years, this guy has counted on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has also signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.⁸

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Another misconception is that the size of the government workforce has exploded. The fact is that, since 2009, government workforces across the United States have shed a total of 642,000 jobs.⁹ And since 1975, the percentage of all jobs in the United States that are in the public sector has fallen from 19.2 to 17.3 percent.¹⁰

Take the federal government, for example—the nation’s largest employer and the target of much of the criticism about “bloated government.” Excluding the postal service, there were about 2.1 million federal employees in 2012. This workforce is actually smaller now than it was in 1967, at the height of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, even though today the federal government serves 100 million more Americans than it did in 1967.¹¹

Despite federal hiring fueled by the war on terror (e.g., creation of the Department of Homeland Security), the per capita ratio of federal government employees to the general U.S. population has actually declined in the last 50 years.

In state government, there are slightly fewer employees now than there were 20 years ago.¹² The size of the local government workforce has also been declining. According to the 2012 survey by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence, more than half the survey respondents (most of whom are local government officials) reported that their workforces were at least 5 percent smaller in 2012 than they were in 2008.¹³

The shrinking of government is partially the result of increased retirements as baby boomers head toward the exits. For example, federal government retirements in 2011 jumped 24 percent compared to 2010¹⁴ and increased again in 2012.¹⁵

In state government, according to the Center for State and Local Government Excellence:

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Local governments are experiencing a wave of retirements in an era of sustained fiscal constraints. They recognize that they … also need to identify any looming skills gaps and develop workforce strategies for the future. Such strategies includes professional development for current workers so they can fill certain key positions, as well as adjustments in human resources practices that will appeal to the next generation of public servants.¹⁶

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While the size of the public-sector workforce has not grown, the size of the workforce of contractors who support government has expanded dramatically. In fiscal year 2011, for example, federal agencies spent $496 billion on contracts (and that was less than the previous years, when the value of federal contracting was as high as $537 billion). Only a decade earlier, federal contracting was “only” $206 billion. And these totals don’t include contracts awarded by state and local governments. So, in essence, much of the work of government has been privatized.

PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE—SAME OR DIFFERENT?

In response to the criticisms of government and the misperceptions about the growth of government, we often hear the refrain, “run government like a business.” This regularly comes from politicians calling for reform of what they consider to be government waste, inefficiency, and ineffectiveness.

And when scandals erupt in government, like the indefensible waste and behavior by U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) officials who put on a series of over-the-top conferences in Las Vegas in 2011, voices for reform reach a fever pitch. One congressman’s reaction to the GSA misdeeds was to propose privatizing some of the agency’s work. Aside from the very legitimate concerns about wasting taxpayer dollars, the implication seems to be that if government operated more like the private sector, these kinds of behaviors wouldn’t occur.

There is evidence to the contrary, however, including private-sector scandals like the mortgage meltdown or JP Morgan Chase’s $2 billion hedge fund loss in 2012, which its CEO admitted was an “egregious failure” to manage risk. And remember the disgraced head of Tyco, Dennis Kozlowksi, who put on a million-dollar birthday bash for his wife—paid for by his company and its stockholders—that included a personal Jimmy Buffett concert? Government can do without this type of “efficiency.”

As one observer said about state government, “When I hear people talk about how they are going to run the state like a business, my response is that you have to run the state better than you run a business, because you have to do so much more with less resources.”¹⁷ Government leaders also have less unilateral power to make decisions and implement change than private-sector leaders.

In If We Can Put a Man on the Moon, the authors compare getting things done in government to the Greek myth about Sisyphus, who was doomed to a lifetime of pushing a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down again before it reached the top. The book’s authors refer to a “Sisyphus trap” in government:

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Public sector leaders fall into the Sisyphus trap when they fail to fully comprehend the special challenges of the public sector terrain. [They] believe they can achieve results simply by devising the right strategy or passing the right law. They miss a critical ingredient for success because the problem of getting things done in government isn’t merely a systems problem. It isn’t merely a policy problem. It’s a human problem as well.¹⁸

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In other words, to my way of thinking, this is an employee-engagement problem.

The National Performance Review in the 1990s was an attempt to reinvent the federal government and create a government that “works better and costs less.” As a result of the review, the size of the federal workforce was reduced by 330,000 positions between 1993 and 1998.¹⁹ However, as Paul Light (formerly of the Brookings Institution and a longtime observer of government) has pointed out, the services previously provided by these federal government employees were not eliminated.²⁰ Instead, this work was transferred to contractors (the shadow government, now a $500-billion-a-year business) or state and local government (i.e., largely through “unfunded mandates”). Because, after all, the public wants leaner and more efficient government (who wouldn’t?) but balks at cuts that would produce real service reductions.

While the “reinventing government” movement achieved some successes, mostly shedding federal government employees, there is no consensus that it actually produced a government “that works better and costs less.”

The answer to the question about whether private-sector management practices can seamlessly translate to government has important implications for employee engagement. If the leadership challenges in the public and private sectors are essentially the same and the solutions are also the same, then approaches to improving employee engagement should also be the same, or at least very similar.

By now, you probably know where I’m headed. I agree that there are lessons government can learn from the private sector about how to operate more effectively and efficiently. (Do we really need to have seemingly endless meetings in government about everything?) However, I also think the reverse is true: The private sector can also learn from government, perhaps about persevering to accomplish critical missions despite facing serious challenges and obstacles.

I also believe there are some fundamental and important differences between the public and private sectors. These differences make managing in government different (and in some ways more difficult) than in the private sector. The differences also have important implications for employee engagement, including my view that an engaged workforce is actually more critical in government. This is especially true now, with government being demeaned while at the same time also being challenged to handle the toughest jobs and under pressure to operate more effectively and efficiently despite shrinking budgets and workforces.

That may be why one of the cover articles in the October 2012 issue of Fortune magazine was titled, “Does Ray Kelly Have the World’s Toughest Job?” The Fortune writer said this about Kelly, the New York City police commissioner (who, by the way, I’ve met briefly twice and is a very gracious guy):

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Kelly may have the toughest job there is. The NYPD is the biggest police force in the country. Running it is not unlike running a midsize Fortune 500 company—except that the stakes are much, much higher. Kelly manages a $4.9 billion budget, 250 buildings, 7,000 pieces of rolling stock, and 50,000 employees, most of whom carry handguns. One of his operating units is devoted to fighting terrorism. Like a CEO, he contends with a vast and varied cast of stakeholders who scrutinize his every move, but the metrics by which his performance is measured all have to do with life and death.²¹

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So, according to this article, the toughest job in the world is a government job where the stakes are “much, much higher” than running a corporation. Quite a tribute to public service from Fortune, a publication focused on the private sector. It’s worth emphasizing that Kelly operates in perhaps the toughest fishbowl environment possible—a high-visibility job where even small mistakes will generate intense criticism in the media, in city hall, and on the streets of New York City.

In a 2013 New York Times op-ed piece, David Rothkopf, who has served in senior-level positions in both the private and public sectors, wrote, “Public sector management poses its own unique challenges. Great business leaders and great governmental leaders require different personalities, skill sets, tactics and backgrounds.”²²

KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTORS

If government is indeed different from the private sector, then public-sector managers must approach engagement differently than their private-sector counterparts. I believe managing in government is different from managing in the private sector in at least 11 key dimensions that affect employee engagement and therefore efforts to improve it:

1. An environment of broadscale attacks on government and government employees

2. Political leadership that can change frequently

3. Hard-to-measure goals and impacts

4. Complicated, inefficient, rule-bound, and sometimes irrational decision making

5. Multiple external stakeholders with power and influence

6. An older, more educated, and more white-collar workforce

7. Strong civil-service rules and employee protections, plus superior benefits

8. Limited financial tools and incentives to influence employee behavior

9. Strong union influence

10. Public visibility of government actions

11. Different employee motivations (i.e., public-service motivation)

As we review these differences, it’s also important to keep in mind the fundamental elements of employee engagement—specifically, according to U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board research, how employees feel about their workplaces. This includes pride in the workplace or work, satisfaction with leadership, the opportunity to perform well at work, satisfaction with recognition received, prospects for future personal and professional growth, and a positive work environment. Each of the 11 public-private differences affects the key dimensions of engagement. In the rest of this chapter, I outline these differences and how they affect employee engagement. Then, more important, and more optimistically, in Chapter 5 I discuss how managers can address these issues and therefore improve employee engagement.

ATTACKS ON GOVERNMENT AND GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES

First, foremost, and most harmful to employee engagement are attacks on government. Critics include politicians, the media, the public, and other organizations—all of whom repeatedly characterize public servants as overpaid and underworked bureaucrats. This almost constant drumbeat of criticism is disheartening to public servants and can be deadly to employee engagement, as illustrated by the survey data provided earlier in this chapter.

These attacks erode employees’ pride in their agencies—a strong element of engagement. It’s hard to be proud of your work or organization and by extension yourself when your employer and your work are being repeatedly criticized. It’s also hard not to take these criticisms personally. Who wants to go to a social event, explain to someone you’ve just met that you work for the government, and then worry about how the person will react? That is, with an awkward silence or a tirade about waste and inefficiency in government? I recall a conversation I had with an accountant who asked me what I did for a living. At that time, I worked for the Partnership for Public Service, so I replied that I was vice president of a nonprofit dedicated to improving the effectiveness of government. His reply? “That can’t be too hard.” In other words, it was a target-rich environment.

Attacks on government have also morphed into tangible impacts—delays in passing budgets, cuts when budgets do pass, mandatory furloughs, reduced pay and benefits, and downsizing and layoffs. Here in Wisconsin, government employees have taken a verbal beating and had their collective bargaining rights drastically curtailed. Moreover, increases in Wisconsin public employees’ contributions to benefits program resulted in the equivalent of an 8 percent pay cut. The national debate now continues over public-sector pensions (namely, if they are too rich for taxpayers to afford).

No wonder organizations like the Society for Human Resource Management, the International Public Management Association for Human Resources, the Center for State and Local Government Excellence, and the Partnership for Public Service have all concluded that the criticism leveled at public servants across the country—and the budget impacts of these attacks—leads to disengagement among government employees. For example, as cited previously, the number one concern identified in a 2012 survey of state and local government agencies was the public perception of government workers.

It’s easy to see how attacks on government and government employees (and resulting cuts in budgets and staff) can affect engagement. For example, antigovernment animus and its tangible impacts can negatively affect key engagement factors like pride in the work or workplace, satisfaction with leadership, the opportunity to perform well at work, satisfaction with recognition received (especially with pay and benefits cuts), prospects for future personal and professional growth, and especially a positive work environment.

Moreover, attacks on government are usually outside the organizations’ and managers’ control, and government is often not adept at responding. Many agencies lack public relations savvy and fear that PR efforts will be counterproductive anyway, viewed by the public as waste of taxpayer money. This inability to portray a positive image about government work can cause employees to feel ineffective, disengaged, and even hopeless.

Despite the critical need for new talent in government, the attacks on government also discourage talented people from entering public service.

My own daughter is an example. Like many in her millennial generation, she is committed to public service. However, she chose to act on that commitment by working for Teach for America, a nonprofit organization. After her two-year stint with Teach for America, she was interested in applying to the U.S. Department of Education, a logical step, but was frustrated and repelled by the virtually impenetrable language used to describe the department’s work and job opportunities. Instead, she went to work as a government consultant for a large consulting firm.

POLITICAL LEADERSHIP THAT CAN CHANGE FREQUENTLY

Many government agencies are led by elected or politically appointed leaders with brief tenures, short-term perspectives, and politically driven policy goals and agendas. It’s not unusual for political appointees to serve for only a year or two, enhance their résumés, and then leave, often frustrated by their inability to quickly implement large-scale change. In the federal government, for example, the average tenure of a political appointee from 1969 to 2000 was fewer than 30 months.²⁴

Compared to the private sector, this temporary political leadership in government makes it harder to build and sustain initiatives like employee engagement. In particular, leadership changes can affect engagement triggers like satisfaction with leadership, pride in the work or workplace, input to decisions, and opportunity to perform well at work.

Leadership that comes and goes puts extra pressure on career executives and managers (the levels below political appointees) to provide organizational stability and create an environment conducive to employee engagement. Sure, there is turnover in the executive suites in business too, but it’s less frequent than in government and rarely drives the kind of 180-degree change that occurs when the other political party takes control of a government agency. Plus, in the private sector, leadership transition is often the result of succession planning that has intentionally and carefully groomed the next leader(s). This is not possible with political changeovers in government. Policies put in place during the tenure of one political party usually change, often quickly and dramatically, when the other party takes over.

One writer titled his analysis of federal government political appointees “Amateur Government” to reflect the reality that many political appointees have little, if any, experience running large government operations or, for some, any large operation at all.²⁵

Even at the career levels of government, succession planning is rare, in part because of the fear that this kind of planning would amount to “preselection” for promotions and would therefore violate civil-service rules that mandate open competition for vacancies.

In government, frequent top-level turnover makes engagement of the rank and file critically important to smoothly maintain effective operations despite new leaders and new policies. But the irony is that political turnover also makes it more difficult to implement and sustain long-term workforce initiatives such as employee engagement. A critical factor in successful employee-engagement initiatives is sustained top-level support.

In the federal government, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) score in the 2010 “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” rankings dropped by 6.4 percent, plummeting the SEC to rank 24 out of 32 large federal agencies. SEC’s scores declined in dimensions that included employees’ perceptions of senior leaders and their own sense of empowerment. A factor that likely contributed to the drop in SEC’s score was that nearly every division underwent a change in senior leadership between 2009 and 2010, and several of these leadership changes were accompanied by major reorganizations. SEC continues to struggle, ranking 19 out of 22 midsize agencies in the 2012 “Best Places” rankings.²⁶

Elected or appointed political leaders (even if competent and well-intentioned) often focus on near-term results, which means new agency priorities, policies, and agendas. In the city of Minneapolis, which has conducted employee-engagement surveys since 2004, frequent turnover in appointed department directors was a big challenge to sustaining the long-term focus on the engagement action plans developed in response to survey results. Frequent leadership changes meant virtually restarting the engagement initiative every time a new director was appointed. Political turnover like this makes it difficult to connect the dots that are critical to engagement, which include the following:

• Linking the work of individual employees to agency mission/goals and long-term agendas

• Clearly articulating employee expectations/goals

• Involving employees in decision making

• Building and maintaining pride in the organization

Newly installed political leadership can also put career managers and supervisors in difficult situations by pressuring them to advocate and quickly implement policies that are major shifts from the previous administration’s (or leader’s) policies. Examples include situations where regulatory agencies have abruptly morphed from strictly enforcing rules to advocating for the industry they regulate. Shifts like these erode key drivers of engagement such as confidence in and respect for leaders and supervisors, pride in the organization, and input to decisions.

In Wisconsin, for example, this type of scenario played out at the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR), when a probusiness governor took office in 2011. The mission of the Wisconsin DNR is to preserve and enhance the natural resources of Wisconsin, in part by enforcing laws that protect the people and resources of the state. During the first year of the new administration, DNR’s issuance of violation notices reached a 12-year low. Referrals to the Wisconsin Department of Justice for prosecution were also down dramatically, from a 12-year annual average of 65 to 21. The newly appointed department secretary explained that the department’s new philosophy was to emphasize cooperating with business and bringing violators into voluntary compliance, making them “self-regulators.”²⁷

Almost literally overnight, this regulatory agency’s posture abruptly changed as the new administration took over. Whether you agree with the new philosophy or not, imagine the impact on the engagement of the rank and file who were committed to implementing the “old” strategy.

Another factor working against employee engagement is the unfortunate but seemingly inherent mistrust between elected/appointed officials and career employees. The political figures who take charge often see the career folks as intractable bureaucrats who resist change, no matter what. Career employees, on the other hand, often view new political leaders as novices and opportunists eager to make their mark quickly, who are here today and gone tomorrow and therefore don’t really care about the career public servants in their agencies. This conflict filters down to frontline supervisors versus rank-and-file employees. The result can be antagonism and employee disengagement.

Dwight Ink, a retired civil servant who served seven presidents, puts it this way:

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The career civil service is the only vehicle through which a president can govern. Yet we continue to see instance after instance of White House staff and agency (politically appointed) leaders not only failing to reach out to the men and women on whom their political success will largely rest but also quickly alienating them through distrust and marginalizing their roles.²⁸

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This atmosphere of mistrust extends to other levels of government. Craig Benson, a multimillionaire high-tech CEO, was elected governor of New Hampshire in 2002 by promising to run the state like a billion-dollar corporation. On his first day in office, he hosted an inauguration-day breakfast attended by hundreds of state employees. During this event, he told this audience of public servants, “I bet you that not many people in this room have been asked to bring their brains with them to work in a long time.”²⁹ According to the authors of If We Can Put a Man on the Moon, with these words, the new governor managed to achieve a rare political trifecta—he was insulting, condescending, and arrogant, all at the same time. Two years later, Benson was defeated in his reelection bid.

This mistrust between elected and appointed officials and career public servants can also result in minimal investments in employee development—another critical aspect of employee engagement. In contrast to private-sector leaders who have longer-term time horizons, elected and appointed officials are often reluctant to invest in developing agency staff. That’s because helping employees develop their long-term capabilities does not help political leaders achieve their short-term policy or political agendas, even though employee development is a key driver of employee engagement. That may be one reason government has trailed the private sector in training expenditures.³⁰

GOALS AND IMPACTS OF GOVERNMENT THAT ARE HARD TO IDENTIFY AND MEASURE

The goals of public-sector organizations are harder to articulate and measure than in the business world. While most private-sector organizations need to focus on generating revenue and profits, thereby delivering returns to their owners and shareholders, government’s goals are often hard to clearly identify and measure in transparent and meaningful ways. The purpose of most public-sector organizations is not to generate revenue but to achieve goals that collectively provide for the common good. This can mean defending the nation, enforcing laws, educating our children, putting people back to work, caring for an aging population, or solving problems like poverty and homelessness. It can also mean more mundane chores like collecting trash, fixing potholes, removing snow, or making sure that sewer systems operate the way they should. These tasks are mundane but essential to the quality of our lives and often go unnoticed and unappreciated by the public—until something goes wrong.

While the axiom “what you measure is what gets done” also applies to government, developing valid measures is much more elusive in the public versus the private sector. Take corrections (prisons), for example. How do departments of corrections measure their impacts? How do we measure the public’s satisfaction with prisons? Should we count the number of successful prison breaks? Can corrections departments be held accountable for high recidivism rates, which are driven by many factors, including socioeconomic conditions that corrections departments can’t influence?

Another public-sector measurement challenge is in education. It seems as if the entire nation is embroiled in a highly charged debate about the goals of our educational system, particularly in K–12, and how to measure success. What are students learning, how well are our teachers teaching and how do we measure the quality of our schools?

The No Child Left Behind Act was designed to help answer these questions, but now, a decade after the law was enacted, there is still disagreement about how to measure the quality of the education our children are receiving and how to make teachers accountable. If students, particularly from low-income and disadvantaged homes, come to school hungry after escaping from difficult, often single-parent home environments, how can we hold teachers accountable for overcoming these barriers to educational progress?

My intent here is not to try to answer the questions surrounding how to measure the quality of government services or public education. Others are working on that. Instead, I simply mean to point out how difficult it can be to agree on, and then measure, the desired outcomes of government.

Ambiguous, changeable, and hard-to-measure goals create barriers to individual employee commitment and motivation, and therefore engagement. Specifically, it is difficult to clearly link individual employees’ jobs, tasks, and performance goals/expectations to the agency mission and goals when the latter are not clear, or they abruptly change. Plus, because it is often hard to empirically demonstrate that the work of a government agency is making a real difference, employees may question if they’re really having an impact. They often don’t have a line of sight between their work and what their agency is accomplishing.

Despite calls for more efficiency in government (“run it like a business”), the public sector was not built for efficiency. Instead, government was expressly designed with checks and balances to achieve consensus and compromise. This takes time, is difficult to measure, and is often inefficient.

COMPLICATED, INEFFICIENT, RULEBOUND, AND SOMETIMES IRRATIONAL (I.E., POLITICAL) DECISION MAKING

The political agendas that drive government agencies also drive decision making. This results in an often complicated and seemingly subjective decision-making process that challenges efforts to improve employee engagement.

Decision making that is politically based and sometimes may even seem irrational affects drivers of engagement such as employee confidence in, and satisfaction with, supervisors, managers, and senior leaders; involvement in decisions (“my opinion counts”); and pride in the agency. The government decision-making process also dampens employee creativity and risk taking because of uncertainty about (and mistrust of) how decisions will ultimately be made—and the high price of failure.

Government agency decisions are also influenced by the “optics” of how decisions will play out with the media, the public, and the other political party. I often think of when a state government executive told me that his marching orders from the governor in the months leading up to a gubernatorial election were to “make no waves.”

I also recall when I was the administrator of the Wisconsin civil-service system and a colleague and I were discussing with a state senator our proposal to amend the civil-service “rule of five” law that limited all hiring managers to interviewing only the five highest-scoring candidates from civil-service exams. The law was so restrictive that if the applicants with the fifth- and sixth-highest scores were tied, even to the one-hundredth of a point, we had to figure out a way to break the tie.

We gave this senator what we thought was a very logical and compelling argument that this highly restrictive law needed to be changed. After patiently listening to our pitch, he told us that he absolutely agreed. However, he couldn’t support us because the governor who had proposed this change was in the other political party. It took three legislative sessions before we were finally able to convince the legislature to eliminate that ancient rule.

Laws concerning freedom of information and open meetings also allow the media and the public to have broad access to information not only on government decisions themselves but also on how these decisions are made. More on this later.

This decision-making environment is further constrained by government red tape and rules that restrict actions and flexibility in areas like personnel, including civil-service laws that strictly control hiring and firing. Restrictions also cover procurement, which someone who knows once described to me as “the only thing in government more screwed up than HR.” Consider the Federal Acquisition Regulations: more than 2,000 pages of requirements and processes about what to buy and how to buy it.

This environment makes it hard to get things done, and employees who feel they can’t get things done are not likely to be engaged. They must constantly consider all the rules and various stakeholders, assessing possible pitfalls. This sacrifices results for process. A state government executive once remarked to me, “I like process.” Compare that to what Fortune magazine described as the need for businesses to hire people with a “bias for action.”

For many reasons, including rules, politics, and the openness of government decisions to the public and media, public managers have to think twice—and sometimes more than that—before making decisions. They have to assess not only the business benefits and risks but also the political impacts and optics of what they’re about to do. Private-sector decision makers are not as encumbered by these factors.

At the University of Wisconsin, the state legislature gave us the unprecedented freedom to design an entirely new HR system for our public university—that is, the opportunity to design a personnel system to meet the needs of a world-class higher education institution, free from the often-rigid restrictions of the state civil-service system. Our initial enthusiasm was dampened, however, when we realized how many stakeholders with decision-making authority or influence we had to convince to sign off on our HR redesign plan.

First we had to navigate through our shared governance system, which, by law, gives three separate groups—faculty, nonfaculty academic staff, and students—the right to formally weigh in on major changes like this. We also had to vet the proposal with multiple labor organizations; civil-service employees; deans and department directors; the University of Wisconsin System administration, which governs our 26-campus state system; the board of regents; and, finally, the state legislature. Each of these stakeholders had its own, often conflicting, agendas. As one of our colleagues described it, “A university is the only place where a 10–1 committee vote is a tie.” Plus, this entire process played out under close media scrutiny.

As we repeatedly told our chancellor, if the goal was to create a system that would please everyone, we’d be wasting our time.

Here’s one example of the complexity of our decision making. Some faculty members were lobbying for more market- and performance-based compensation to attract, reward, and retain world-class talent in areas like stem cell research, which University of Wisconsin scientists helped pioneer. According to these faculty members, we needed new and more flexible compensation tools to attract and retain these researchers.

On the other hand, our labor groups, still reeling from the governor’s actions to limit their collective bargaining rights and increase their members’ benefits contributions, resisted performance-based pay. They were particularly wary about giving their supervisors authority over their pay raises. The labor groups lobbied hard (including in the press) for across-the-board pay raises to make up for years of no pay raises, as well as recently enacted increased contributions to retirement and health care that effectively reduced base pay by about 8 percent. Then, if there was any money left over, it could go for performance-based raises or bonuses. Threading the needle between these two diametrically opposed views was a tough challenge.

The complicated and sometimes irrational decision-making process makes it harder to legitimately involve employees in decision making, a key driver of engagement. Employees’ opinions about how to achieve agency goals and how to get the work of their organizations done more efficiently and effectively can be trumped by political considerations. This makes it far more difficult to explain and justify decisions and therefore harder to get employee buy-in—and engagement.

MULTIPLE EXTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS WHO HAVE CONTROL AND INFLUENCE

The inherent complexity of government decision making is further complicated because public-sector organizations often find themselves in the eye of a hurricane of external forces they have little or no control over. Agencies can be influenced by pressure from external constituencies who often have conflicting goals and agendas and can drown out employees’ voices. This can result in disengagement, with employees feeling their leaders lack authority and/or are ineffective and perhaps even unethical.

In addition to the appointed political officials who lead their agencies, public servants have to implement the policies and agendas of their chief executives. These executives include the president, governors, county executives, mayors, and so on, who, along with their staffs, don’t hesitate to directly intervene in agency affairs. Outside forces also include the legislative branch (Congress, state legislatures, city councils, and even school boards), as well as external audit organizations like the Government Accountability Office in the federal government and legislative audit bureaus for states.

Government agencies have little or no control over the influence these leaders and organizations have, but they can nevertheless drive policies, processes, budgets, and even downsizing and layoffs. As described earlier, regulatory agencies are particularly vulnerable to these conflicting demands, both by those who want stronger regulation and by those who chafe at regulation and believe aggressive regulation constrains business and limits job creation.

Because employee engagement is driven by factors such as satisfaction with leadership and the ability to make a difference, the impacts of these outside forces can block efforts to improve engagement.

There are also the outside nonprofit watchdog organizations that exist primarily, or solely, to scrutinize government. These mostly well-intentioned groups span the political spectrum, from liberal-oriented organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union to middle-of-the-road organizations like Common Cause to conservative groups like Citizens Against Government Waste, whose mission is to “eliminate waste, mismanagement, and inefficiency in the federal government.”

Each state also has its own set of government watchdog organizations. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington maintains a website of state government watchdog organizations that includes state-by-state listings of dozens of these organizations.³¹

In addition to the direct impacts of external organizations, especially on budgets and the workforce, there is a more subtle, but perhaps even more pernicious, impact: Employee creativity and risk taking can be hampered by fear that outside organizations—including and especially political opponents—will criticize and publicize mistakes. It’s hard for leaders to improve, or even maintain, engagement (e.g., “my opinions count”) when employees know their decisions and actions are subject to this kind of second guessing.

AN OLDER, MORE EDUCATED, AND MORE WHITE-COLLAR WORKFORCE

Government’s chief assets are its people. In most government organizations, employee pay and benefits account for 70 percent or more of budgets. Unlike private-sector firms that can leverage assets like raw materials, machinery, patents, and other proprietary intellectual property to drive business results, most government organizations don’t have these resources. What they do have is people—the public sector’s main asset. This makes leadership and employee engagement more critical in government. Plus, there are major differences between public- and private-sector workforces that affect engagement.

Demographically, the government workforce is, on average, older, more educated, and more white collar than the private-sector workforce. For example, federal, state, and local government agencies have higher percentages of employees over the age of 45 than private-sector employers.³² In local government, which employs more than 14 million workers, almost 36 percent are over the age of 50, compared to just 26 percent in the private sector.³³ Likewise, government has lower percentages of workers under the age of 30. The average age of a newly hired state government employee in 2010 was 37.³⁴ While I don’t have anything against thirtysomethings, this is hardly a youth movement.

There are reasons why the public-sector workforce is older, including golden handcuffs like generous pension plans and retiree health care that reward longevity. At the other end of the career life cycle, government hiring qualifications often emphasize job experience, even for entry-level jobs, thus disadvantaging recent college graduates who may have great potential but not much real work experience.

Public-sector employees are also more educated than their private-sector counterparts. Specifically, in 2010, 52 percent of public-sector workers had a bachelor’s, advanced, or professional degree, compared to 34 percent in the private sector. This is largely because a higher percentage of government jobs are white collar and require more education. About 55 percent of public-sector employees are employed in “management, professional, and related occupations,” compared to 37 percent in the private sector.³⁵

These workforce differences affect efforts to improve engagement in several ways:

• Employees who are more educated and employed in professional occupations have higher expectations about their ability—and need—to make a difference. This can be a huge advantage for government agencies committed to improving engagement. However, it also means that government managers must work hard to satisfy their employees’ need to be engaged by involving them in decisions and helping them clearly see the line of sight between their work and their agencies’ results.

• Older workers tend to be more skeptical about (and therefore less willing to endorse and support) what they may perceive as fads like employee engagement. It’s harder to convince them that engagement isn’t just another passing fancy; instead, it is a long-term strategy worth actively supporting.

• An older workforce also means a higher percentage of older managers and supervisors who can be reluctant to give new (and younger) employees real responsibility and a voice in decision making.

• Likewise, a higher proportion of older workers can mean more friction between generations in the workplace and can also mean fewer opportunities for younger workers to develop and advance—key factors in engagement. Although I’m skeptical about the generational stereotypes that writers and consultants seem to peddle relentlessly, the research clearly shows that younger workers generally prize work-life balance above most other job characteristics. This tends to grate on baby boomer managers who question younger workers’ commitment because they don’t seem to want to work as hard, or as long, as “we did when we were their age.”

While these demographic factors also exist in some private-sector organizations, the government workforce is older, more educated, and more white collar than the private sector. As a result, these demographic realities present higher hurdles to engagement in government than they do in the business world.

STRONG CIVIL-SERVICE RULES AND EMPLOYMENT PROTECTIONS, PLUS SUPERIOR EMPLOYEE BENEFITS

Most public-sector managers do not have the tools that private-sector managers have to influence employee behavior and performance. For example, public-sector managers can be strictly limited in how they can deal with poor performers; these restrictions don’t exist in most private sector organizations. While these limitations exist for good reasons, they can also be barriers to employee engagement.

In particular, public employees have stronger job protections, even in nonunion organizations, than their private-sector colleagues. In fact, courts have ruled that most civil-service employees can only be dismissed from their jobs “for cause” (i.e., for a valid and job-related reason) unlike most private-sector employees who are “at will” and can therefore be fired for any reason except discrimination. Plus, most government employees have the right to pursue lengthy, highly legalistic processes, including appeals, when they’ve been dismissed (or even when they feel they’ve been mistreated in the workplace).

Rather than try to deal with marginal performers or disengaged employees, many public-sector supervisors/managers often tolerate them. It’s not good management, but it’s reality. Anyone who’s worked in government personnel has stories of managers who come to HR because they want to fire an allegedly poor performer. The first question HR asks is about the employee’s performance appraisals. The answer, too often, is that there aren’t any appraisals for the alleged poor performer, or the appraisals are positive because “everyone around here gets good evaluations.”

On the other hand, I’m not a naive defender of HR. The flip side of this poor performer kabuki occurs when a manager comes to HR with a well-documented case of poor performance, yet HR is reluctant to take action for fear that the employee will make a fuss and generate bad publicity and maybe a lawsuit.

Failing to deal with poor performers can also magnify conflicts between older and younger employees because the latter want the organization to deal with ineffective workers (who may even be their bosses). This lack of management flexibility to take swift action against poor performers creates workforce calcification that makes it harder to drive change. Employees feel they can simply wait out any change efforts. This frustrates leaders who want to make big changes fast and also frustrates rank-and-file employees who are solid performers and don’t want to work with those who aren’t.

At the other end of the employee life cycle, hiring in government is often a lengthy and arduous process with many hurdles that tend to discourage the best talent from competing for government jobs. Rigid civil-service hiring requirements, often involving the dreaded civil-service exam, create a double whammy: The best candidates likely have other job options and may not wait around for government agencies to make hiring decisions after lengthy processes. A public-sector HR “professional” once confided in me that the many hurdles in government hiring were intentionally designed to screen out the candidates who are not fully committed to finding a government job. In other words, only the strong—and truly patient—should survive.

The public-sector hiring process also gives experienced candidates an advantage because the candidates with the most work experience usually get the job interviews, even for entry-level jobs. This poses a disadvantage to younger candidates, including recent college graduates.

One observer wryly characterized this decidedly user-unfriendly government process as resulting in hiring “the best of the desperate.”

In addition, despite attacks on public-sector benefits, most government employees still have better benefits than most private-sector workers. These include guaranteed pensions, more paid time off, and health care that is heavily employer subsidized, even for retirees. These generous benefits tend to limit government turnover, which is generally lower than in the private sector. While low turnover can be healthy, it also limits the infusion of new talent and ideas.

Rigid civil-service policies and rules can also stifle employee development, including limited opportunities to perform work that is more fulfilling and engaging; restrictions in job descriptions (“it’s not in the job description”); and limits on employee advancement, job movement, and succession planning. In fact, as I described earlier in this chapter, we can do succession planning in government if it’s designed as an inclusive development opportunity (open to qualified candidates) and not an exclusive process (preselection of the anointed).

LIMITED FINANCIAL TOOLS AND INCENTIVES TO RECOGNIZE PERFORMANCE AND INFLUENCE BEHAVIOR

For reasons that include budget cuts, pay freezes, union contracts, and strict rules on how pay is distributed, government managers do not have the same compensation and related tools to drive behavior as their private-sector peers. Government agencies usually can’t provide incentives like substantial pay raises and bonuses, not to mention perks like stock options, fitness center club memberships, and car services.

Compensation inflexibility is a barrier to improving engagement because a key driver of engagement is employees’ satisfaction with the recognition they receive—and compensation is an important way to recognize good performance. According to the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board engagement survey and model, key issues to measure engagement include the following:

• “Recognition and rewards are based on performance in my work unit.”

• “I am satisfied with the recognition and rewards I receive for my work.”

Most public-sector employees have not received raises in years due to difficult budgets. In Wisconsin, state government employees haven’t had an across-the-board pay raise since 2009. In addition, because of the criticism of public employees (underworked and overpaid with gold-plated benefits), agencies are reluctant to give pay raises for fear of political and public backlash.

For example, I was interviewed by a television news reporter about the University of Wisconsin’s decision to provide modest raises and bonuses to exceptional performers. One of the questions the reporter asked me went something like this: “Why are you giving raises and bonuses? Shouldn’t these employees just be happy they have jobs?”

Even when money for raises is available, union and other restrictions often prevent managers from using pay raises or bonuses as rewards or incentives. Unlike private-sector firms, few public agencies can provide meaningful pay raises or bonuses linked to performance. When there is money for raises, the more common way to distribute it is through across-the-board pay raises, often per union contracts. But how much does an across-the-board pay raise of 1 or 2 percent (when that is even possible in today’s highly constrained budget environment) provide recognition or drive behavior? Not much.

STRONG UNION INFLUENCE

Unlike in the private sector, where union membership is at an all-time low (7 percent of employees in 2011³⁶), union membership in the public sector reached an all-time high (37 percent) in 2011 (but declined slightly to 36 percent in 2012). In 2009, for the first time, the overall total number of union members in the public sector exceeded the number of union members in the private sector.³⁷ This was the inevitable outcome of the decades-long erosion of organized labor’s influence in the private sector; at the same time, labor’s influence in the government workplace has dramatically increased. Public-sector unions are therefore formidable forces that must be reckoned with, including in efforts to improve employee engagement. Even in states with laws that do not allow public employees to form unions, employee associations can exert considerable power and influence.

The relationship with public-employee unions is particularly sensitive today. In some public-sector environments, there is strong antilabor animus that, in turn, has further hardened labor’s attitude toward management.

In addition, there is the danger that organized labor can view employee-engagement efforts as attempts to co-opt employees and therefore minimize union influence and power. Organized labor also has its own allies and influence (including with elected officials whom unions support financially and politically). Much more than in the private sector, public-sector engagement efforts must bring unions inside the tent.

PUBLIC VISIBILITY OF GOVERNMENT

The work of government is complex but also uniquely visible. Open meeting laws in most jurisdictions, for example, require that legislative sessions be open to the public. These meetings are even routinely televised, from congressional proceedings shown nationally on C-SPAN to city council and school board meetings on local cable networks. Besides turning our elected and appointed officials into actors and actresses, this visibility is in stark contrast to private-sector deliberations (such as board meetings), which play out largely behind closed doors.

Freedom-of-information and open-records laws also force government agencies to provide, on request, material that includes meeting minutes, memos, decision documents, emails, and even text messages.

This public visibility of government can affect employee engagement in several ways, including dampening employees’ appetites for taking risks and being creative for fear that failures will be publicized and pilloried. It also has a chilling effect on interactions between supervisors and their direct reports, because documentation of these interactions, such as performance appraisals and even emails, can become public records.

I’m not arguing against government transparency. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, “Sunlight is said to be the best of antiseptics.”³⁸ But the result is that the work of government is highly visible and highly scrutinized.

Imagine the impact on large corporations if the deliberations of their leaders and managers, including board members, were as transparent and available to the public. That would certainly make for interesting and revealing reading.

The public visibility of government decision making and activities has a chilling effect on risk taking and innovation. Engaged employees are the most likely to contribute innovations, according to a Gallup survey of U.S. workers.³⁹

In government, however, innovation is not often rewarded. In fact, creativity can actually be penalized. In the 2012 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey of more than 1.6 million federal employees, only 38.5 percent of respondents said creativity and innovation were rewarded in their agencies. And this percentage is down from 2011, when 41 percent responded positively to this statement.⁴⁰

When a government agency or employee tries something new and creative and it fails (an often critical step in innovation), the failure is likely to be publicized. This creates disincentives to risk taking and innovation. The sad reality is that it’s highly likely that politicians, the media, and the public will seize on and publicize government failures.

In the private sector, while failure is certainly not intentional, healthy companies look at failure as a learning opportunity that can lead to improvements and eventual success. This principle has been called “failure value” or “intelligent fast failure.” While private-sector failures are not routinely publicized, unless they’re enormous (e.g., JPMorgan Chase), government failure is often seen as fatal, especially by political leaders. There is not much perceived “failure value” in public-sector failure.

A Partnership for Public Service analysis concluded that six factors must be present in government agencies to stimulate innovation:

• Employees are recognized for providing high-quality products and services.

• Employees are given real opportunities to improve their skills.

• Employees are involved in decisions that affect their work.

• Employees are given a sense of personal empowerment with respect to work processes.

• Employees are provided with opportunities to demonstrate their leadership skills.

• Leaders work to gain employees’ respect.⁴¹

If these look like the factors that drive engagement, that’s because they are quite similar.

The potential visibility of managers’ and supervisors’ actions can also stifle candid interactions with their employees. Experienced public-sector managers understand that virtually anything they say or do is subject to freedom-of-information or open-records requests. The sad result can be a reluctance to provide candid feedback and openly discuss performance issues, even with direct reports. Given that two key drivers of engagement are “I know what is expected of me on the job” and “I am given a real opportunity to improve my skills,” the absence of candid performance feedback is a barrier to improving employee engagement.

PUBLIC-SERVICE MOTIVATION

The public-private differences do not always put government at a disadvantage when it comes to employee engagement. There is strong evidence that public servants are motivated differently than private-sector employees. This public-service motivation (PSM) research suggests that government employees are attracted to public service primarily by the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of the people they serve. In psychological terms, they are “other-regarding.”⁴²

PSM research shows that this willingness to help others and serve the common good is a stronger motivator in the public sector than in the private sector. Public servants find meaning in work by making a positive difference in the lives of the citizens government serves. This concept is a counterweight to the assumption that people—including when they’re at work—make decisions primarily to maximize their personal benefit.

That’s not to suggest that our colleagues in the private sector are motivated solely by greed. I reject this kind of stereotype just as much as I reject negative stereotypes about government.

This PSM research, however, suggests that employees with high levels of public-service motivation are more likely to be satisfied and engaged than those who do not have this predisposition. To the extent that they see their agency’s mission as satisfying their basic need to help others, they will commit to that mission. These public servants are more likely to be motivated by intrinsic, not extrinsic, incentives.⁴³

As one county government employee put it, “I love the job I have because every day I can look back on at least one project that is going to make someone else’s life safer, someone’s property safer, someone’s community more secure.”⁴⁴

This is good news for government. The challenge, however, is to recruit and retain employees who have a high degree of PSM and then build on this gene to drive high levels of engagement. Even though engaged employees can be made, not born, government agencies can get a head start by recruiting, hiring, developing, and retaining employees with PSM.

However, this also means that employees with public-service motivation have higher expectations about their involvement in and impact on important policy issues and socially desirable outcomes. This puts pressure on managers who want to improve engagement to (1) help employees see directly how their work contributes to the agency mission, (2) involve employees in decision making, and (3) help them grow and develop in ways that will contribute to agency mission/goals.

So the differences between the public and private sectors, while distinctive and important, are not all negative in terms of driving higher levels of engagement in government. Despite the attacks on and declining public trust in government, there is still cause for optimism. The PSM factor, in particular, can be an important asset in efforts to improve public-sector employee engagement.