Human capital is the most important resource for any enterprise. However, the Government Accountability Office reported in 2020 that 60% of newly hired government employees only remained for two years. Such a talent drain forces government agencies to consume resources on constantly recruiting and training new personnel.
Agencies are routinely looking for ways to retain talented individuals and provide meaningful career paths, while cutting operational waste and redundancy. Employee lifecycle tools in end-to-end, hire-to-retire (H2R) integrated human resources processes are designed to streamline human resources employment and improve the retention of skilled employees. This provides enormous benefits to both agency management and employees.
Digital Transformation
The government doesn’t always make effective use of its employee data and require more efficient ways to access, query, and visualize the information. Across the government, agency leaders and HR teams are leveraging digital transformation to improve the H2R lifecycle.
Innovative programs use automation, analytics, artificial intelligence, omnichannel engagement, and other capabilities to create a 360-degree view of every employee. This allows HR leaders to provide systems that deliver an improved customer experience—offering tailored, personalized options from the start of an individual’s career, through their training, development, and career progression to the time they retire. The personalized employee experience includes an intuitive, single sign-on from anywhere capability and processes can be streamlined with mobile self-service capabilities.
The HR team can build solutions with helpful apps—from helpdesks to time and attendance–enabling employees to be more engaged. The right blend of people and technology can be a huge boon to employee effectiveness, productivity, and retention. Using a digital transformation plan to digitize form completion and other individual manual processes, agencies save money and free up employees for higher priority work.
Talent Recruitment
Technology can be invaluable when recruiting new employees. AI solutions provide a more collaborative and effective recruiting experience by automating processes with real-time tracking HR offices can deliver the right content to the candidate at the right stage of the hiring process. Information can be automatically sent to specific candidates with an appropriate cadence that makes them feel wanted. With AI managing applications and qualifications, hiring is easier for everyone.
Onboarding
The right technologies help agencies streamline mandated in-processing forms, individual benefit programs, and personnel record management. Less manual labor and faster processing means employees can start working sooner. Technology gives new hires a smoother experience—from offer acceptance through the training and mission orientation activities in the first year of employment. New employee training and orientation can be integrated into one standardized platform, so managers can track each employee’s progress in real-time. This makes the employee’s onboarding experience more positive and increases agency efficiency.
Workforce Planning
Leaders can use platforms to visualize data, equipping them to make data-driven decisions and draw insights from trends. Greater visibility into the available talent pool allows supervisors to use personnel resources effectively. They can evaluate mission needs, discover workforce talent gaps, and formulate appropriate recruiting efforts.
Employee Development
Providing timely and effective training and education helps improve employee retention. By the time an employee is completely onboarded, agencies have a lot of information about them, including training needs, special skills, and preliminary career development goals. With that data, the right digital transformation solution can help employees identify where they want to go next and which skills they will need.
With these tools, education and training can be tailored for each individual’s career goals. Automated systems can alert people to relevant opportunities and give access to training without requiring employees to fill out forms or talk to HR staff. With information at their fingertips for both employees and managers, the agency community remains connected.
Personalization
Many legacy HR systems are impersonal and one-size-fits-all. Systems that allow for personalization increase engagement by doing something very simple: making employees feel valued, noticed, and cared for. AI and machine learning capabilities allow computers to be more interactive with employees so they can pinpoint relevant data and offer very specific opportunities.
Setting Goals
Managers often struggle to set mission goals and then translate them into workforce tasks. With a comprehensive digital transformation solution, management can set specific mission goals and measurements and link them to performance objectives for individual employees. Because all the information is managed on a single, holistic platform, managers can link mission goals to an individual’s desire for a specific kind of assignment or training. With a 360-degree view of an employee, supervisors can also set performance goals with employees and then check progress and provide feedback quarterly or semiannually, helping both the employees and the agencies realize their long-term goals.
View our webinar to learn more about how government and industry thought leaders are using Hire to Retire.
