When recently surveyed about the impact of Coronavirus on HR, 89% of public sector respondents said that keeping employees healthy was their biggest concern. Given that 92% still have some portion of their employees working from the office, that means the majority of HR professionals are being forced to rethink how they conduct daily operations in their physical environments.

As the world addresses the widespread impact of COVID-19 from a physical and mental perspective, many things remain uncertain. However, less uncertain is the fact that public sector employees continue to be responsible for providing a safe work environment as this dire situation continues to unfold. Whether some of your staff are now telecommuting or will be soon, inevitably there will be public sector employees who cannot perform their critical functions remotely. Doing everything we can to make these employees feel supported, informed, and safe is a top priority.

As we approach a month since the first COVID-19 stay-at-home orders were put into place, HR professionals in the public sector are still waiting for the dust to settle from the upending of their daily operations. Transitioning employees to remote working, maintaining critical services to the public, and concerns about layoffs or shuttered departments have all been top of mind as we continue to confront uncharted territory.

A recent survey of HR professionals by Gartner found that 88% of organizations have encouraged or required employees to work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In public sector and higher education organizations, however, there are unique challenges to successfully implementing a work remote program for employees while also maintaining critical services. Whether it be utilities, police and fire, online schooling or other various functions deemed essential, working remotely may not be as simple as it is for private sector companies.

Hiring in the public sector today is becoming increasingly difficult, as high retirement numbers are causing jobs to open up a rate the public sector can’t keep up with and the near-record low unemployment rate making competition for talent tough. One way to lessen the current talent gap is to grab job seeker attention through engaging job promotions.

The public sector is struggling to recruit effectively throughout the entire application and candidate selection process. One area that can easily be improved is the interview. At our CONNECT user conference, we asked hundreds of public sector HR professionals to share their favorite interview questions they use to gain better insights into candidates and determine whether someone is the right fit for the position.

We compiled some of the best ones into a list of 99 Questions to Ask Public Sector Candidates. Here are some of them:

According to Gartner, “Approaches to learning are stubbornly stuck in the past — too episodic, too rigid, too slow, too expensive and out of sync with today’s needs.” Microlearning aims to solve this by reducing the length of individual employee training courses and the volume of content communicated in each lesson. Information is presented in more digestible pieces so it can be learned more quickly and accurately, with greater expected retention.