NEOGOV Blog

Americans are getting older and retirements are rising throughout the U.S. workforce. About 10,000 people turn age 65 each day, bringing a flood of change to local governments.

Because public sector employees are older on average, this could have an outsized impact on localities. Neil Reichenberg of the International Public Management Association for Human Resources reported Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing that 37 percent of employees in local government are at least 50 years of age, compared to just 28 percent in the private sector.

Government organizations must prepare for the increasing age of its workforce and get ready for more employees to become eligible for retirement. According to the Center for State and Local Government Excellence's (SLGE) workforce survey, 44 percent of organizations saw more people retire in 2018 than in 2017; a mere 10 percent of organizations said retirements were lower during the same time period.

While more Americans are putting off retirement and working past age 60, people who work in government aren’t necessarily following the delayed retirement trend. In the past year, SLGE reported only 21 percent of eligible state and local government employees postponed their retirement, down from 44 percent in 2009.

As a local government leader, what leading practices for mentoring and offboarding can keep your organization afloat during this inevitable change?

Every organization will have a unique employee onboarding process. Of course, the details will be partly dictated by administrative, IT, legal, and human resource needs. But, for your onboarding to be effective, it should also be guided by continuous employee feedback.

A recent study conducted by Phil McAleer, a psychologist at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, found that we begin forming opinions about people when they first open their mouths.