For years, the public sector and all those doing business with the federal government have focused on attracting and retaining millennials.
But my two cents, millennials seem like old news.
Millennials are more cooperative than their younger peers, Generation Z, and have more predictable expectations of their employer, such as stability, career advancement, and above-average health benefits.
Gen Z remains an anomaly, mostly because we know so little about them. But this group will quickly outnumber millennials, making them a highly sought-after workforce.
They are our future. We lag behind tech giants like Apple, Google and Amazon when it comes to Gen Z recruitment and retention, which ultimately leaves a gaping talent hole for national security and IT modernization for the US government.
The generation born between 1997-2012, or Gen Z, currently makes up about 12% of the US workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But they are about to overtake millennials based on the number of births worldwide in this age pool.
While there is strength in numbers, Gen Z is also more vocal about their expectations of their employers compared to millennials or Gen X. For the public sector, we can now start implementing changes in our behavior now to prepare for their arrival.
Here are my top four tips.
Create a successful intern program
Internships should be engaging and mutually beneficial. Put aside the thought of ‘back in my day, we did coffee runs’ or ‘we had to earn our stripes.’ When I interact with my customers, I always ask them, “What results do they hope to achieve by partnering with us?”
Ask your interns the same question. They usually say they hope to gain real-world experience, use real technologies, and bring their ideas to the table. Offer your interns an immersive experience where they do the work and gain experience they can put on a resume.
As their employer, create an action plan to convert them into full-time employees. We are currently finishing CACI’s Summer Internship program which is mainly 70% experiential, 20% collaboration, and 10% formal training.
Our 325 interns attended enrichment seminars, earned accreditations and learned how to use the latest technologies including Agile at scale, artificial intelligence, Linux, cloud and more.
Practice reverse mentorship
Whether formal or informal, reverse mentoring is an effective way to engage and listen to the voice of Gen Z. Most people think of mentoring as a formal program where someone experienced or higher up in the company hierarchy mentors a more junior.
Reverse mentoring reverses this, with more junior employees mentoring senior employees and often having to formalize this with the “mentee” asking the Gen Z “mentor” to teach them digital technology and collaboration.
Gen Z is the most diverse generation in US history. They are “digital natives,” who grew up with a smartphone welded to their palm, and we can learn a little from them. They think differently, problem solve differently, and collaborate differently.
They are unrestrained and confident in using technology; to be successful, we must use a similar approach in our business leadership. This is the future of work.
Engage Gen Z while they’re young
In the 1960s, every kid wanted to be an astronaut. The Gemini and Apollo missions captivated the nation and inspired children to become part of public service. Google, TikTok, Meta, YouTube and others dominate classrooms and everyday life. We need to guide young minds back to public service and national security.
For example, we need more talent in digital signal processing. Because Gen Z is highly committed to social causes, we can show them through experimental projects how they can use technology to make the world better and safer.
To achieve this, we must actively work with academia to develop an engaging digital signal processing and radio frequency curriculum and sponsor outreach programs in these areas throughout the school year.
We cannot simply expect them to choose these educational paths and we cannot simply attend career fairs in the hope of finding job candidates.
Provide significant benefits.
We can talk about health care premiums until we’re blue in the face, but most Gen Z employees haven’t maxed out their health care coverage nor do they have a primary care doctor.
Gen Z wants continuous learning of contemporary technology, improved tuition payments, and reimbursement for strategically important certifications in areas like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, Agile Development, ServiceNow and GitLab.
They demand flexibility in work – especially remote work – and they really want mobility. Those are the “significant benefits” we hear from Gen Zers and they’re even willing to take a pay cut for these opportunities.
Empower all your employees to collaborate and collaborate with other teams across different customers and missions. At CACI, we call our program #makingmoves. The program makes it easy for employees to seamlessly move around the company and find new and challenging opportunities.
For Gen Z: let’s not just give them a job, but an engaging, dynamic career with growth potential.
Sustainability is about engagement, learning and challenges, digital collaboration and empowering the disruptive Gen Z to enable change.
Glenn Kurowski is senior vice president and chief technology officer for CACI International.