Learn about demographic and cultural changes that have taken place in recent decades—which make it critically important for government leaders to attract creative individuals into public service—and how a human services agency in Nebraska is addressing the challenge.

Deniz Zeynep Leuenberger and Jodie Drapal Kluver

The public sector has long been responsible for responding to complex and abstract social issues. Now, with the advent of global changes and technological advancements, issues such as Internet personal identity theft, environmental resource limitations, and homeland security require nontraditional solutions. Other factors—limited resources, bounded information, technological barriers, and norms regarding democratic participation, efficiency, effectiveness, and equity—further complicate decision making. The problems faced by public administrators require information on citizens’ desires, resource barriers and assets, and the most recent theoretical and technological innovations and their applicability to societal problems. Public and nonprofit organizations alike are faced with an increased need to recruit and retain experienced and well-qualified workers to tackle these problems.

Demand for Creative Individuals

Current literature has captured an interesting trend, which suggests that the number of creative individuals rises prior to periods of major social, economic, and political change and innovation. If this notion is accurate,can the increase in the number of  “knowledge workers”meet the increasing need for them in society and are educational structures
in place to assist in their development? Five recent books on this topic report that a core of individuals in society is transforming public and nonprofit agencies by redirecting a change in values.As caretakers of information and knowledge, these individuals are leading change through careers in healthcare, social work, education, and many other fields.

The titles of these books communicate the essence of this trend:

• The Rise of the Creative Class describes the growth of the creative class in relation to generations and how this emerging class is altering the face of the workplace.

• Creative Collaboration describes collaborative relationships that result in ground breaking innovations in the arts and scientific thought. It gives examples of thirteen partnerships and details the working relationships between creative class individuals.

• The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People are Changing the World reports that the creative culture community can transform challenges into opportunities and provides practical details on how creativity can be used to inspire new social solutions.

• Imagine: What America Could Be in the 21st Century optimistically discusses the topics of education, citizenship, law, economics, activism, community,
  environment, and government through the vision
  of creative class members.

Taken together, these works suggest that adopting an active approach to include the creative class in organizations will result in solving some of the difficult problems facing us today.

Generational Collision

What does this trend mean for public administration? In When Generations Collide, the authors explore communication patterns between employees born in five generations and the related outcomes in employee productivity and satisfaction. Also,they suggest that persons born in certain historical periods share performance and communication characteristics on the basis of social and normative orientation.The five generational categories include the traditionalists, baby boomers, generation Xers, millennials, and cuspers. These groups are defined by their years of birth, the social and normative environment in which they were raised, and common generalized characteristics (Table 1).

Differences in beliefs and experiences between the generations lead to communication problems in the workplace. For instance, baby boomers may view the desire for flexibility in work hours and relatively frequent movement between jobs attributed to the generation X and millennial generations as a lack of dedication and loyalty to the organization. Other generations may interpret the traditionalists’ focus on the history of the organization and consistency as a lack of support for creative solutions and innovation. The failure to address generational communication differences may lead to problems in retention and recruitment and ultimately reduced productivity. This suggests that communication between different generations may require various methods and styles.

Creative Class

In The Rise of the Creative Class, the author suggests that as a society we are moving from a labor and service market toward a new era based on knowledge and creativity. Leading this market shift are the thirty-eight million Americans in many diverse fields who create for a living.The creative class comprises “people who add economic value to the community through their creative acts—referred to as the ‘knowledge workers.’”This class includes two subgroups: the super creative core (scientists, engineers, professors, poets, artists, etc.) and the creative professionals (high technology, financial services, legal and health industries, etc.). The creative class is not new to our society (it has always been a component), but in recent years its numbers have grown dramatically, from 10 percent of the workforce in 1900 to 30.1 percent in 1999, or more than thirty-eight million individuals (Table 2). As a result of this

growth, the labor market has changed markedly, including a shift to the horizontal, where organizational charts become flatter and shorter; emphasis on self-motivated, life long learning; and a vibrant horizontal hyper-mobility movement from workplace to workplace.

Along with these changes, the creative class brings to the workplace the contributions of innovative and cutting-edge practices and solutions to problem solving.As an employee,the creative class member is motivated by a passion for developing “one’s life’s work” rather than simply collecting a paycheck. The individual is invested in the project, program, or process to the degree where he or she requires little direction or oversight.As a result,drivers for the creative class differ from “traditional” employee motivations. For instance, motivating the creative class requires a stimulating workplace environment. In this environment, the worker is challenged to express talents and develop abilities, has the freedom and flexibility to weave personal and work lives together, and is compensated both financially and by a supportive organizational culture and an external environment (city, region, etc.) that is culturally stimulating. (See the case studies for examples of actions that agencies can take to foster a workplace environment that better fulfills the needs of a creative workforce.)

Intersection of Demographic and Cultural Change

The impact of the creative class on organizational culture is often underestimated. Over time, the number of creative class members increases with each new generation of the population, as shown in Table 2, exacerbating the generational and creative class issues in the workplace.

These recent works acknowledge that a shift has occurred in the workforce and that this change has ramifications now and in the future for public management. Public administrators need to respond to the questions arising from such demographic and cultural changes:

• Is the public sector creating an environment that attracts and retains the creative class worker?
• How do public-sector agencies need to change to promote this environment?
• What are the consequences for the public sector if it chooses not to invite the creative class into its workforce?
• What are the consequences if they do?

To avoid the trap of developing a one-size-fits-all approach to responding to these questions, public-sector agencies should examine themselves, considering whether they should embrace the change and, if so, how they should do so:

• What is the nature of our work?

• What is our current organizational culture?

• What rules, regulations, and (labor-management) contracts would prohibit embracing creative change?

• Would embracing the creative class jeopardize our public nature (responsiveness to the citizen)?

• What are the demographic characteristics of workers, and do they reflect the diversity of the community and customers?

• What are the potential costs to the quality of service if less-centralized, less-regulated systems are adopted?

• How will the history and mission of the organization be preserved or adjusted if change is adopted?

Case Study Solutions

Solutions offered in response to generational and creative class issues in the workplace include a focus on mentoring, training, rewards, flexibility, and mission and vision.To harness creative energy in the workplace, we suggest some simple alterations to the environment and provide examples of one agency’s implementation of such practices.

To provide these examples, we drew on the recent experience of a state human services agency in Nebraska, which at the time of our research was experiencing recruitment and retention problems.The organization’s mission and workforce focus on families and youth involved with the child protective services and juvenile criminal justice systems, and the agency has recently made changes to foster a work environment that attracts and retains creative workers.

Mentoring

As one group of employees approaches retirement age, mentoring support systems actively include younger workers, there by allowing the agency to limit intergenerational conflicts and introduce creative approaches to perennial problems. Younger workers may also mentor senior coworkers by introducing and translating new technologies and innovations.

Case Study

Following training on generational issues, the agency’s employee organization determined that millennial and generation X practitioners wanted more frequent performance feedback from their supervisors, who were mostly baby boomers. The supervisors reported being overwhelmed by the demand for feedback on work performance. The agency resolved the problem by encouraging senior and newer employees to form mentoring partnerships to provide feedback on day-to-day work activities and training in areas that needed improvement. When the agency implemented a new computer system to manage client information, the mentoring roles were reversed in the partnerships.

Training

Training programs are adjusted to allow for lifelong learning. As training moves from a monolithic, larger process to stages, it is used as a reward for good performance. Earning training encourages employee loyalty to the organization, reduces the initial investment in training of new workers, reduces the costs to the agency of hypermobility, and allows employees of all generations to benefit from updated technological and theoretical information.

Case Study

The agency practice had been to submit new employees to a four-month training process at an off-site location. To address the learning styles of new employees and to create opportunities for hands-on training, the agency divided the training into components and reduced the amount of off-site training by assigning some training responsibilities to the supervisor of each employee. It required employees to take the core component close to their hire date and staggered the other components over about six months. In addition, the agency reinitiated workshop and continuing education funding, which had been eliminated due to budget cuts. The changes allowed the agency to train an unusually large number of new workers when it experienced high turnover.

Reward

Rewards are balanced to reflect the motivation of workers in different generations. Training, vacations, flexible work hours and location, and monetary rewards are used to attract and retain workers with good performance. The organization creates a wider range of rewards from which employees may choose.

Case Study

To increase retention, the agency incorporated individualized reward plans for some of its units through a pilot project. It surveyed and asked employees to rank the rewards that motivated them from a list. Supervisors administered the survey in one-on-one meetings with workers every three months. The list included time off for good performance, flexibility and funding for education, verbal rewards, lunch with peers or supervisors, reward banquets, assignment to special projects, assignment to mentoring opportunities (as mentor or mentee), casual dress days, and off-site work days.

Flexibility

Embracing available technology, agencies explore flexibility in the workplace and in the hours of work. Balancing flexibility for employees with responsiveness to customer needs, agencies attract creative class workers as well as retired traditionalists and baby boomers part time. Problems of workplace diversity are also improved through flexible workplaces.

Case Study

Following a period of unusually high turnover, the organization used flexible scheduling to attract experienced workers into its investigations department. Retired persons and those on extended parental leave were asked to come back with schedules that were part time, divided into four 10-hour days instead of five 8hour days, or extended to evening, overnight, and early morning hours. As a result, recruitment and retention of experienced workers improved. Within six months, other workers in other units used flexible scheduling to attend courses for advanced degrees related to their work.

Mission and Vision

Agencies communicate their direction in this increasingly diverse environment through statements of goals, mission, and vision. Public administration is faced with the dilemma (and the advantage) of not having a clear, precise mission or vision. New generations of practitioners create multiple missions: for individuals, organizations, and public management in general.

Case Study

The agency director changed twice in two years, and the employees and supervisors of the agency reported confusion as to the direction and plan of the organization. Several units of the agency created their own missions and strategic plans to guide their practice in the interim. When the agency clarified its mission and strategic plan, each unit revised its plans to coincide with the larger organization. The agency also encouraged workers in high-stress, high-burnout positions to develop individual missions.

Conclusion

In the face of a number of cultural, political, and environmental changes, public-sector organizations need to encourage public managers to attract and develop persons capable of and energized for solving the problems we now face. A key component of the solution is including the millennial and creative class individuals in the public sector. These groups possess the innovative and creative skills to transform the way we view and solve problems. As we learn more about this demographic, we find that senior public administrators can use mentoring and training, for example, to translate their experience to new practitioners by highlighting the potential benefits of their contribution to the whole of society.

A focus on agency mission and individual employee’s contribution to it encourages young recruits to check out a career in public service. Attracting a new generation of public administrators and maintaining strong , effective organizations are increasingly tied to accurately portraying the value system inherent in the public service to be performed. An agency’s translation of its mission, use of strategic planning, and communication of potential outcomes from the services or information it provides are vital in attracting and retaining young professionals and will lead to improved results.

References

Florida, Richard. The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 2002).

John-Steiner,Vera. Creative Collaboration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Lancaster, L. C., and D. Stillman. When Generations Collide: Who They Are.Why They Clash. How to Solve the Generational Puzzle (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002).

Ray,P. H.,and S.R. Anderson. The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People are Changing the World (New York:Three Rivers Press, 2000).

Williamsen, M., ed. Imagine: What America Could Be in the 21st Century (Rodale Press, 2000).

Deniz Zeynep Leuenberger, PhD, is an assistant professor of political science at Bridgewater State College in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. She was the primary researcher for the original project with the state agency referenced in this article.The research was initiated by the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 2003. She can be reached at dleuenberger@bridgew.edu.

Jodie Drapal Kluver is a PhD candidate at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and is a coauthor and research partner on this and several other research projects on generational and creative class issues.