Attrition in the Federal Workforce

Knowledge retention and transfer is a challenge within any large organization, but this is especially true for public sector workers within the U.S. federal government. The federal government is shrinking on a per capita basis despite its growing responsibilities. Due to some interesting dynamics in this aspect of the labor market (federal retirement and pension rules, overall stagnation in the workforce, etc.), understanding the dynamics that drive a federal worker to stay or go is a complex issue.  The ability to anticipate and plan for these dynamics could improve the ability of these organizations to deliver public services to the citizens. 

Our project and web tool was developed keeping federal agency leaders in mind, with the goal of creating an application that would help leaders understand historic attrition trends, future predicted attrition levels, factors influencing attrition, and help them identify "at-risk" groups. Doing so would enable agency leaders and HR to develop policies for attrition mitigation, strategies for recruitment, and succession plans.