Three Imperatives for the Future of Work within Federal Government Ecosystem

Federal agencies are beginning to address their strategy and plan their approach to bring employees back to the office nearly a year and half since the start of the pandemic. Workforces that transitioned to full-time telework practically overnight and adopted new norms are now driving and shaping what the future of work will look like.

Guidance for Federal Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies was released by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the General Services Administration (GSA) in June 2021. The challenge – and the opportunity – exists today for organizations to assess their current culture, people, processes, technology, and operations to create a different and dynamic workplace strategy for the future.

GDIT is no exception. At the start of the pandemic, alongside our customers, we had to quickly adapt and saw an opportunity to pursue modernization investments to empower our workforce, increase productivity, and develop strategic plans for the future of work at GDIT. Today, our experience and our capabilities are delivering value to our customers who are pursuing their own “Future of Work” journey. We are partnering with them on mission enablement activities across three thematic value streams, which include:

• Enabling re-entry and transitioning to the new “normal.” Agencies must acknowledge that the world has changed. Communicating about this reality and the ways they are actively supporting their teams – today and for the long-term – is key. Demonstrating flexibility and an ongoing commitment to helping leaders and individual contributors alike will create a culture of loyalty and trust. These essential strategies provide the foundation for decreased attrition and will increase the recognition required for attracting and retaining a quality workforce.

• Workforce-centric capability and experience enhancement. The characteristics and dynamics of individual team, job, and personal circumstances led to a wide range of outcomes for employees as organizations responded to the pandemic. Incorporating these evolving and diverse employee needs, as well as emerging social and cultural norms, at the center of planning processes helps guide strategic workplace investments to enhance employee capability, flexibility, and quality of experience. By evaluating and enhancing remote and flexible work capabilities alongside the factors that contribute to employee experience, organizations can facilitate productivity, collaboration, and work-life balance that result in positive mission impact and empowered workforce.

• Transforming Work and the Workplace. Across every industry or service sector, the opportunity exists to create a radically different ways to do our work, as well as a radically different environment from which to do it. As an example, evaluating pain points in existing processes should be a driver and an accelerator for process automation and digital transformation. An “Art of the Possible” exploration coupled with an experience design management exercise can increase productivity in measurable ways while also maintaining the workplace/workstyle flexibility and personalization discussed above. This can also help leaders identify collaboration solutions that are easy to use and access and that are aligned to existing governance models.

From our lessons learned and analytically predicting the needs for inclusion for future consideration, GDIT makes the following recommendations for strategically planning:

• Increased mission and workforce resilience to adapt to future change
• Increased workforce mobility
• Improved speed, consistency, and capacity of routine tasks
• Increased workforce and operations visibility and performance management
• Adaptive and cost-efficient technology infrastructure
• Improved employee experience, sentiment, and retention
• Quantifiable measurements for productivity, suitability, collaboration, satisfaction
• Governance and security-enabled solutions
• Technology optimization
• Organizational reputation for thought-leadership

While the pandemic created a sudden shift that is still impacting where and how people work, it also provided an opportunity to prioritize funding, projects and create a dramatically different – and better – Future of Work. We’re committed to bringing about that better future – and doing it in ways that help advance our customers’ critical missions every day.

To learn more about the GDIT Future of Work offering, contact: Future_of_Work@gdit.com