Understanding Attrition

Federal agencies are losing far too many new hires within their first two years of employment, according to a new report by the Partnership for Public Service and Booz Allen Hamilton.

The report, issued Thursday, noted that from fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2008, 24.2 percent of new hires at federal agencies left their jobs within the first two years. That number is even higher at the Commerce, Homeland Security and Treasury departments, where 35 percent of workers left within the first two years, the Partnership and Booz Allen found. Retirements also pose a problem, as more than 48 percent of federal workers will be eligible to be retire by 2015, including 67 percent of supervisors, the report noted.

In particular, employees in the federal information technology field might not be motivated to stay in their jobs, in part because of concern about staying on the cutting edge of their field as well as the nature of the work they are doing, the report noted. During the "dot-come era," competition for IT professionals was high, driving up attrition for those mission-critical occupations. And given the high demand in the public and private sectors for cybersecurity professionals and advanced IT skills, agencies should give special attention to the possible risk of losing that talent, the report states.

So what should agencies do to analyze and minimize attrition? The report recommended that agencies first analyze who is leaving, why they are leaving and the impact of external factors, such as the economy, geographic location or better opportunities in the private sector.

"If agencies don't study and understand attrition, they can't take effective steps to fend off unwanted or unpredicted loss of talent," the report states. "Thus, federal agencies should invest in attrition analysis to find out who is leaving their organizations and why they are leaving."