Matching Foreign Service officers to positions: the labor market at the State Department

 Many public servants became discouraged during the Trump administration, and those who serve in U.S. Embassies and consulates, and at the State Department in Washington, are no exception.  But the demands of overseas assignments make their internal labor market a matching market with many specific requirements.

Here's a new report:

Retention Issues at the State Department

"In a new report published by the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Constanza Castro Zúñiga, Mojib Ghaznawi, and Caroline Kim highlight the retention crisis at the State Department. The Harvard Kennedy School Master in Public Policy (MPP) graduates surveyed 2,853 Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) and Foreign Service Specialists (FSSs) on their experiences at State.

"Their report finds that “31.42% (797) of current officers surveyed are seriously considering leaving the Foreign Service and are actively exploring their options. Of these officers, 31.27% (247) plan to leave in the next year and 56.58% (447) plan to leave in the next five years. This indicates a clear discontent within the Foreign Service that will increase attrition above the Department’s historical averages” (p.11).

"The authors conclude that “FSOs and FSSs feel lost in a workplace that lacks accountability and transparency, to the point where our data suggests a coming exodus on the horizon. While it is impossible to design the perfect system, the Department can strive to create a Foreign Service that feels fair, equitable, and inclusive. However, that can only happen if the Department understands what is driving people away. By surveying over one-fifth of the State Department’s officer corps, we discovered the four biggest drivers that motivate members to leave the Department. By targeting structural and cultural changes to address families, assignments, promotions, and bias, the Department can begin a proactive approach to address retention. However, this will require leadership to listen from the bottom-up and implement from the topdown. If the State Department can begin implementing the recommendations that we have suggested here, it will be on its way to having a Foreign Service that is truly talented and representative” (p. 41).

"Recommendations include extension of Leave Without Pay (LWOP) for Department employees; updated and more flexible remote work policies; a centralized preference matching system to streamline, standardize, and increase transparency in the assignments process; and that the State Department should consider conducting an annual Organizational Climate Survey."

***********

The report itself is here:  https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/vu5gk9qfh6vd0uc6feagqu1u6o7mmawc 

Here's part of the discussion of the matching market: 

"The  current  assignments  process  at  State  is  broken.  Bidders  and  hiring  managers  waste  considerable  time and energy under the current system trying to extract commitments from each other. Rules related to  bidding  prevent  commitments  and  formal  offers  before  imposed  deadlines,  relying  on  informal “handshakes”  of  mutual  interest.  Pressure  on  both  sides  to  secure  desirable  positions  or  candidates  leads to suboptimal outcomes in a process that is growing increasingly non-transparent, stressful, time-consuming, and inequitable.

...

" The Bureau of Global Talent Management’s Office of Career Development and Assignments (GTM/CDA) is collaborating with the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP)58 to design, execute, and evaluate a pilot use of a preference-matching algorithm in bidding and assignments. NRMP will adapt its ranking process to account for CDA bidding rules on eligibility.  NRMP will provide a software platform for collecting rank ordered preferences from bidders, hiring-managers, and bureaus.  CDA  and  NRMP  will  develop  training  and  communication  materials  for  bidders,  hiring  managers, and bureau decision-makers on the use of the algorithm during one or more regular bidding cycles, as well as provide customer support on using NRMP’s proprietary software. Using the collected preferences, NRMP will run the algorithm to produce matches for bureaus to use as the basis for handshake offers for assignments."