Hello government employees and experts! Employee morale is one of the most important factors for any organization, including government institutions! We would love to hear your thoughts:

Hello,

I’m a former federal worker and also worked for a government contractor in the past.  I would argue that all of those would be nice to have, but if I had to pick (and this is totally my opinion as a 42 y.o. mother of three) I would rank them c, b, d, a with c being the highest.

Hope that helps jump start the conversation, happy to answer any questions.

As a current federal government contractor in an agency that is the target of intense retribution by the current administration, all four of these elements are useful, but above all the support of the administration for activities that the government of any free and democratic society should support totally, regardess of political ideology, that support the health and welfare of the society as a whole, is what boosts staff morale in public sector institutions.

When swaths of government that for decades have been deliberately separate from politics are made political, and targeted by the regime, these institutions are destroyed, their staff demoralized, and society loses.

These are great insights! Thank you for sharing ​@AdamK12 and ​@pamelalbeck. 

Thanks ​@erollins for raising this important topic! Something that I hear often these days is some variant of “what can I do?” It’s a challenging question to answer because the impact of the federal workforce isn’t readily apparent outside of the DC region. So I would encourage people in this network to advocate for what government agencies do to improve people’s lives with concrete, clear examples like:

• Most obviously, if you receive benefits like Social Security, veterans’ benefits, or small business loans, those come from federal agencies.
• If you or someone you know works at a university or a nonprofit organization, especially in areas like health, science, or the humanities, your job may depend on grants from agencies like the NIH, the CDC, the National Science Foundation, or the National Endowment for the Humanities. If your work is with nonprofits that work overseas to help hunger or health, you probably already lost your job which was funded through USAID.
• If you use data in your job, or need any kind of service or information for your work or personal needs, you rely on the federal workforce. This could include economic data from the Departments of Labor or Commerce, or health information from the agencies above.

People often listen to friends and family, especially when they can give clear and concrete examples that are relatable, so in your own communities, please bring these or similar points up!

​@AdamK12 Yes to the outside of DC, I was located in Western PA.

​@pamelalbeck -- I love that area-used to spend a lot of time there. There’s a large community of veterans in western PA, and it’s also a hub for medical innovation with UPMC and tech though Carnegie Mellon! (In fact, last week I met a CMU postdoc who was doing some really valuable work using large language models to help get medical information to people.)