Volpe Center: Volpe Center Highlights

Information Resources

Volpe Center Highlights - January/February 2001

Director's Notes

Building the Future Volpe Workforce

The Volpe Center's continuing success in fostering innovation and bringing the latest technologies to bear on defining and solving the broad array of complex challenges facing the transportation community depends on the Center's ability to continue to attract and retain quality staff. The Center is not facing this challenge alone: the Washington press has been full of stories on the talent crisis facing the federal government after years of downsizing. Like every federal agency, we are keenly aware of the pressing human resource issues facing government, including an aging workforce and a tight labor market. Creating the Volpe workforce of the future demands the focused efforts of our entire management team working in partnership with our planning, human resource, and technical staffs to implement an innovative, integrated strategy to bring in and retain high-value staff and to transfer knowledge from those who are departing.

Our major challenge is - and will continue to be - recruiting, training and retaining quality federal staff. Recent research and interviews with young people entering the workforce cite four factors that new workers seek: an opportunity to do good, a family friendly environment, opportunities for training, and the availability of mentors. A recent "Brookings Report" states that new graduates who wish to work in public service are looking for flexibility and meaningful work. Young Americans are not saying, "show me the money" so much as "show me the work."

We are making progress in the critical human resource arena.

In 2000, we made nearly 50 permanent hires; currently, we employ more than 30 undergraduate, masters, and doctoral candidates as co-ops representing a wide range of schools both locally and nationally; nearly one-half of our 550-strong federal workforce joined the Volpe Center in the past five years;
Last year, we invested nearly one million dollars to provide training and offer tuition assistance to our staff;
Our new employee orientation, mentoring, and individual development planning programs have been revitalized and reinvented; we have established these practices to nurture our existing staff and to integrate our new employees into the workforce quickly by providing them with the information resources and supporting tools to help them be successful;
We have established dual tracks for our staff - one track primarily technical, the other toward management - in order to allow for career flexibility;
We have awarded the first annual John A. Volpe Transportation Internship, and will continue to use this developmental program to gain access to the best pool of new leadership in the field of transportation;
We have established the innovative Volpe Emeritus Program to take advantage of the accumulated knowledge of our more senior federal staff and to pay tribute to their long and distinguished careers in public service;
We have brought and will continue to bring professors to Volpe on assignments both to contribute their knowledge and to mentor our newer staff;
We have expanded the number of participants in our Volpe Fellows Program (full reimbursement of tuition, fees, and book expenses for graduate degree studies) to enhance staff technical expertise;
Our recruitment efforts are utilizing recently available compensation tools, such as advanced step hiring and recruitment and relocation bonuses, to attract top candidates. As soon as other flexibilities, such as student loan repayment, become available, we will add them to our recruitment "tool kit."

While I am proud of what we have accomplished, we have much more to do. We have an incredible depth of talent at the Center - people who have tremendous energy, enthusiasm, and commitment. It is up to our veterans to take new people under their wings and give them the mentoring and on-the-job training they need to be successful. I am sure that working together, merging the vitality and vigor of our next generation with the experience and resilience of those who are more seasoned, we can respond to new opportunities, meet future challenges, and, most important, make a difference and the world a better place.

In a fee-for-service organization, where we cover all costs, our typical hiring model has been replacement hiring, which, in the current labor market, will not enable us to keep pace with increased attrition. Therefore, we are seeking to make a fundamental shift in how we hire by bringing in quality recruits as we find them, thus creating a pipeline of talent ready to solve new transportation problems. We will continue to use all of these tactics and strategies, as well as create new, innovative ones in order to ensure that the Volpe Center has the right staff in the right place at the right time to meet the transportation challenges of the 21st century.

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