What do you work for: Money or Love?
Whether you love or hate him, it is safe to say that president Donald Trump has a way of stirring up emotions. One could definitely sense an uncomfortable stirring among the people seated in the crowded conference room. The question came from the president of the National Academy of Public Administration, Terry Gerton. The problem was what will be the next activities in the PMA over the next five years? It was quite interesting how the question just dangled in the air across the room even as the contractors, assorted federal thinkers and the non-political crowd of reporters are trained to keep their personal politics in an ice box during this types of events. The 2020 election is already devolving into something unpleasant.
A former career financial guy, Dave Mader, later in the program called the decades om management work a relay race. That was a good analogy seeing as the multitude of contractors, think tankers and consultants that actually supply most of the brain power and do much of the work come from administrations of both parties. It could be that the five-year question wasn’t farfetched seeing as everyone is familiar with everyone.
Dual-hatted Weichert who is acting as chief of the Office of Personnel Management was emphatic that while people have got to be paid for work, levels of salary aren’t the main driving force of career or job satisfaction. She also promised that a major study would be launched in regards to this topic. It is partly true that people don’t work solely for money. There is no shame in being poor, but it isn’t an honor either.
Weichert is correct that job mobility, training opportunities, and recognition play a role in people’s perception of their careers and good employers worry about all those factors. Employment systems can rarely outlast large, permanent shifts in the economy, and that’s the reality. Almost no one has defined benefit pension plans on the private side. In the year an administration and Congress debate moving one bureau from one department to the other. In the private economy, there will be acquisitions, closures, realignments, transfers and mergers that sum up to ten thousand.
