The government’s focus on attracting and retaining digital and data talent has been described as “refreshing” by Daniel White, partner at Global Resourcing, talent solutions provider for the public sector.
White’s response follows government chief digital officer Joanna Davinson’s comments that government still struggles to recruit and retain talent after the release of the government’s Blueprint for Modern Digital Government.
The report noted: “Compensation is below the private sector; for example a typical central government cyber specialist earns 35 percent less than private sector peers, while civil service CISOs earn on average 40 percent less than their private sector counterparts. While the Digital, Data and Technology pay framework attempts to close this gap, it is not universally or consistently adopted, encouraging skilled talent to move within the sector to earn more.”
Overcoming recruitment challenges
On attracting talent, White (pictured) said: “Salary is important and something that needs addressing, particularly with the increase of new skillsets around data and AI. When we ran the chief data officer role for government previously, salaries were into the millions per year, so going out at £200,000 versus £150,000 isn’t going to make a significant difference to the outcome.
“For me it is about showing the art of the possible (and also the challenges), giving people the levers and mandate in order to be successful in their role and contribution to society.”
White said government must be open about people using their role as a platform and may only want to stay for two years – currently, all civil service jobs expect hires to stay a minimum of three years.
“Similarly, I meet so many people who would love to apply for the roles we go out with but are unable due to their personal circumstances or particular point in their lives financially,” he said. “Can we create NED or advisory roles whereby individuals can contribute to the public sector, gain insight as to how it works and then, if the time is right, join a role and ultimately be more successful in landing?”
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White also recalled the Think Data for Government event where the discussion centred on ‘T-shaped people’ – individuals with a deep level of expertise in one area, while also possessing a broad skill set and experience
“Do we need to be more flexible in our approach to talent and consider creating multiple roles; i.e. – a data scientist straight from a PhD combined with a long standing civil servant who knows how to get things done within the environment, to stop innovation becoming shelfware?
White also said there is “reticence of good people not wanting to leave their roles due to market instability and/or not favouring the current government. There is so much talk and in fact we have seen it in tender requests around our use of AI for screening and reaching out, when in fact now more than ever has required our human touch. We need to really leverage our network just to be able to have conversations with people to tempt them out of roles and being able to bring out the nuances of the role, culture, teams etc.”
The retention problem
On retaining talent, meanwhile, White said Global Resourcing offers a coaching service specifically aimed at people joining the public sector from the private sector.
But also he said internal talent is not always considered, or people are put off by an external search campaign. Additionally, individuals within the civil service moving up in grades are restricted by rules such as a 10 percent increase or bottom of band (which may in fact be a pay cut) when an external person can negotiate to the top of the band.
“People often say they are incentivised to leave the civil service to then rejoin down the line at a much higher salary,” White added, noting this could be as much as £50,000 difference between them joining from inside, versus from outside when moving from Grade 6 to SCS1.
