Capitol Hill tries to tackle its brain drain
FLAILING? BAILING? HILL TALKS RETENTION ISSUES — Lawmakers want to reverse the brain drain caused by top aides leaving, but it's not clear whether the promise of future pay bumps and proposals for expanded benefits can counteract the strain of working long hours in an environment where they’ve experienced an insurrection, a bomb threat and a vehicle attack in less than a year. (And for entry- and mid-level aides, those pay bumps and benefits aren’t just around the corner.)
A former House aide who ascended to a top role on a major House committee before jumping to the private sector, cited stress, workload and emotional drain of partisan politics as his primary reasons for leaving Capitol Hill, with more money being secondary.
“At some level, the money is a factor, but so too is the tremendous workload and stress and the psychic toll of living in a zero-sum world,” they said.
Some degree of turnover on Capitol Hill is natural, and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) isn’t harboring illusions about keeping staff who can double or triple their salaries by leaving public service. But he sees the salary cap increase announced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) last month as an opportunity to retain employees with an eye on executive agencies or the White House. (In an interview with Huddle, Hoyer ticked off a roster of star House employees who left for the executive branch, lamenting the wave of departures, but wishing them well… the ones that got away!)
Meanwhile, the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress has put forth a bevy of proposals for professional development, tuition remission, management training and human resources that could help support entry- and mid-level staff to becoming expert senior staff instead of leaving. But shifting entrenched systems in a decentralized workplace takes time and buy-in (unlike the pay cap, which Pelosi could raise unilaterally.)
“Democrats and Republicans on our committee embrace that modern organizations understand that investing in compensation and benefits and programs that employees want, and frankly, increasingly expect, is a real key to maintaining a high performing and stable workforce,” ModCom Chairman Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.) told Huddle in an interview.
So much more on Hill staff woes and who’s working to tackle them, from your Huddle host: https://politi.co/3nk3akp
Source: Politico
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