Government

Keeping the focus on your people

“Government of the people, by the people, for the people.” President Abraham Lincoln’s words from the Gettysburg Address got it right. Government starts and ends with people—outside the government but inside as well. To govern well, federal government agencies need access to a diverse talent pool that represents all constituencies.

But as the world changes, it’s becoming harder to access top talent with the skills to navigate disruption. From digitization and rising regulation to shrinking budgets, government leaders face many roadblocks on their path toward transformation. They need to be resilient, agile, creative, and, perhaps above all, radically human in their approach. That’s why federal agencies turn to Korn Ferry for government consulting.

Our government consulting helps you define what success looks like for both General Schedule and Senior Executive Service roles. We then identify the talent needed to achieve your objectives. As a GSA Schedule holder with relationships throughout the public sector, we build the strategic frameworks that attract top talent. Our solutions will allow you to not only achieve your internal goals but also better serve your communities.

What we do

We help government agencies design their organizations — including their structure, roles and responsibilities — to prepare them to face the challenges of policy change and leadership transition.

Our federal government consultants can help you attract, develop and retain best-in-class talent for your organization. Adjusting to constant disruptions in the market requires an agile pipeline of leadership talent ready to seize the opportunities that change presents. We work with you to assess and address the full spectrum of your talent-related needs. We help your leaders become even more effective. And we support culture transformation to improve services at the national, state and local levels.

Where we can help

Your performance and results are what matters. We partner with you to continually evolve and optimize to reflect your changing needs. We have helped our government and agency clients address challenges like these.

Closing talent gaps and addressing future of work challenges

Governments and government agencies have a hard time filling roles because they have highly specialized hiring needs. You need access to a deep talent pool if you have to fill surge roles as created by initiatives such as the CURES Act or for special hiring authority needs. And the question is often whether you can “build” that talent internally or “buy” it by looking to external candidates.

We help you assess the talent you have and determine whether you can turn it into the talent you need. We also show you where you can find top talent to add to your roster. Our assessments will reveal whether your prospective and current talent has the competencies, traits and drivers to meet your goals. When talent matches our success profiles, they’re more likely to be engaged at work, and your chances of a successful promotion or hire skyrocket.

Defining and achieving high performance

When budgets are limited, it’s important to ensure that you’re investing wisely. Before you choose a leadership development program, make sure it offers tangible results that lead to success in a role. We help you to achieve this by building research-based Success Profiles that identify the vital leadership attributes, via our four-dimensional model for leadership and talent, needed for success in the role, given your mission strategy and organizational culture.

Our assessments help you gauge where to spend your development dollars so you get the most for your investment. We use our data-driven diagnostics to create personalized learning journeys aligned to the success profile to ensure development activities are aligned to high performance in the role. We help you identify and develop potential today so you can put your organization in the best position to succeed tomorrow.

Improving diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility throughout your organization

To lead effectively, government organizations must have credibility. An essential part of that credibility is reflecting the diversity of the people you serve.

But all too often, the leadership ranks of government agencies look different from the rest of their organization and their community. That’s not a problem you can solve overnight with a few quick hires and a diversity training session. It requires a long-term, dedicated strategy that roots out the causes of inequity so you can sustain your progress.

Through our government consulting we enable federal organizations to unlock the power of all of their employees. We review your current diversity, equity and inclusion programs and listen to your employees with our DE&I Compass. We will use this to understand what makes people disengaged and what is inhibiting employees’ advancement.

We identify where potential biases might be built-in. For example, we uncover inequities in pay, talent acquisition, talent review, development, special assignment opportunities, promotions, succession and retention. Then we compare your organization against our DE&I maturity benchmarks, which measure how well your efforts are driving business outcomes. From here we build a roadmap of where you need to go and how you can get there.

We leverage our Inclusive Leader model as it transcends current approaches to DEIA. Where standard approaches solely focus on creating diversity champions, Korn Ferry helps build inclusion architects, leaders who role model and demonstrate inclusive behaviors dealing with diverse employees and constituents, and who can uncover new opportunities to serve by embedding DEIA in talent, operations and organizational decisions.

Developing effective coaching programs

Few organizations believe there’s a ready-now successor for their positions or that their talent is ready for new challenges. Preparing successors requires organizations to understand their internal talent pipeline and develop a transparent development strategy that includes coaching. For government positions, this is especially critical given the specific competencies required to fulfill roles, including Executive Core Qualifications (ECQ).

Korn Ferry is a coaching institute accredited by the International Coach Federation (ICF) for the government sector. Our government consulting provides coaching tied to competencies identified by the Office of Personnel Management. We follow the For Your Improvement development guide in creating our coaching plans. We also offer project management and contract management certification programs that satisfy federal requirements.

Designing effective reward and benefits plans

Government agencies that create a positive, supportive employee experience are more likely to engage and retain talent and drive higher performance. A key part of that experience is an enticing rewards and benefits program. It’s essential to know how to build a compensation program that appropriately incentivizes deserving professionals.

We can put together a rewards program and create an engaging employee value proposition. We suggest the right strategy to attract talent. We also help you identify and address compensation trends with a flexible, competitive benefits strategy that reinforces your goals.

Let us be part of your success story. Contact us to start implementing talent strategies that will put people first—both inside and outside your organization.