People and workforce transformation for government and public sector

Our team helps the federal, state and local governments and higher education create holistic strategies designed to meet the demands of the future working world.

Related topics Government and Public Sector

The team

Erica Ford

Erica Ford

Principal, EY US Government and Public Sector People Advisory Services Leader

Ram Venkatraman

Ram Venkatraman

Managing Director, GPS People Advisory Services, Ernst & Young LLP

Jennifer Rome

Jennifer Rome

Managing Director, People Advisory Services, Ernst & Young LLP

View all

What EY can do for you

As the world continues to change, developments in globalization, demographics and technology are requiring government organizations to reimagine the work experience. Key people themes that have emerged include motivating and supporting employees through changes in ways of working and rethinking rewards and recognition.

Only by prioritizing placing humans at the center can sustainable value be created.

According to the EY 2022 Workplace Reimagined Survey, only 30% of government and public sector employees are considering leaving their positions; however, just 34% feel like their wellbeing has increased with the post-pandemic new ways of working.

We have designed our services around organization, culture, people and workforce experience. We integrate EY capabilities and assets into issue-based capabilities. 

Our capabilities

  • Organization and workforce transformation

    Organization and workforce transformation within the government and public sector integrates services, such as operating model design, organizational planning and design, strategic workforce planning, job and role architecture and design, career path development, talent planning and transition planning capabilities, with digital assets to create customized approaches that align organizational and workforce capabilities to an organization’s strategy.

    With a focus on people experience, we enhance employee engagement, productivity and wellbeing through flexible, future-optimized organizational approaches and new ways of working.

  • Change experience

    Change experience is designed to deliver the best change experience for our clients and their people so they can successfully navigate through complex, continuous change and realize the long-standing associated benefits. Our change experience methodology is an agile, user-centric and insights-led approach to help governments and commercial organizations adapt to and navigate transformation. This adaptive methodology visualizes the iterative change cycle through eight core steps, all centered on the four pillars of the change experience: purposeful, insightful, personalized and interactive. It supports transformation across the enterprise, adapts to unique client environments and helps provide sustainable business outcomes and a superior workforce experience.

  • Learning

    With the increasing changes to technology adoption, federal and state governments will need to embrace not only their human skills at work but also their digital, technical, management and cultural skills to adapt to the new work environment. We help government organizations develop, retain and upskill their workforces for the jobs of tomorrow.

  • Leadership, culture and DEI (LCD)

    Organizations need leaders and employees who are adaptive, motivated to learn and shift through change. They can enable performance through tools, information and processes, but individuals must be motivated to change, do great work and go above and beyond. LCD focuses on enhancing clients’ people capabilities; leaders; culture; diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI); and accessibility initiatives. Our culture capabilities are focused on identifying the needs of the work environment to best enhance both experience and business objectives. Leadership and teaming services focus on helping leaders and groups accelerate their teams more effectively, while DEI and accessibility services focus on helping them foster an inclusive, open environment. Our method is designed to help government organizations, federal and state and local, create a movement that inspires people to action by pairing a core set of activities with purpose.

  • HR transformation (HRT)

    We help HR unleash the power of humans to do the extraordinary and deliver sustained value to the business. Government organizations need to think about adopting agile innovation and implementation techniques to outpace the competition and improve outcome quality through the delivery of HR, payroll and mobility operations. HRT services primarily include HR and payroll strategy and operations assessment, HR and payroll transformation, and technology selection and implementation services. These approaches aim to create human value that empowers and fuels transformation through HR. HRT helps clients achieve relentless business collaboration, create a customer-focused people experience and deliver the people services expected by an evolving workforce.

  • Future of work

    Top talent has more options now than ever, and the organizations that are adopting a cross-functional approach to reimagine and transform the work, workforce and workplace will differentiate their employee value propositions and the ability to attract and retain top talent, create competitive advantage and enable evolving mission objectives. We help government organizations design a customized, consumer-grade employee and customer experience based on a deep understanding of persona needs and journeys. We also help to redefine the purpose, space design and technology supporting diverse workplace environments and worker needs.

  • Civil service transformation

    As organizations in the public sector face disruptive change at a rapid pace, maintaining a workforce that is equipped to manage these challenges is more important than ever. Considering these challenges as organizations forge into the future, we take a people-first view to help our clients articulate who they envision their future civil servants to be and how they can bring that vision to life through human-centered transformation initiatives. We help our clients choose the right initiatives to begin their transformation journeys.

Putting humans at the center

For government organizations to successfully transform, it is critical to put humans at the center.

Contact us to learn more