5 ways Philadelphia can address its short-staffing problem

For more than a year, Philadelphia city government has struggled to fill thousands of open positions, resulting in a persistent staffing problem that has not abated.

City officials and lawmakers are pouring money into improving recruitment and hiring practices in departments across the municipal government. They’re funding new perks to try to retain workers, and plotting aggressive outreach campaigns.

The Inquirer spoke to experts in recruitment and hiring, as well as city officials, about how Philly can tackle its staffing problem. Here are five ways:

Even before the pandemic, the public-sector workforce in America was aging. Experts say governments have struggled to attract millennial and Gen Z job applicants, despite surveys showing that young workers value jobs that they believe make a difference in their communities — more so than their older counterparts.

Gianluca Cairo, a vice president at human resources software company Ceridian, said the firm surveyed leaders across a variety of industries and found that, when asked about the most important characteristic of a job, compensation came in only slightly above work-life balance, flexibility, and job security.

» READ MORE: Philadelphia is spending a record amount on overtime as 1 in 5 city jobs sit vacant

He said governments in general have “outdated employer brand propositions” and should launch aggressive outreach campaigns to tout that the work is meaningful and comes with strong benefits.

“If the public sector is able to harness the value that those jobs bring,” he said, “they really have an opportunity to attract that next generation of talent.”

Michael Zaccagni, Philadelphia’s interim director of the Office of Human Resources, said that with additional funding allocated this year by City Council, officials plan to contract a firm in the coming months to launch a broad media and marketing push to draw in job applicants.

“This idea of us being able to have meaningful work for people,” he said, “we really think that’s going to be a big piece.”

Philadelphia offers hiring bonuses for police and correctional officers, and it’s going to expand those offerings to other hard-to-fill positions such as paramedics and engineers. But officials say an equally important component is offering strong benefits to existing employees to slow attrition and keep workers around.

» READ MORE: How Philly lawmakers are trying to solve the city’s workforce problem

Chief Administrative Officer Stephanie Tipton said the city is newly offering free transit vouchers to all city workers, and intends to expand paid parental leave from four weeks to six weeks. Those added perks were partly the result of a committee convened by Council President Darrell L. Clarke that focused on recruitment and retention.

Some benefits won’t be immediate because they will need to be collectively bargained with the city’s four municipal unions.

Governments have long lagged behind the private sector how quickly they hire, which can prove especially detrimental in a tight labor market.

On average, the Philadelphia municipal government takes about 100 days from application to onboarding, Tipton said. That’s roughly in line with local governments nationally. But it’s far longer than the average time-to-hire across all sectors, which is 36 days, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

Andrew Erdmann, a partner at McKinsey & Co. who consults governments on recruiting and hiring, said reducing the time between recruitment and hire date is critical.

“You’ve got to be fast,” he said. “You’ve got to have your internal processes be really, really agile to stay at the pace of a tight labor market, because people aren’t going to wait months for you to get back to them.”

Zaccagni said the administration is evaluating how to reduce the time between recruitment and hiring. It is also working to decrease barriers to employment, such as adjusting some job descriptions to remove four-year degree requirements.

But some of the process is out of HR’s control, he said. The majority of jobs require that the applicant pass the civil service exam, which can slow hiring. And it’s up to the individual agencies to conduct interviews, meaning the time it takes to fill a role varies widely between departments.

Erdmann said one of the top reasons people leave jobs both in the public and the private sector is that they don’t feel a sense of upward mobility or they crave stronger professional development. He said this is a key reason cities should ensure they’re investing in middle managers who “get the job done, but also inspire and motivate people while they’re doing it.”

“Those kinds of fundamental investments are often overlooked,” he said.

» READ MORE: The Philly Police Department is short 1,300 officers. Here’s why the situation is about to get worse.

Philadelphia is putting some funding behind expanding development programs. The city budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 includes $5 million to fund a workforce development program in the Streets Department, as well as $6 million for scholarships for workers in a variety of departments.

The high vacancy rate across city government is in large part driven by the Police and Prisons Departments, which have both seen a mass exodus of employees since 2020. Making up for those losses will likely take years.

The Prisons Department is offering hiring bonuses for new guards and is adjusting shift lengths. The Police Department has revamped its recruitment office, and top brass say leaders are working to modernize internal systems to expedite the hiring process.

First Deputy Commissioner John Stanford said during a recent City Council hearing that the biggest change in attracting cadets may be cultural.

“Coming out of the past few years, quite frankly, police hasn’t been the most popular profession,” he said. “That is starting to shift slightly.”