INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH
A Call to Action: Finding a New Path
for the Next Generation
by Lorelei Kurimski, MS, director, Institutional Research and Sara Woldehanna, MS, MA, manager, Program Evaluation
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LAB MATTERS Fall 2018
satisfaction
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Figure 2: Perceived Value of Continuing Education and Training vs. Job Satisfaction
At a minimum, we need to find the
incentives that attract high performers to
want to come work in the PHL community.
The report provides some areas for
consideration on this topic. For instance,
while a key incentive for entering and/or
remaining in the public health workforce
might be assumed to be the value of
public service, the report shows that
this is true more for Baby Boomers than
Millennials. Unlike Baby Boomers, the
correlation between the value of public
service and job satisfaction for Millennials
was low (See Figure 1). Therefore,
recruitment and retention strategies that
highlight public service might fall short of
their goal with this generation.
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Tracking the “Brain Drain”
Figure 1: Perceived Value of Providing Public Service vs. Job Satisfaction
As a public health laboratory (PHL)
community, we need to find creative
yet practical solutions that laboratories
can implement to attract, support and
sustain the next generation. The most
recent APHL workforce survey report
underscores the importance of carefully
examining the differences between
generations of laboratorians, particularly
the Millennials. The report highlights
that more Millennials (compared to
Generation X) indicated an intent to
leave the PHL workforce. In fact, fully
a third of Millennials intended to leave
the workforce in the next five years as
compared to 16% of Generation X. As
younger workers continue to become
a larger percentage of the workforce,
traditional career tracks within a
particular laboratory likely will shrink to
a much shorter tenure. These shortened
terms of employment and faster cycles of
turnover not only put a strain on existing
staff to provide training while sustaining
capacity and capabilities, but also pose a
risk for organizational knowledge where
subject matter experts with decades
of public health laboratory science
experience become something from
the past.
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