National service is struggling to connect with younger Americans, the problem may be both the message and the messenger

Guest:	Brian Griepentrog
Title:	President of Research and Advisory Services at Fors Marsh
Summary:	Research from Fors Marsh shows recruiting challenges go beyond eligibility to issues of perception and influence. From military campaigns to civilian programs, agencies need new strategies to make service resonate with a generation that expects speed, clarity and authenticity.

The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton provides expert insights on current events in the federal community. Read more interviews to keep up with daily news and analysis that affect the federal workforce. Reach out to Terry and the Federal Drive producers with feedback and story ideas at FederalDrive@federalnewsnetwork.com.

Interview transcript

Terry Gerton Fors March has studied military recruiting for years. And I think we’re at a point now of saying, let’s look at national service more broadly, not just military service, but civilian federal service, for example, or volunteer programs. What are you seeing in the space? What are the trends that you’re watching?

Brian Griepentrog Oh, wow. Big, big, big question, right? I think anytime we start talking about public service, national service, military service, I focus in on the second word there, the service part, right. And it truly is, it’s a, what are some of the associations that job prospects have with this kind of umbrella term of service? And I think we’ve done a lot of our own research. We are good consumers of research from monitoring the future to other types of important federal surveys that ultimately show that as we talk about the associations that applicants, prospects have about, frankly, federal and public service, there’s a lot of misperceptions there and those attitudes, they’re strong, they are resilient. And I think for us, it has provided a real significant challenge, which is how do you combat that without just masses of money that, frankly, on the public side don’t seem to be there.

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Terry Gerton Are there differences in age? And I’m thinking, we often talk about recruiting recent college grads, but there’s a lot of talk about permeability of the workforce in the military and on the civilian side, people being in the private sector coming into the public sector going back. Do the attitudes about public service change as people age?

Brian Griepentrog Well, one of the things that I think is really important that you hit upon is just that the window of employability, what I might say is as we’ve matured our understanding over the past 25 years, we see some societal changes. And frankly, what that means is that the idea of young adults, whether it be getting a full-time job, moving out of their parents’ home, getting married, having kids, kind of solidifying their life. Those have all shifted to the right. That’s very well known. What that means for a lot of employers, frankly, is that that window at which you are recruiting, that also shifts to the, you talk about the permeability. I would also say that that just means that the focus can’t be just on a college graduate or a high school graduate. We understand that those individuals are not landing that long time first job. And we see that over 50% of young adults and that kind of that age group of 16 to 24 and sometimes 16 to 28, they tend to have multiple jobs. And that’s not always the case that they’re wanting that, that’s something that, the gig economy is something that they have control over. Yes, there’s a desire for flexibility. Yes, There’s a desire for comfort, but it’s well recognized that over half of these young adults frankly feel as though they’re in great financial hardship.

Terry Gerton We’ve been hearing that sort of younger Americans really are motivated to service, to community service or helping each other, and yet you mentioned that we’re having a hard time translating the message of national service into this generation. What are some of the things that you’ve looked at that would help the federal government maybe shape its message better or find different channels to reach these folks?

Brian Griepentrog I think that’s a really important point here, right? It’s when we ask young adults, what are the factors that are most important to them as they’re making a decision? Maybe that’s during high school and they’re make a decision after high school or that’s individuals in that college age and what do you plan to do after? It’s fairly consistent in some of the answers that they provide. And I think we hit upon some of those, right. I kind of mentioned a work-life balance and flexibility. This idea of kind of lifestyle, comfort, safety, the ideas of, frankly, of purpose and of kind of career growth and stability, those are pretty consistent. But I will say that the idea of wanting to provide for and wanting to engage in national service, it’s usually about 40% of young adults are kind of endorsing that. And that has dropped over the past 25 years. One of the big misperceptions, and I hit upon this at the top, is the service element, which is service doesn’t have to mean sacrifice. And I think when it does, it really is challenging, because frankly, that idea of fear of missing out, the idea of putting your life on hold, stepping aside, that’s the language that we get to hear from young adults. And frankly, that becomes a huge limiter for national service, public service, and military service that ultimately do see themselves as providing career acceleration, purpose, passion, connection. So that’s one of those that comes out. And it’s not just the military service, also the work that we’ve done with AmeriCorps, that we done with DHS, that we have done with some of the DOD civilian agencies. It’s a common thread.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Dr. Brian Griepentrog. He’s the president of research and advisory services at Fors Marsh. Brian, I wanna follow on with that because you mentioned some of the civilian agencies and we’re seeing groups like the DOD cyber workforce or the National Park Police or Customs and Border Protection offering huge signup bonuses. You’ve done a lot of research with the military who’s very practiced in the idea of enlistment bonuses. What do you expect the outcome of these incentive programs to be? Are more people going to take them and say, yes, I want to serve in the National Park Police?

Brian Griepentrog I can answer that from both the research that I am aware of, as well as from some of our own experiences, right? That’s Fors Marsh. And it’s first to note that when we look at this mix of kind of levers that you have in terms of, one, should we spend resources identifying who to target? Right? Who? Who should we be really trying to bring into our organization? Who do we want to make sure that they know our story, that they knew our message, right? That’s one aspect and it’s kind of the marketing element. Then we have the element of, how do we wanna induce them? What are the incentives? And we can also talk about some of those elements of frankly, some of our recruiting, our sales force, not to mention how efficient all of those are. And what I’ve seen time and again is that the element of the inducements of the incentives are the least cost efficient of those three. And frankly, the focus of resources on those individuals who might be most interested and who might to be qualified, that and then in tandem with a strong handoff to a sales force that can follow up on that, I’ve seen has tended to be the most effective route because. ultimately. we’ve also, and I’ve been a part of some of this research as well, with my colleague, Jen Gibson and Sean Marsh, where we’ve seen that some of those, frankly, some of these transactional job characteristics, something like job pay and incentive, those individuals tend to not re-up, re-enlist, stay for longer periods of time. So it might address a short-term need, but it might also have, from a labor force projection, a challenging multi-year outlook.

Terry Gerton That’s really helpful insight because 2025 has been a tough year for the federal workforce and lots of people have left and there’s been a federal hiring freeze in place for most of the year. But now the agencies have submitted their workforce plans, OPM is looking at that and expectations are that hiring may open up. So what advice would you have for OPM and the federal agencies with all the things that we’ve just covered. What should they be looking for? What processes should they have in place that would really help motivate the best hires going forward?

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Brian Griepentrog Another great question, Terry. I think having some caution, going into this with some caution, that the idea of flipping the switch is not necessarily expectation of having this just a windfall of candidates, right? I think that’s number one. I think number two is that some of the same challenges that existed two years ago are gonna exist in two weeks. So as we start thinking through who’s interested, who’s motivated, who’s qualified, what is the experience of the candidate? I think all of those elements, I mean, they’re, they’re still working in very much a competitive landscape with a lot of private sector organizations that also want the most talented individuals. And frankly, I would suggest that the past year has not been the greatest from a branding and association for those individuals to come in with the motivation element to this. And so I do think that a lot of attention should be given to how are we communicating our brand, our story, and what it looks like as an employer.

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