Qualities Doge overlooks

Hello, please let it work.

I am Bethan Staton, Associate Editor of Work and Career, and I am standing for Isabelle, who is back next week.

This week, the clock moved to summer time in England. In London, warm weather, sunlight and flowers coincide with peering into the soil. This morning I cycled past the cherry blossoms and started riding my bike home in the light.

I discovered that working long days is a little more full of possibilities. Office time feels like a productive, indoor entanglement into the outside world that may include running around the park, pottery in the garden, or sitting in the pub garden until dark.

New freedom in Spring is the only mention of all sorts of “liberation days” that I make in this newsletter. But I’ve been thinking a bit about reducing US government efficiency (DOGE) and what it says about how it evaluates work and organizational management.

Turn federal employees into brokers

In the past few months, tens of thousands of US federal workers have been fired and accepted takeovers or acceptance as the Trump administration attempted to reduce its government. I don’t know the full scale of these cuts. The New York Times estimates that at least 13% of the 2.4 million federal workers could be affected, with departments like USAID being effectively eliminated and others being radically changed.

Donald Trump says Cutting eliminates “waste, bloated and isolated” and claims that many of the fired people “do not work at all.”

However, observers both inside and outside the government report very different employment situations. Of course, the government sector can be improved, but organizations everywhere can learn a lot from some of the best characteristics of working in these workplaces.

Leaders can do worse than reading Michael Lewis’ 2018 book The Fifth Risk. Both books delve deep into the federal workforce and profile a small number of dedicated and talented professionals in well-run organizations. For example, someone who wants to oversee the management of nuclear weapons or the national distribution of social security checks.

William Resh, a professor of management at the USC Price School of Public Policy School, points out that federal staff tend to tend to be lower than their private sector colleagues, but they are motivated by other factors, which earns a financial hit.

“They are giving grants based on … two, perhaps three things,” Resh told me this week’s call. “Job stability… the intrinsic value of work” and “the motivation of public services.” This type of motivation is closely related to the qualities that other organizations want to cultivate too – expertise, support teams, or value-driven work. But Resh said in the federal government’s job, they are all “weakened at the moment.”

This isn’t just Doge. RESH research shows that outsourcing work to external contractors can result in more federal employees acting as intermediaries, resulting in loss of institutional knowledge and lower morale. This made the department more vulnerable to reductions and unable to ensure that external contractors were doing a good job.

The way cuts occur can promote talent loss. When an organization announces budget cuts, the people most likely to leave are high-performance people who can easily get jobs elsewhere. Layoffs also target new recruits recruited because they have the key skills that the government needs. According to Resh, both are people who “meet new government needs.”

It made me think about how private sector organisations could risk creating an environment that would drive away the best people through missions to the office and performance-based firing, and try to cut personnel through future mandates or performance-based shootings.

We haven’t seen the impact of federal cuts yet. The warning that everything from economic data to national security is enough to make the most enthusiastic cost cutter alk.

Federal Workforce accounts show a system that keeps these risks at bay. It depends on the skills and qualities of the workers. A dedicated team, excellent management, a strong mission and long-term institutional expertise are things that every organization should consider to be extremely valuable. It’s not easy to put it back after it’s lost.

Have you been affected by federal sector cuts? Or do you want to share your experiences as a member of the government workforce? Please contact bethan.staton@ft.com

Five Top Stories from the World of Work

The first Company Org Chart was a design classic. This lovely piece dismantles the origins of organizational charts and raises fascinating questions about how design shapes the way you think about business.

How Trump is harnessing the critical identity crisis of major law: Based on interviews with dozens of legal officials, this excellent read quickly dissects the implications of corporate law into the demands and priorities of the US president.

Persistent wage gaps for people with disabilities: Last week’s spring statement brought news of a massive cut in disability benefits. The government says it will bring people back to work. However, for people with disabilities, inequality within employment is still entrenched.

Meet LinkedIn Superusers: It was a lot of fun interviewing Big On-Linkedin for this work. As users leave other platforms, professional networks are adopting new tones with more influencers and greater networking. What does this mean for our working lives?

Investment Bank Bonus Use and Abuse: According to this FT editorial, “Only the small violins will be regenerated” for HSBC bankers who did not receive the bonus on the day they were fired. surely.

Words from the working IT community

Last week I wrote about unexpected ways that work can bring value or not, thinking that explicit purposes are not always enough to make the work meaningful.

Many of you responded thinking about how you were surprised by this in your career. One came from Marie Silvie, who worked for an international development organization but was disappointed by the poor behavior of some of her colleagues. She writes:

I have switched to my usual job in an international organization with more normal purposes. There, on every opportunity I consciously developed my own concept of calling “care” to others around me. “Care” in the work world is called “love” in the private world, but it requires the need to maintain separate use of different vocabulary. This is extremely effective in creating engagement and results. Incidentally, it is very important that we continue to strive to welcome everyone else as is, regardless of the nonsense we’ve heard recently.

How do you cultivate this feeling of caring for others and meaning in your work?

One more

One topic that FT work and career coverage (and FT in general) is obsessed with now is the extent to which AI changes our work. This work by New Yorker Joshua Rothman begins with an example of the kind of AI-supported work that was once astounding and perhaps normalised. It urges us to take seriously the ways in which AI can change our lives. If you’ve read lighting writing on this subject or have expertise on whether this work is doing it right, I’d love to hear about it. Please email us at bethan.staton@ft.com.