Civilian cyber workers in the U. S. Department of Defense : demographics, retention, and responsiveness to training opportunities / Michael G. Mattock, Beth J. Asch, Avery Calkins, Daniel Schwam.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mattock, Michael G., 1961- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Information storage and retrieval systems.

Other Title:

Civilian Cyber Workers in the U.S. Department of Defense

Place of Publication:

RAND Corporation 2022

Summary:

Given the importance of the civilian workforce to the U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD's) cyber mission, it is imperative to understand how pay, promotion, and retention have varied over time and to continue to identify and refine strategies for retaining civilians with cyber expertise. After establishing that these personnel outcomes vary across cyber occupations and differ from the outcomes for the rest of DoD, the authors explore how training might be used as a retention lever for cyber employees. Training is an essential component of initial and ongoing skill development and is especially important in cyber, where technology changes at a rapid pace. Although training is necessary to ensure the continual productivity of the DoD cyber workforce, simulation results suggest that an aggressive training policy should be accompanied by the development of internal opportunities and by pay commensurate with external opportunities. Otherwise, trained personnel will have a relative disincentive to stay, assuming their training is equally valuable and remunerative elsewhere. Therefore, training policy should not be developed in isolation but in concert with internal pay, opportunities for advancement, and engaging work experiences.