Ontario Municipal Human Resources Association

The conventional wisdom is wrong.

Our society assumes people are slackers. In fact, contributing our talents to benefit society, and being recognized for it, is one of our strongest motivators. Employees today are thirsting for opportunities to contribute meaningful work. To be valued. To feel like they matter.

Two years ago in this newsletter, I argued that offering broader access to meaningful work would make municipalities employers of choice: “Where people crave meaningful work, an employer who offers it will have their choice of top talent, even in tight job markets.” That’s truer now than ever.

What’s changed in the last two years? Exponential growth in the quality and pervasiveness of generative artificial intelligence (AI). That trend will only accelerate as AI models become faster and more accurate. With AI threatening to replace human contributions at scale, fulfilling the core human need to contribute has never been more urgent.

Imagine a world where AI has disrupted entire industries and displaced hundreds of thousands of workers. How will society address the legitimate resentments and the psychological wellbeing of thousands of people who’ve just been told that their contributions don’t matter? That a machine is better than them at the career skills they’ve honed their entire lives?

These are big questions, beyond the scope of a short blog post. Yet the answer must include proactively maximizing human contributions and offering meaningful work opportunities that satisfy people’s need to be recognized for their talents. Nor does this only benefit the worker. For employers, maximizing the contributions of existing employees is the simplest and most cost-effective way to boost productivity, engagement and morale.

And municipalities are uniquely positioned to do it. They provide essential public services that no AI model will ever replace. Municipal employees should consistently feel like they’re making a difference, because they are. In fact, this might be municipalities’ most important differentiator in the competition for talent.

The next step is to bring it to life. In my earlier article, my recommendations focused on recruitment. Here are suggestions to maximize contributions from existing employees:

Discover latent talents and interests: Conduct a survey, questionnaire, or discussions to uncover employee skills and talents that already exist in the organization and aren’t yet being leveraged. This should include discussions of employee interests and what skills they want to contribute, without promising opportunities that can’t be met.

Broaden access to complex work: Ensure everyone has a chance to do work requiring analysis and judgment. Research shows that complex work that pushes workers to grow is central to engagement, motivation and loyalty. Many analysis and judgment tasks can remain with managers, professionals or specialists who are being paid for those abilities. But hoarding all complex work at the top leads to disengagement, burnout and turnover for everyone else. And many heads working on judgment tasks will always be better than just a few, helping to optimize decisions, reduce errors, and drive productivity.

Prioritize training, growth and development: If employees don’t yet have the skills to make a greater contribution, support their development. Then offer robust opportunities to apply the new skills on the job, which will reinforce employees’ learning while maintaining their motivation.

Offer project opportunities: Google famously offered its engineers the chance to spend 20% of their work hours on projects of their choice. Many of Google’s most profitable products were developed during this time. It’s unrealistic for municipalities to offer so much time away from regular work (even Google doesn’t do it anymore), but consider offering some opportunities to work on projects initiated by or of interest to employees. This can allow employees to contribute in ways they find meaningful, while generating innovative ideas to enhance the services offered to residents.

Consider cross-training: Allowing employees to cross-train in different departments or areas not only allows them to develop and contribute new skills, but also provides useful resourcing for the municipality to handle staffing shortages, unexpected absences, or overtime needs.

Leverage AI for good: Despite the disruptions it may cause, AI isn’t the enemy. It’s a tool, and we can choose how to use it. Leverage AI to replace routine tasks, freeing up employee time and attention for the complex work they’ll find more meaningful. AI can also be used to support employees in analytic or judgment tasks, boosting the productivity and the contributions of each employee without replacing human judgment.

Written by: Brian Gottheil, Bernardi Human Resource Law LLP