Joint Meeting of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast Regions

Toward Resolving IRS Staffing Shortages: Insights from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey

• In Event: Dialogue 2: Behavioral and Organization

Abstract

Over the last decade, there has been an exodus of 33,000 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees (George, 2021). According to the IRS, 60% of its employees will retire in the next six years (Rettig, 2022), with only 3% of IRS employees being under the age of 30 (De Lea, 2020). At the same time, the agency has recruited, trained, and deployed only 67% of the new workers it needs to provide basic customer service and process tax returns (McKenney, 2022). Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is (1) to evaluate the career preferences of Millennials and Zoomers who qualify for positions at the IRS and (2) to determine how well these preferences fit with working conditions at the IRS via an examination of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. We find that a career at the IRS is a strong match with Millennials’ and Zoomers’ core job preferences (i.e., work-life balance, job security, and service orientation [White, Davidson, & Cullen, 2020]). A career at the IRS is also likely to satisfy preferences for job clarity (e.g., a clear job path, understandable expectations, and effective feedback) and opportunities for human interaction. Areas for potential improvement at the IRS include offering more opportunities for advancement, bolstering personal empowerment, fostering motivation, increasing support for diversity, and explicitly rewarding creativity. Due to a substantial number of neutral perceptions regarding these areas, considerable ground may be gained initially by shifting neutral perceptions to positive ones, although we do not discount the need to address wholly negative perceptions. In a tight job market where applicants may receive multiple offers, improving the IRS’s “edge” in these areas may be especially beneficial for recruitment.

Authors

• Kathryn Simms, Radford University

• Yiwen Li, Radford University

• Robert Alexander Warren, Radford University