We interact with public employees on a daily basis. Crossing guards, police officers, firefighters, government workers, and more, all fall into this broad category.

But what makes a public employee tick? Assistant Professor Chae Young Chang, in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, aims to find out. Chang's research is expansive, but at its heart, it focuses on public employees, their relationships with supervisors and coworkers, and organizational culture.

"I'm especially interested in public employees' turnover and performance, and how organizational culture affects public employees," he said.

As society progresses and the current workforce ages, Chang notes some significant generational changes. Work ethic is one major difference, and level of training is another.

"Current executive directors and managers will retire soon…people believe that, automatically, employees can be placed in their positions," Chang said.

However, this isn't the case for many organizations, both in Northwest Indiana and across the state. Overall, there has been very little preparation and preemptive training for the workers needed to fill these positions.

But that doesn't mean it's too late to train up current employees into managerial positions. Chang hopes that his research can give these public service organizations some ideas on how to create a robust workforce ready to take on the challenges of the job.

"[Organizations] can buy into some ideas, so they can develop a new training program…and prevent employee turnover," he said. Chang has noticed through his research that this focus on comprehensive training programs results in employees staying with an organization much longer.

In fact, the bulk of Chang's research centers on how long public service employees choose to stay in their jobs and how their performance and motivation ebbs and flows throughout the years. "I found that there is a curvilinear relationship," Chang said. "[After] about 13 years, employee performance starts to decrease."

Multiple factors impact employee performance

So, what can local organizations do to mitigate these effects? Chang continues to stress the importance of training public employees, but he also notes how crucial culture is to any organization.

Chang saw the importance of workplace culture firsthand after partnering with local police departments. "Their cultures are totally different [from other organizations]," Chang said. "Compared to other public employees, their satisfaction is very high and closer to the rates I’ve seen for nonprofit organizations."

It’s up to the organizations themselves to decide what to do with findings about high or low satisfaction. Although many organizations Chang researches boast high employee satisfaction, that doesn’t mean there is no room for improvement when it comes to workplace culture.

Complete employee satisfaction is understandably challenging to achieve, and there seems to be no easy way to definitively measure workplace culture. Because culture is highly subjective, Chang has had to be creative with different methods of understanding unique cultures and hierarchies.

"There are two types of measurement of organizational culture. One of them is performance…the other is turnover rate," Chang said. But these objective measurements aren't the only way to understand workplace culture.

Another, more subjective method has to do with talking to public employees and learning what they perceive about their organization's mission and whether that mission is being achieved.

Once organizations better understand their employees' reasons for staying in their positions, they can work to lower turnover rates and increase employee satisfaction.

While local organizations and public service agencies certainly benefit from this research, so do Chang's students.

"Students in my class…can create their own organizational culture," Chang said. After they've learned the fundamentals of public service management, they can better understand how to foster a positive organizational culture themselves.

Despite its challenges and complexities, researching public employees' habits and satisfaction has a profound impact on organizations, students, and the Northwest Indiana community as a whole.