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The future of work in health and human services

by Libby Bacon, Will Arnold, Michael Walsh, Tiffany Fishman, Lynnette Stern, Judi Cicatiello
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    3 minute read 14 October 2020

    The future of work in health and human services What will jobs look like in the age of AI?

    3 minute read 14 October 2020
    • Libby Bacon United States
    • Will Arnold United States
    • Michael Walsh United States
    • Tiffany Fishman United States
    • Lynnette Stern United States
    • Judi Cicatiello United States
    • See more See more See less
      • Tiffany Fishman United States
      • Lynnette Stern United States
      • Judi Cicatiello United States
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    ​Health and human services (HHS) jobs will likely undergo major changes due to factors such as technology advances and changing demographics. Explore how a range of HHS jobs could look in 2025.

    (Originally published April 9, 2020. Updated with new personas, HHS customer of the future, Child support supervisor of the future and Child support caseworker of the future.)

    Health and human services (HHS) agencies often struggle to serve some of society’s most needy populations. At many HHS agencies today, tight budgets limit the size of the workforce, even as the volume of caseloads continues to grow. That imbalance makes it hard to provide efficient and effective solutions to address the critical needs of individuals and families, and can leave employees feeling stressed and overworked. Those same employees may also see few opportunities for career development or advancement. High rates of turnover can put a steady stream of inexperienced staff into critical jobs with little training to prepare them.

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    To compound those challenges, most HHS agencies are still using workforce approaches that were designed in the distant past to meet the needs of that era, not of today.

    HHS agencies may strain to cope with some of the disruptions on the horizon. How, for example, can they reorganize to serve a growing aged population, while also meeting the needs of younger constituents who adapt easily to new technology and prefer to communicate via digital means? How can agencies offer workers the job flexibility they demand, replace older workers as they retire, and attract younger generations into the workplace? How can they manage and analyze vast pools of data, so they can gain new insights to guide their policies, track performance and outcomes, and drive efficiencies?

    At the same time, these disruptors—if leveraged correctly—may also help HHS agencies address the challenges that make their work so difficult today. New partnerships with businesses and nonprofit organizations, for instance, can create community networks that fill a broader array of critical needs than an agency could on its own. Mobile technologies can give employees the job flexibility they crave, allowing them to work anywhere, at any time. Advances in artificial intelligence and virtual reality can change the nature of work at HHS agencies while also enhancing training capabilities.

    If HHS leaders can learn to view these disruptors as potential accelerators, rather than obstacles, they can use them to reform outdated bureaucracies and introduce new practices to meet the needs of the workforce and the public.

    As part of that reform, HHS agencies will likely see major changes in the jobs their employees perform. For one thing, technology will handle many of the repetitive tasks that now take up a large portion of the typical agency worker’s day. Freed from much of their data entry, report writing, and other routine functions, caseworkers will be able to spend more time working directly with individuals and families on strategies to meet their specific needs. Managers can focus on coaching and supervising the people who report to them and on overseeing relationships with community partners. All employees will have tools to help them work more efficiently and effectively and gain better insights to inform their decisions.

    Some jobs that are currently fixtures in an HHS agency will likely disappear as new ones emerge. Other roles may retain familiar titles but will undergo a profound shift in emphasis.

    Understanding how the HHS workforce will evolve can help agency leaders get ready for this profound transformation.

    To help HHS leaders and employees visualize the possibilities, we’ve developed a series of personas that describe what a range of different jobs could look like in 2025. We have chosen to describe these 2025 jobs from the vantage point of the workers themselves, exploring how their work has changed, what kinds of skills and career pathways they have, the types of digital tools that assist them in their work, and what a typical day on the job may look like.

    Bringing these future jobs to life can help stimulate conversations around what needs to change in order to address the workforce challenges HHS agencies contend with today.

    Explore the personas

    Child aid coordinator

    Eligibility coach

    Eligibility team manager

    Data engineer

    Community partner of the future

    Contact center worker of the future

    Career coach of the future

    Adjudicator of the future

    HHS customer of the future

    Child support supervisor of the future

    Child support caseworker of the future

     

    Acknowledgments

    Cover image by: Alex Nabaum

    Topics in this article

    Future of Work , Health Care , Government , Public Sector

    Human Capital

    Today’s business challenges present a new wave of HR, talent, and organization priorities. Deloitte’s Human Capital services leverage research, analytics, and industry insights to help design and execute critical programs from business driven HR to innovative talent, leadership, and change programs.

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    Get in touch
    Contact
    • Libby Bacon
    • Principal | Organizational Transformation
    • Deloitte Consulting LLP
    • elbacon@deloitte.com
    • +1 717 695 5317

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    Libby Bacon

    Libby Bacon

    Principal | Deloitte Consulting LLP

    Libby has more than 20 years of experience leading large-scale organizational change management efforts across the government sector. She leads Deloitte’s Organizational Transformation practice across Government and Public Service. Her work includes a focus on organizational change management, talent, learning, employee engagement, and culture. She is based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

    • elbacon@deloitte.com
    • +1 717 779 9256
    Will Arnold

    Will Arnold

    Will Arnold is a managing director in Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Government & Public Services practice with more than 15 years of experience. Arnold is also Deloitte’s asset leader for GoCase, a suite of configurable applications focused on mobile case management, leveraging innovative technology such as VR to create immersive learning experiences. Arnold is based in Pittsburgh.

    • wiarnold@deloitte.com
    Michael Walsh

    Michael Walsh

    Michael Walsh is a manager in Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Government & Public Services practice and has more than eight years of experience working with state and local government clients driving large business transformations. Walsh also serves as the champion for Deloitte’s ChangeScout solution, the firm’s organizational change management platform. Walsh is based in Chicago.

    • micwalsh@deloitte.com
    Tiffany Fishman

    Tiffany Fishman

    Research leader | Higher education, human services, and transportation

    Tiffany Fishman is a senior manager with the Deloitte Center for Government Insights. Her research and client work focuses on how emerging issues in technology, business, and society will impact organizations. She has written extensively on a wide range of public policy and management issues, from health and human services reform to the future of transportation and the transformation of higher education. Her work has appeared in a number of publications, including Public CIO, Governing, and EducationWeek.

    • tfishman@deloitte.com
    • +1 571 882 6247
    Lynnette Stern

    Lynnette Stern

    Lynnette Stern is a specialist executive with Deloitte Consulting LLP with more than 30 years of professional experience in unemployment insurance (UI) dating back to her days as a state employee in Montana beginning in 1983. Over the course of her 30+ year career, she has helped 12 states through a variety of UI IT modernization projects. Her expertise in UI law, regulation, and operations is unparalleled. Stern leads a multidisciplinary Deloitte team with decades of experience designing, building, and delivering IT solutions that assist UI agencies in responding to operational demands.

    • lystern@deloitte.com
    Judi Cicatiello

    Judi Cicatiello

    Judi Cicatiello is a manager in Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Labor & Workforce Practice with 25 years of experience driving strategic and operational transformation in public sector organizations through large-scale IT system and programmatic modernization initiatives. Through expansions and recessions, Cicatiello developed a deep knowledge of federal and state laws, rules and policies, and the skill set to actively support state workforce agency leaders.

    • jcicatiello@deloitte.com

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