The Turbulent Environment of Public Personnel Administration: Responding to the Challenge of the Changing Workplace of the Twenty-First Century

Numerous studies have described the changes expected to occur in the workplace of the twenty-first century. The nature of work, the demographics of the workers and the nature of workers' values are expected to be very different from what employers recognize today. As participating employers in the next century, local governments and local public personnel administrators will have to develop strategies for dealing with these changes. This paper seeks to discover the perceptions of a selected group of local government personnel administrators in Virginia concerning the nature of the future workplace and the strategies to deal with these changes.