Table 5. Full-time Staff Equivalents from June 1967 to September 1982 for Nine National Laboratories*

Source: NASA, Personnel Programs Division, The Civil Service Work Force as of September 30, 1982, p. 3.

FIGURE 42. - This figure shows the number of permanent civil service employees in NASA and how they are divided into various occupational groups.

The other notable trend is in the age distribution of scientists and engineers which is, of course, a consequence of the manpower reductions. In this respect, NASA is typical (fig. 43).

Since 1975, there has been a quite dramatic increase in the average age of scientists and engineers employed by NASA. Note particularly the decrease in the number of scientists and engineers in the 30 to 34 and 35 to 39 categories - precisely the ages when the most productive research is being done.

The Problem of the Aging Staff

Why is the aging of the professional staff considered a problem? Most research and technology development organizations seek to bring in those who will contribute to the store of new technology. Recent graduates with advanced degrees have been trained to attack problems using the most advanced instrumentation, design concepts, and computer techniques. The received wisdom is that younger candidates are likely to

Source: NASA, Personnel Programs Division, The Civil Service Work Force as of September 30, 1982, p. 15.

FIGURE 43. This figure shows the age profile of NASA civil service scientists and engineers in 1975 and in 1982.

be more productive than older employees, and the hiring age distribution reflects this preference. Note that this preference is not a matter of discrimination on the basis of age, but rather that the desired qualities are usually found among younger employees.

However, there are some functions that can more effectively be carried out by persons with broad experience. Project management is an obvious example, since it involves coordinating the work of many contractors and subcontractors. Also, as programs change, an organization needs to find expertise not represented within its present staff. Thus, some new employees will be hired at mid-career or beyond.

In fact, most laboratories have a spectrum of needs, ranging from basic research to project management to the continuing administration of the laboratory itself. There is, then, no single approach to hiring and retaining technical personnel, because no single approach can meet all the needs of a large organization moving simultaneously on many fronts. At Bell Labs, for instance, there appear to be several concurrent policies calculated to maintain a high level of competence. Bell Labs predominantly hires young degreed scientists and engineers out of the best universities; weeds out by termination those who do not come up to Bell Labs' standards of performance within three to five years; continues to let go those whose performance lags in mid-career; and retains a core of highly qualified people up to the mandatory retirement age of 65.

Such policies inevitably raise this question: How many new employees does a given research and technology development organization need to hire each year to maintain a high level of effectiveness? Where basic research is a source of new ideas or programs involving highly sophisticated techniques, an influx of new employees is essential. In a study carried out by staff at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1970, the data in table 6 were gathered, showing the average turnover rates in fifteen research and technology development organizations.

Table 6. Professional Personnel Turnover in Research and Technology
Development Organizations

* Includes all full-time, regular, technical, professional employees who were added to the staff by any means and those who left for any reason, including layoff. The percentages were calculated for each year separately and then averaged. Some figures were based on calendar and some on fiscal years.

b

Includes those engineers who, after hiring and training, were transferred to other company departments.

Source: C. M. Van Atta, W. D. Decker, T. Wilson, Professional Personnel Policies and Practices of R&D Organizations (Livermore, Cal.: Lawrence Laboratory, December 1971), p. 10.

Many of the organizations listed above reported more people hired than terminated and were in a period of growth. For example, Bell Labs

had known sustained growth throughout its history, save for a five-year period in the 1930s. In such periods, growth plus normal attrition may provide sufficient vacancies to accommodate an adequate hiring rate. But where there is no real growth, the hiring rate may drop to only three or four percent annually unless management stimulates attrition by selective termination. On the limited evidence available, an annual influx of six to eight percent is needed to avoid deteriorating performance.

During periods of rapid growth, the opposite condition may prevail — too many new employees for the organization to assimilate efficiently, resulting in inadequate supervision and inefficient use of resources. Rapid growth is followed by moderate or no growth, and errors in hiring during the preceding period become obvious and present management with difficult choices. To compete with other comparable organizations, senior managers may have to terminate incompetent professional employees and shake up the organizational structure.

To sum up the argument to this point. Within Federal laboratories and laboratories operated under contract to Federal agencies, we have noted the following: a decline in total employment at various Federal laboratories, combined with a rise in the percentage of professional employees, a steady rise in the average age of scientists and engineers, and a drop in the number of employees per supervisor. These figures suggest a sluggishness - a stagnation, even in bringing new blood into the organization. But against these data, there are certain considerations which tend to mitigate their impact. The first consideration has to do with the effects of an aging staff. It is true that in scientific research, the most significant work is done before the age of forty and in development work, before the age of fifty; that performance tends to decline in the forties as employees fail to keep up with advancing technology; and that sometimes it becomes necessary to make older employees take early retirement to open up positions for applicants with specialized skills. But this is scarcely the whole story; professional obsolescence is at most a statistical tendency, not an iron law. For one thing, personnel chiefs at some major industrial laboratories have denied that there is a significant relation between age and value to the organization (ref. 140). More important, the attitudes of a laboratory's senior managers may themselves determine how productive older professionals are. If the laboratory tries to maintain a low average age and an "up or out" policy in promotions, older staff members may indeed feel undervalued and their work will suffer accordingly.

There has also been much research sponsored on the effects of aging within organizations - "industrial gerontology," as it has been called. On the evidence, productivity need not decline after the age of forty. Indeed, it appears that after fifty productivity tends to climb. As the Lawrence Livermore study mentioned earlier notes: ". . . contributions