The COVID-19 pandemic brought disruptions to government workplaces, including abrupt transitions to remote work for many employees. Remote work can offer a physically distant environment and greater flexibility for individual employees and organizations; remote work also creates or exacerbates potential work-life balance tensions. Drawing on Job-Demands Resources theory, we propose that two organizational resources, instrumental leadership (a vertical organizational resource) and a sense of social belonging (a horizontal organizational resource), help prevent burnout by alleviating conflict between work- and family-life activities. Using survey responses from local government employees collected during the COVID-19 pandemic (May 2020), we show that employees with a strong sense of social belonging experience less work-family conflict and, in turn, report lower levels of burnout. We also find that social belonging, as a horizontal organizational resource, appears more important for reducing burnout in a period characterized by disruption than the more formal, vertical resource of instrumental leadership.

Individuals with disabilities (both physical and cognitive) constitute 15% of the global population and 25% of U.S. citizens. However, public administration has not given explicit thought to how current research methods and other data collection processes or tools might exclude individuals with disabilities. This lack of attention to research methods and instruments might impose barriers and limit access to participation for individuals with disabilities who would otherwise meet the requirements for participation within the research design. This omission undermines social equity, a critical pillar of public administration, by systematically excluding individuals with disabilities from the research process. Equitable research ensures that scholars are not excluding participants from the research while obtaining insights from the ‘relevant population.’ Current exclusionary practices raise several questions that are addressed in this essay including: (1) What are the implications of equitable access in electronic research? (2) What are the barriers of access for individuals with disabilities who want to participate in research, like surveys conducted through an electronic delivery system? and (3) What would an equitable data collection and research design look like?

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Advocates often present veterans as an untapped resource for local governments to boost the public service workforce. However, there is a lack of understanding of how human resource (HR) professionals value military experience when assessing candidate preparedness for a managerial career in public service. We examine how veteran status affects U.S. city and county HR directors’ evaluations of candidates for entry-level managerial positions in local government. Using an experimental design, we randomly assign candidate characteristics of veteran status and gender, and we observe HR directors’ assessments of candidate preparedness. Our findings reveal a premium on veteran status for candidate assessments relative to similar private sector experience in assessments of candidate experience. At the same time, the results are less conclusive when compared to similar public sector experiences. In addition, we find no clear evidence of disparate assessments of candidate preparedness as a function of candidate gender.