Below is the agency's intranet posting this past week, from a section entitled Commissioner's Corner [emphasis added].

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Recruitment Incentives to be Offered/Retention Incentives Planned

In order to meet our quality and pendency goals, Patents is engaged in an aggressive effort to meet Under Secretary Dudas' directive to hire and retain more examiners. Recently, Patents senior management worked, in coordination with the Chief Administrative Officer and her staff, to develop a plan to offer recruitment incentives to qualified electrical and computer engineers. These engineers would receive the bonus in exchange for an agreement to remain in the patent examiner position for a period of time. The ability to offer this recruitment bonus should help Patents meet its hiring goal of 1200 new examiners for FY06.

While we are working to meet our hiring goal, we are also working on strategies to retain our current, highly talented examining staff. Attrition rates have increased to levels not seen since the late 1990s and currently stand at almost 13%; the attrition rates are particularly high among the newer, lower-grade examiners many of whom are part of what is known as the Millennial generation. The "Millennials" typically plan to job-hop every 18 months to two years, a period of time well below that needed to become really proficient as an examiner. At the other end of the spectrum, we, along with the rest of the federal government and US workforce, are experiencing an unprecedented loss of experienced examiners as the baby boomers begin retiring. In order to retain more of these employees, as well as mid-career employees who may leave for other jobs, Patents senior management is working to develop a retention incentive program. Details about this program will be provided in a later issue.