Career-Stage-Specific Training Priorities for State Department of Transportation Workforce Development: An Integrated Regression and Importance–Performance Analysis

Transportation agencies nationwide face a convergence of workforce aging, accelerating retirements, and rapid technological change that threatens institutional capacity. Despite decades of research documenting these challenges, most workforce studies treat employees as a homogeneous population or rely on descriptive analyses that cannot disentangle career-stage effects from demographic confounders such as age, gender, and education. This study addresses three gaps: the absence of covariate-adjusted career-stage analysis, the lack of stage-specific training diagnostics, and limited within-agency evidence on life-cycle workforce needs. We analyze survey data from 386 employees at the Indiana Department of Transportation using regression models with dummy-coded career stages and demographic controls, applying Benjamini–Hochberg false discovery rate correction across multiple outcomes. The regression results are then translated into actionable priorities through stage-specific importance–performance analysis (IPA). Our findings revealed a systematic mid-career vulnerability: mid-career employees consistently gave lower ratings of training effectiveness and organizational support than both early-career and senior employees, even after controlling for demographic factors. Senior employees reported high technical proficiency but faced emerging gaps in technology-related domains. Education and gender emerged as independent predictors with distinct patterns across proficiency and satisfaction outcomes. The IPA diagnostics indicated that training priorities shifted systematically across career stages, from foundational communication skills for early-career staff to regulatory knowledge for mid-career staff and software competencies for senior employees. These findings were synthesized into a life-cycle workforce framework that offers targeted strategies for each career phase, providing a replicable approach for transportation agencies seeking to align training investment with stage-specific workforce needs.