Conditions inside the Department of Defense’s civilian workforce help explain why Margarita Howard has made employee retention a central focus at HX5. A March 2026 Federal News Network pulse poll of 141 current Department of Defense employees found workers reporting heavier workloads, lost institutional knowledge as colleagues departed, and job duties stretching beyond their original assignments as vacated positions went unfilled.

Those conditions followed a period of heavy turnover. The Department of Defense lost more than 61,600 civilian employees, close to 8 percent of its total workforce, through deferred resignation and reorganization programs across 2025 and into early 2026. For contractors, those departures cut two ways. Experienced civilians leaving government service offer a pool of talent that companies can actively recruit. At the same time, the strain reported by employees who remain signals that more departures could follow.

A Pull Toward the Private Sector

Margarita Howard has positioned HX5 to absorb some of that movement without abandoning the retention practices the company already relies on. HX5 operates across approximately 70 government locations in more than 20 states, supporting NASA and Department of Defense missions with a workforce of roughly 1,000 people. Since 2021, the company has used the SkillBridge and Hiring Our Heroes Corporate Fellowship programs to bring transitioning service members on board before they leave active duty, and veterans now make up more than 30 percent of HX5’s staff.

Rather than treating the current wave of federal departures purely as a hiring opportunity, Margarita Howard has framed it as a reminder that contractor employees embedded at government sites depend on stable government counterparts to do their jobs well. Agencies like the Defense Contract Management Agency now operate with fewer staff than assessments say they need, and that gap makes the professional environment surrounding embedded contractors harder to maintain, adding another layer to the retention challenge Margarita Howard has spent years preparing HX5 to handle.