1. Building Successful Organizations:
A Guide to Strategic Workforce Planning
Session 748: Building the 21st Century Workforce
2007 TRB Annual Meeting
Alethea Long-Green
National Academy of Public Administration

2. A Definition of Strategic Workforce Planning:
Strategic workforce planning is a systematic process for identifying the human capital required to meet organizational goals and developing strategies to meet these requirements.
Systematic process: integrated, methodical, and ongoing steps
Identifying the human capital to meet organizational goals: determining the numbers and characteristics of the employees that will be needed, and where and when they will be needed
Developing the strategies to meet these requirements: identifying actions that must b taken to get and keep the numbers and types of employees needed

3. Overview Steps for Strategic Workforce Planning
Workforce Planning Models
References
Exercises

4. The Strategic Workforce-Planning Process
Purpose: Ensure that the organization has the human resources it needs to accomplish its mission.
Obtaining Commitment
Getting Started
Linking Strategic Workforce Planning to Programs, Budgets, and the Organization’s Strategic Plan
Describing the current workforce, projecting requirements and identifying gaps
Identifying strategies for closing the gaps
Evaluating and Refining the Strategic Workforce Planning Process
Integrating Workforce Planning with Human Capital Investment

5. The Strategic Workforce-Planning Process

6. 1. Obtaining Commitment
Commitment from top leaders, human resource professionals and line workers is absolutely necessary for successful strategic workforce planning.
Communicate vision of the future direction of the organization and;
Demonstrate value of workforce planning:
Improved Strategic Utilization of People
Foster Strategic Thinking about Human Resources
Direction and guidance for managers concerned about human resources
Benefits to budget staff like the ability to better anticipate changes
Ability for the HR office to add value to the business of the organization
Use appropriate tools, i.e., the GAO Self-Assessment Checklist for Agency Leaders tool, or demographic data demonstrating labor trends.

7. 2. Getting Started
Complete NAPA’s “Checklist for Getting Started”: These activities aid the organization in preparing to create a strategic workforce plan by conducting primary research. The activities and sequence of events will vary by organization, and some may have already implemented some activities.
Create the Workforce Planning Team that includes top leaders, line managers, HR professionals, IT professionals, strategic planners and budget analysts.
Develop the workforce plan.
Recognize the need; Obtain leadership support; conduct an inventory and build on what you already have; conduct research; issue policy statement; form a team; develop implementation and communication plans
Teams should include members from different occupations and different locations, functional areas, skills and grades.
Workforce plans usually include: Action items; accountability information; integration issues; communication plans; critical success factors; agency goals; workforce composition; workforce needs gaps; workforce requirements

8. 3. Describing the Current Workforce, Projecting Requirements and Identifying Gaps
Project the workforce supply through standard personnel and payroll databases, and project the future supply by projecting the current numbers into the future, excluding new hires and applying a general rate of attrition and considering desired skills.
Determine future functional requirements through environmental scanning and organizational analysis.
Calculate workforce demand by determining the number and type of employees needed and then assess additional drivers that may impact future workforce needs in different areas.
Perform a gap analysis by comparing projected supply with projected demand to identify deficits or surpluses that will exist.
Environmental scanning: A systematic examination of external trends helps to develop a better understanding of what is happening in the environment in which the organization operates – through a literature review and analysis of trends and issues in the economic, social, technological, legal and political spheres (p 31)
Organizational Analysis: An assessment of how well the organization is preparing itself to deal with the issues identified by the environmental-scanning activity – perhaps through a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)

9. 4. Identify Strategies for Closing the Gaps
Strategies are developed to address the issues such as skill shortages, skill surpluses, attainment of diversity goals or coping with an aging workforce, as identified during the analysis of demand and supply.
The strategy selected will include one or more of the following elements:
Training and Continuous Learning
Leadership Development and succession planning
Recruitment and Retention
Workforce restructuring, outsourcing and downsizing

10. 5. Evaluating and Refining the Workforce Planning Process
An evaluation of the workforce planning process should be conducted immediately after its development to ensure completeness and accuracy.
Workforce planning is a continuous process – it should be reviewed and revised at least once a year.
The workforce evaluation should answer these questions (offered by DOT): Have the organizations’ strategies upon which the workforce plan is based changed? Is there another staffing assessment needed for next year? Are the assumptions of the demand and supply models still valid? Did the action plan accomplish its goals? Is there a need to modify the planning methodology? Is there a need to modify the approach to implementation?
DOT recommends these data collection tools: customer satisfaction inventories, program progress reviews, effective placement and development inventories.

11. 6. Critical Success Factors
After reviewing workforce planning efforts in 17 federal agencies, the Academy identified seven critical success factors.
Top management support
Support from program managers and HR managers
Employee involvement
Good communication and marketing
Linkage to other planning processes
Availability of accurate input data
Detailed implementation plans

12. 7. Integrating Workforce Planning with Human Capital Investment
Workforce planning is an investment in the organization.
The mission of the organization should drive the human capital system.
The system is composed of four processes:
Defining requirements (workforce planning)
Acquiring human capital
Improving human capital
Leveraging human capital
The system also requires leadership, resources and processes for measurement and accountability.

13. Academy Studies Focused on Strategic Workforce Planning:
Transforming the FBI: Roadmap to an Effective Human Capital Program: The Academy is assisting the FBI in dealing with critical human capital issues such as career development and succession planning.
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Transforming to Meet the Challenges of the 21st Century: The Academy assisted the USPTO in the development of strategies to transform itself into a more positive, collaborative organization with a more flexible and capable workforce.
NASA’s: Balancing the Multisector Workforce to Achieve a Healthy Organization: The Academy is providing an independent assessment of the agency’s workforce strategy and recommending methodologies to plan for future workforce needs.

14. Academy Studies Focused on Strategic Workforce Planning:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Action Plan to Achieve a Diverse Workforce: The Academy was enlisted by the CDC to provide advice and counsel on issues of leadership development, succession planning and diversity strategies.
Office of Environmental Management: Review of Human Resources, Acquisition and Organization: The Academy conducted a management review of the EM program.

15. Other Approaches to Strategic Workforce Planning
GAO: Human Capital: Key Principles for Effective Strategic Workforce Planning
The success of workforce planning is judged by the results, rather than the process but there are five principles that the process should address:
Involve top management, employees and other stakeholders in the plan
Determine the critical skills and competencies required
Develop strategies to address gaps in numbers
Build the capacity needed to address administrative, educational, and other requirements important to supporting workforce strategies
Monitor and evaluate the agency’s progress toward its human capital goals.
From: The United States. United States General Accounting Office. Human Capital: Key Principles for Effective Strategic Workforce Planning. Dec

16. The Strategic Workforce Planning Process
From:
From:

17. Other Approaches to Strategic Workforce Planning
RAND: Workforce Planning in Complex Organizations
Workforce planning can help ensure that an organization has the right mix – by education, experience, and other important characteristics – of personnel to advance its functional and organizational objectives.
To succeed, workforce planning should answer questions regarding desired workforce characteristics now and in the future, and how organizational practices are helping maintain or develop these characteristics.
Among elements needed to make workforce planning successful are active executive and line manager participation, accurate and relevant data, and sophisticated workload and inventory projection models.
From: Emmerichs, Robert M., Cheryl Y. Marcum, and Albert A. Robert. "An Operational Process for Workforce Planning." The RAND Corporation. 29 Nov <

18. The National Academy of Public Administration
Private, Non-profit 501(c)(3)
Congressionally Chartered in 1967
“Trusted Source”—Non Partisan Advice
600 Elected Fellows
Distinguished Public Administration Careers
Primary Resource in Addressing Issues
100 Employees, IPAs, Independent Contractors
15-20 Research Projects a Year

19. Director of HR Government Studies
Contact Information
Alethea Long-Green
Director of HR Government Studies