Human Resource Diversity Management

Workforce Planning & Diversity Management

In its simplest terms workforce planning is getting "the right number of people with the right skills, experiences, and competencies in the right jobs at the right time." This shorthand definition covers a comprehensive process that provides managers with a framework for making staffing decisions based on an organization’s mission, strategic plan, budgetary resources, and a set of desired workforce competencies.

Many organizations, both public and private, have developed models for workforce planning. Putting aside variations in terminology, the processes are all very much alike. All rely on an analysis of present workforce competencies; an identification of competencies needed in the future; a comparison of the present workforce to future needs to identify competency gaps and surpluses; the preparation of plans for building the workforce needed in the future; and an evaluation process to assure that the workforce competency model remains valid and that objectives are being met. This process is simple in outline but depends on rigorous and comprehensive analysis of the organization’s work, workforce, and strategic direction.

Workforce planning requires strong management leadership; clearly articulated vision, mission, and strategic objectives; and cooperative supportive efforts of staff in several functional areas. Strategic planning (GPRA), budget, and human resources are key players in workforce planning. GPRA plans set organizational direction and articulate measurable program goals and objectives. The budget process plans for the funding to achieve objectives. Human resources provides tools for identifying competencies needed in the workforce and for recruiting, developing, training, retraining, or placing employees to build the workforce of the future.

Why Do Workforce Planning?

The "why" of workforce planning is grounded in the benefits to managers. Workforce planning provides managers with a strategic basis for making human resource decisions. It allows managers to anticipate change rather than being surprised by events, as well as providing strategic methods for addressing present and anticipated workforce issues.

Some components of workforce planning, such as workforce demographics, retirement projections, and succession planning, are familiar to managers. Workforce planning provides focus to these components, providing more refined information on changes to be anticipated, the competencies that retirements and other uncontrollable actions will take from the workforce, and key positions that may need to be filled. This in turn allows managers to plan replacements and changes in workforce competencies.

Organizational success depends on having the right employees with the right competencies at the right time. Workforce planning provides managers the means of identifying the competencies needed in the workforce · not only in the present but also in the future · and then selecting and developing that workforce.

Public sector management is focusing on performance-based organizations. Achieving measurable program results was the thrust behind Congress’s passage of the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 · identifying in measurable terms what government organizations intend to accomplish and basing future budgetary decisions on achieving those goals. This emphasis on performance also shows up the National Partnership for Reinventing Government’s efforts to establish Performance Based Organizations (PBOs) and identifying "front-line organizations" · offices that are performing the government’s key functions. The emphasis on performance based organizations is evident also in the General Accounting Office’s study Major Performance and Management Challenges, which notes: "Only when the right employees are on board and are provided the training, tools, structures, incentives, and accountability to work effectively is organizational success possible.¹"

Finally, workforce planning allows organizations to address systematically issues that are driving workforce change.

One such issue is age and growing retirement eligibility. The HHS workforce is universally aging and is slightly older than the government average. However, age and retirement eligibility in the various Operating Divisions varies greatly. Nearly one-third of the permanent civilian employees of HHS are eligible for either voluntary or early retirement. But the percentages vary by Operating Division from a low of 23 percent to a whopping 72 percent in another. Workforce planning allows organizations to project, at least statistically, retirement rates and to make plans for replacing lost competencies.

In less clear-cut but equally effective ways workforce planning provides managers with tools to address changes in program direction that impact the type of work being performed (and hence the competencies needed) and allows managers to identify ways in which technology may change competencies required in the workforce.

The overall benefits of workforce planning, then, are its ability to make managers and programs more effective.