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We're going to get started on our second half of the program. To my left, we've got Ms.
Pamela [inaudible 00:11] and we've got Roger Slater, and what they're going to do is they're
going to share speaking roles in providing us some information on Department of Interior's
efforts to restructure.
I know it's been in well demand. I know you guys have been out on the road. A lot of agencies
have been chopping it to bit to hear more about DOI's workforces restructuring effort
and your tools, so we're really, really excited to have you guys here today.
Not only are we going to talk about their strategic workforce planning, but their presentation
is also going to include the practice, a hands on review of DOI's strategic workforce planning
model. Pam, the floor is yours.
Pam: Thank you. Good morning. First of all, I want to thank OPM for not putting me either
before your lunch break, before your break, or before the end of the day. So it's nice
to be here after a break, and hopefully we can have a little bit of fun with this. What
I want to do is sort of tee up the whole context here. First of all, we're trying to help get
ahead of the curve, if you will. To be more proactive in our workforce planning, even
though we feel like we're in a very reactive environment right now.
We anticipate that this reactive approach is going to be around for a while, so the
more we can be proactive, the better prepared we feel like our managers are going to be
for working through challenges.
When Angela introduced me I hope you picked up on the notion that I'm a working capital
or a human capital newbie. Even though I've been doing this for a few years now, I really
started my career in mission programs for the Department of Interior in the US Geological
Survey, and so I learned about human capital management on the frontlines, if you will.
I went through issues like reduction in force, a major downsizing, office closures. I learned
how to manage human capital the hard way, and the entire time I was doing this I was
very, very thirsty for finding human capital or human resources practitioners who could
help me do this in a more strategic and thoughtful way. I was sort of making it up as I went
along, and I learned a lot of hard lessons through that experience.
I think that's what helps me in my new role as a deputy human capital officer for the
department, to take those practical experiences that I had in trying to accomplish a mission
and manage a workforce, and put that effort into tools, techniques, systems, you name
it, and help our managers be successful.
I want to give you just a little bit of interior facts because I think that will give you a
context for the environment that we're working in. I don't claim at all to say that we're
unique. In fact, you'll hear a lot of similarities between us and agriculture, and we're working
with agriculture quite a bit because we have those similarities.
The mission of the department is to protect and manage our natural resources and our cultural
resources. Many of you may know interior more through our bureaus. National Park Service,
Fish and Wildlife Service, US Geological Survey, Bureau of Indian Affairs, what have you. But
we have trust responsibilities for special commitments to Native Americans, and that's
what drives us.
Our secretarial priorities right now, America's great outdoors. The demographics are showing
that fewer and fewer people are getting out and enjoying our natural resources through
the parks and refuge systems, other recreational activities. The secretary has a strong focus
on trying to get more people, particularly young people, out and about and enjoying the
great outdoors.
Climate change is a huge issue for us in terms of managing those resources. How are we going
to handle having Glacier National Park without glaciers? So those are some things that are
long range issues for the department, but certainly important.
New energy frontiers. How many of you paid more for gas this week than you did the last
two or three? Well bio fuels have been an important thing. We're very much focused on
solar energy. How do we help this nation sustain itself through new energy frontiers.
Challenges for water availability. If you live in the west, have ever lived in the west,
those issues have been around for decades, if not centuries, in terms of allocations
of water. But it doesn't take long in the east to figure out we're having some of those
same challenges back here. So how do we get ahead of that curve in terms of water availability
and environmental protection?
Perhaps somewhat unique to Interior, is our responsibilities for overseeing Native American
communities, and their interests; Alaskan Natives, as well as the Pacific Island communities,
or island communities. We have a huge trust responsibility in operating an education system
for Native American tribes. That is a large focus for the department.
Then probably the one initiative that I think the secretary gets the most pleasure out of
is his youth initiative. He had a strong focus for engaging youth when he was in the state
of Colorado as the attorney general. He's brought that to Interior because that's our
pipeline, if you will. Those are the people who are not only going to fuel our work force,
those are the people who are going to use our parks and refuge systems.
They are the future citizens in terms of making decisions about this great nation, and he
wants to engage them in those decisions.
Right now we have ten bureaus, next week it might be more. Last week it was fewer. It's
one of those dynamic organizations. Probably the latest change that we've undergone was
a result of the oil spill in the Gulf, where Mineral's Management Service is now split
into two bureaus. One focused on safety and enforcement, and the other one working on
energy resource exploration.
We're a highly decentralized organization. You heard that from agriculture. Out bureaus
are independently authorized. And even though they come under an interior appropriations,
they build their budgets independently, and we try to bring them together in some cohesive
way. They operate those budgets independently.
We're highly decentralized in terms of delegations of authority. That comes into play around
work force planning. When you've got managers thousands of miles away from headquarters,
and independently responsible for executing their budgets and managing their mission and
their programs, you have to strike a balance in here in terms of what you can drive from
the top, and what they need at the far reaches of the organization.
Very high levels of autonomy, that's just our culture. So you have GS12s out in the
field that are making the kinds of decisions and being accountable for things that back
here at headquarters might be at an SES level. Not quite the same, but if you're out there
managing a resource there's nobody back at headquarters with a safety net. It's yours
to manage.
These are some data from earlier this year. Our permanent workforce is just under 60,000,
but we have a very large seasonal workforce, roughly 12 to 15,000 annually, and this year's
fire season is probably going to push it up higher than that. In this past year we hired
and had on board for some period of time, and I don't want to overstate this, because
it's not like we have interns that work for several months. Sometimes these are for a
few weeks, but over 18,000 young people.
These are between the ages of 16 and 25. And while some of you may say, "Oh, gee, how can
you focus on that?" Well, fortunately we have authorities that allow us to specifically
target and recruit for young people on our Public Land Corinth Authorizations. We share
some of that with Agriculture as well.
Perhaps unique, and I'm not sure, but we have over 300,000 volunteers that help us accomplish
our mission. A lot of those are in the Park Service or the Refuge system. I'm looking
at Dr. Kelly, and she's going, "300,000!" It's true.
Some of those are just a few hours a year, and some of those are almost like fulltime
equivalents in terms of what they dedicate their time and energy to. They do parks interpretations,
cultural interpretations. They lead tour guides. They do a lot of things. So we have to manage
and think about that volunteer workforce as well as our permanent and temporary workforce.
In terms of demographics we have about 10,500 supervisors, and those are people who are
specifically coded as supervisors. We have team leads as well, and I haven't counted
those in the numbers, so these are people with very clear supervisory responsibilities,
and that's important when you talk about workforce planning to us.
We have about 150 bargaining units in the department under...I don't even know the number
of unions anymore, but it is more than double digits, the number of unions that are affected,
or cover those bargaining units. Right now we're roughly just under 60 percent male,
remaining female.
Predominantly a white organization, which is something that we are working hard to try
and change so that we reflect the citizenry of this nation and the nation that we serve.
And I'm not going to talk about our diversity initiative, but if you want to hear that one,
come back to a future context as we have a great diversity inclusion program underway
that is yielding results.
Right now we have about a third of our workforce that has more than 20 years of service. Our
permanent workforce, and I emphasize permanent. That's not as big as that workforce I was
talking about earlier, but we have 12 percent currently eligible for retirement, and that's
growing at a rate of about 2,000 positions a year for the next few years, so that comes
into play in terms of planning.
Average age is just over 47 years, so you can see we're at the end of...Or starting
to get towards the end of the career cycle. And the average age of our executives right
now is 54. Our retirement eligibility there is much higher, as you would expect, than
our overall workforce.
But one of the things that concerned me the most when I came to the department level,
and I had done this when I was at the USGS, was take a look at the demographics by age
and by grade. What I was looking for were succession issues, and what I found is, if
you plotted the curve for GS11s through executives on an x-axis of five year age breakouts by
numbers of people, the curves were pretty much bell curves.
The question was where did they fall along that x-axis? And you would hope that you would
see your executives out to the right side. They're nearing the end of their career. And
as you work the grade levels down, you would expect them to be to the left side so that
over time you'd watch this wave occur, right? Your 11s go to 12s, your 12s go to 13s and
on up.
That's not what I found. What I found were curves that stacked on top of each other.
Very slight movement to the left. What that said to me is we're going to lose our 11's
and 12's at the same time we lose our 15's and executives, or shortly thereafter, which
leaves a huge pipeline issue in terms of succession into leadership roles.
I don't know about you but I learned a lot of my supervisory and management skills on
the job over time. It was watching and waiting for my time to grow to the next position and
learning from my manager above me and so on. In my opinion, the future of those management
responsibilities will not grow over a 15 or 20 year time frame to go from entry level
to executive. They're going to happen in much shorter time frames so how do we get ahead
of that?
That's a bit of a context, if you will. Some of the challenges. They're not all of them
by any means.
Let me talk a little bit about workforce planning and then I'm going to hand it to Roger because
he's got the thunder of the show, to say the least. It's not that we weren't doing workforce
planning in the department. We have been.
There are pockets of it all over the place, but that decentralization, the high degrees
of autonomy, you could find it in a lot of places but there was no way for us at the
department level or even at the bureau level to be able to make some long term assumptions,
to look at some trends, to anticipate and try to put in place mitigations that are appropriate
at that level because it was looking at apples and onions. Not even apples and oranges. They
weren't just all fruit.
I formed a team that Roger was the chair of and pulled together a group and they started
doing an inventory to understand what did we have ongoing already. First of all, I wanted
to validate and honor the people who had been proactive enough and had taken responsibility
to do some workforce planting. Plus, I didn't want to spend a lot of resources reinventing
the wheel. If there were good practices out there I wanted to take those and use those
and build on them.
Then we looked at where there might be gaps and how could we fill in those gaps. Ultimately,
what I wanted, and what Roger and his team have delivered and I think you'll find exciting,
is a systematic way of doing workforce planning that works both at I'll say the lowest level,
and I really mean the lowest practical level and that's different depending on where you
are in the organization, and I can roll it all the way up.
I can take it out to a park unit and it makes sense for a park superintendent to do workforce
planning to manage their sphere of control and influence. Their regional director can
look across park units and look for consistent trends or inconsistent trends. This one's
growing, this one's shrinking. Are there opportunities to cross service or mitigate those issues
that a park superintendent might not see within their sphere of influence but the regional
director can.
Beyond that, I can take a cross regions and the national park service at the headquarters
level can look across the country and say where do we have common issues that it might
be worth spending some resources on at the bureau level to address and which ones are
in conflict and we might be able to bring people together?
Then I can take bureau by bureau and bring them up to the departmental level and I can
look at "It looks to me like we've got some serious succession issues." Maybe we need
to grow, expand, our summer leadership programs at the development levels. It's more cost
effective, it's efficient. I get cross-fertilization of ideas rather than having 10 bureaus or,
worse yet, 400 park units developing their own leadership development programs.
That's the approach that we try to take is that it's scalable, it's practical at multiple
levels, and it's useful. This is not shelf art. Sorry, had to steal that one from you.
It's not shelf art. If we do this right this is a continuous, thoughtful process. We teach
managers it's not periodic in the sense that you have to do it every month, every year,
every quarter. It's periodic in the sense of you know or can anticipate the future situation.
When you see something that's changing that, it's time to revisit your workforce plan.
I'm not going to, again, steal much more of Roger's thunder there. The big thing that
we're working on now is how do we turn out human resources specialist from very transactional
or tactical advisers. 'Yes, this is how you conduct a reduction force. This is what transfer
of function means. This is what a competitive area is.' Those are important things but how
do we help managers understand what their options are in terms of managing their workforce?
How do we strategically advise them?
First of all, workforce planning is not a human resources activity. It's a management
activity. I beat that drum all the time. Human resources is going to be there to help you,
will help you understand the methodology, will provide you with demographics and information
and data that we can pull from our systems, and we'll help you understand options that
are available to you. Ultimately, Mr. Manager, Ms. Manager, these are your decisions to make
in the context of you trying to accomplish your mission.
What I've said is I don't want to lead them to water, I want to make them thirsty as hell.
Sorry. If we're not adding value, they won't care. So far, knock on wood, as we've piloted
this, the managers who have been part of this are now our greatest ambassadors. They're
out there touting this as the greatest thing since sliced bread. That's what I want.
In fact, Roger and I don't really care about being the ones that get credit for this. We
want our managers to get the credit because that's where it matters. It's where the rubber
meets the road. Without further things, and we'll get to questions later, I'm going to
hand it off to Roger. You've gotten the 50,000 from me. He's going to pull it down a few
thousand feet and for the second part we're going to get down into the weeds. For those
of you interested in the actual tool and how it's used, you're going to get that tutorial
this morning. Roger?
Roger Slater: Thanks, Pam. Good morning. I was telling these guys at the break, I said
it would be a challenge for me. I'm not normally one who stands behind a podium but I'll do
the best I can. I speak loud enough. I think everybody can hear me. I also know that I
also have a tendency to speak rapidly so I'll try to watch that as we go.
As we go through this process, you'll hear me reiterate some things that Pam alluded
to, but I think you'll also see the connection being made and the dots being connected with
some of the information you heard from the Department of Agriculture and the Intelligence
Committee this morning.
We're going to talk about not just the consistent philosophy that we're going to see between
agencies. We're going to talk very specifically about some of the tools and methodologies
to make those situations and those philosophies reality.
The first one you see here is this slide about connecting the bridge between strategic planning
and tactical operations because so often, and as we understand as Pam alluded to, we
have people in the human capital arena who get so wrapped up in tactical execution in
day to day operations, sometimes they don't understand or recognize the strategies that
they're expecting to accomplish.
And on the other hand if we do a whole lot of planning without an implementation plan,
how do we get from strategic planning to operational execution? The process we're going to talk
about is the manner and the methodology to do that and that's through data analytics
and strategic workforce planning.
One of the other things that you'll hear from me quite a bit, anybody who knows me knows
I used to talk to my staff all the time when I was the HR officer in reclamation and it
goes back to what Pam was talking about, is the human capital community being a strategic
partner. My job is not to impress upon you how much I know about human resources. My
job is to impress upon you how much I understand your business.
And if you could buy and have an opportunity to purchase your HR services from anybody,
would you still choose to buy them from me? And if I hold myself accountable to those
two standards, I do pretty darn good. So we'll talk about it in that context, but what we'll
go through this morning is this process of how to bridge this gap.
Next slide. When we started this process as Pam was saying, we did an inventory for where
we were in the Department of Interior and we knew where we wanted to go. These were
our original goals. We wanted to develop a common and consistent approach to workforce
planning, automated as much as possible but it must have end user value.
I think one of the other things that anybody who knows me and knows about me is I am not
an unfunded mandate check the box exercise type of person. What we do has to have end
user value.
I think the important part of this, when we go through this process, the methodology that
we use becomes important. Because when we go through the methodology, we have 10 different
bureaus with 10 different missions. That's true. We may get 10 or 20 different answers.
That's just fine because if we go through a methodology that is consistent, we can not
only do workforce planning vertically in an organization, we can do it horizontally across
the organization.
One of the things we'll talk about very specifically and you'll hear me reiterate this many times
this morning is risk assessment and the mitigation of that risk and that risk as it relates to
money, workload, people and positions. The process is all engaged around that and we
do that through a bunch of different environments.
But when we talk about automating this as much as possible, it must have end user value
so that end user managers can make strategic tactical decisions that not only help them
accomplish their mission, they're linked to the strategic plan of the department. So it
was very much in tempo that where we started from with this foundation of what we wanted
to accomplish.
The other thing that's very critical as you see there is that although it's a common and
consistent approach, we have to allow for flexibility for individual bureau proprieties
and individual bureau activities because something that's a priority for the US Geological Survey
may not mean a whole lot to somebody in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. That's true and
we understand that.
But if we have a common consistent approach and allow for that flexibility, that was part
of the design process. And then be able to adjust to emergent needs without losing long
term focus.
One of the things that we always see when we do this process is we've been through continuing
resolutions as we have the last few years. The point being, and the other panelists alluded
to, one of the most important parts of strategic workforce planning is not just the emergent
needs you have over the next 12, 16 or 18 months. It's looking out three years to five
years. And what do we know? What risks do we see and how do we mitigate those risks?
I'll walk you through the tools to help you accomplish that.
The slides you're looking at here have the other important point that we're always talking
about; workforce planning. A lot of times you'll hear people say that the gut reaction
for a lot of folks is it synonymous with succession planning. Succession planning is simply a
component of strategic workforce planning.
And as you'll see by this slide you're looking, there's an attachment to recruitment, engagement,
employee development, multi sector workforce planning because not all of our work is done
by federal employees. We have 300,000 volunteers. We have contractors. We have employees. So
where is the best use of those resources to accomplish work? Retention of not just people,
but knowledge.
And then we have organizational design and structure. We can be perfectly organized and
be dysfunctional. We can be highly functional and be disorganized. So how we are organized
and how we function within that structure is a critical piece.
And then you get into the succession planning and the other thing that we will talk about
very specifically. It's not just about what positions you need to fill. It's about what
skills you need and how you can use those skills and how those skills may be transferable
into other arenas because the other thing that I want to make sure we understand as
we go through this this morning is how to connect strategic workforce planning to workforce
restructuring and you can do that.
One of the things that you'll always hear from me when we talk about workforce restructuring
is it does not necessarily have to be correlated or synonymous with downsizing or reductions
in force.
Because if we use information and we use knowledge that we have about what we're doing, where
we're going, how we're going to get there and what our needs are, we can make strategic,
informed and educated decisions that avoid adverse action, downsizing and the like and
accomplishing mission at the same time. We can be smart about it.
And then you talk about this other little piece of context. This other little thing;
budget formulation and execution. There's a process there of when do we know what we
know about the budget formulation process, the pass backs we get? I know that Pam and
I and a number of folks in the Department of Interior did this process not too long
ago with the Office of Management and Budget and the pass back language for the next fiscal
year. So we took a very strategic approach with that process.
One of the things that you'll find and you'll see in some of the future slides here is we
will very much connect these strategies that a lot of you have seen that are associated
with the Partnerships for Public Services making smart cuts, but you'll notice that
there is one strategy that we did not intentionally and consciously employ; across the board cuts.
We all know what that means.
We all can get there. If it's the only thing that we can do, it's because we've exhausted
every other option. So we know that's out there. We intentionally didn't leave it off.
When we went through the pass back with OMB, we did up a workforce management plan that
outlined the strategies, the directions and the opportunities that we would pursue and
prioritize if we were to receive a reduction in funding for FY13.
We didn't go through across the board cuts. We didn't give them numbers of FTE we would
cut and, "Here's where we'd run reduction in force." We came with, "Here are the strategies
we would deploy in order to accomplish those reductions and still be able to accomplish
the mission of the department." And you'll see that very specifically as we go through
here.
The other thing that I always make a point of when I do this slide is strategic workforce
planning is about helping managers understand how and where to connect dots because you
look at that and you say, "OK, recruitment." And in that slide you'll see we have youth,
we have veterans, we have individuals with disabilities and we have bringing people back
off Worker's Compensation roles.
So how do we know and get the ability to help mangers understand that when we have these
other niches, these are not silos? They are all connected.
So here's how you can use the initiative of increasing our veteran employment numbers
in the context of workforce planning because we know, what, where, when and how we do need
to recruit. We know what skills we need and now we know where to go and when to find them.
So again it goes back to what Pam was talking about, how to be more proactive in a reactive
environment and that's really what a lot of this is all about. It's about giving people
tools to do the work that we all know needs to be done and it's not done in silos.
Next slide. This won't look too unfamiliar to a lot of people. So what do you do? The
most critical step is you need to set the strategic direction. If we don't know where
we're going, we'll probably end up somewhere else. So if we set the strategic direction,
that becomes critical.
And then you see step two. The guided inquiry, risk assessment and demand, supply and analysis.
The bulk of my conversation this morning is going to be around step one and step two and
then we'll talk a little bit about step three, developing an action plan. But when we start
talking about this strategic direction and going through this guided inquiry and asking
you very specific guided questions. "What do you know?" And then we can ask, "What do
you do about what you know?"
I think one of the things that is very important when we start talking about risk assessment
is money, work, people and positions. And what you're going to find when we go through
this process, guided inquiry, risk assessment and data analytics...
I thought it was very interesting for Pam to sit up here and tell you, "This is what
we know. This is the percent of people we have at grades. This is the percent of people
we have that are retirement eligible." Why? Because she's able to look at that information
and make educated strategic decisions from it. It's not just data.
It's how you use that data, what you ask yourself about that information. Where are your risks
and how do you mitigate those risks? And what actions do you take to do so and when do you
need to take them?
The other thing that's very important here and I'll reiterate this a couple of times.
You'll see that demand comes before supply. That's intentional. That's purposeful. Why?
Because in our research what we found is human nature.
If we start with supply, we have a tendency to defend and justify what we have, the way
we already look and try to make changes within it. Whereas if we start with demand first,
it helps us paint the picture of where we need to be and then if we look at supply,
gap analysis becomes a little bit more evident and a little bit more easy to do because you
started with where you need to go.
And also the thing that's very critical there is that demand is also attached to strategic
direction, so it was very purposeful that we put these things in the order in which
you will see them. That was very intentional.
Next slide. When we go through the process, you're going to find that it has three major
components; a user guide that's written in a guided inquiry format and then we go through
risk analysis for money, workload, people, positions and we do those specifically, and
then we do common data elements and the analysis that comes from that data.
Next slide. This is a real easy way to look at it. Risk assessment, guided inquiry and
data analytics. It's those three components in their combination that make up strategic
workforce planning because I can tell you from experience if you do one of them and
not the other two, you're not going to be as successful and you're not going to be as
strategic.
If all you look at is data, that will give you some information. If all you do is risk
assessment, that will give you some information. It's the combination of those three in context
with each other that allows us to do strategic workforce planning. Next.
So the model that we designed in DOI we've done it by step by step process. This is the
process we used when we got the model designed and developed.
Now we have to look at how do we deploy it. It was a very conscious decision to put it
in a step by step format because anybody who has ever done some level or any level of strategic
workforce planning knows it can viewed as a huge elephant. As we all know the best way
to do that is to take it bite by bite. So we broke this down into step by step processes.
What you'll see is step one, setting the strategic direction. Step two, risk analysis for funding.
Step three, risk analysis for workload. Step four, risk analysis for people in positions.
Step five, reports. I'll show you why that is important because we're going to run reports
based upon those first couple of steps and then ask you strategic questions about the
information you've already assessed.
Current vacancies, organizational demographics, demand, supply, gap analysis. A set of final
guided inquiry questions. Again we go back to bureau specific actions because in the
design that we had, we have to design in a way to account for flexibilities for individual
bureaus that they may have. Then we go to a final recap and checklist and it all ends
with an action plan that U.E. will all be familiar with.
What actions do you need to take, what deliverables do you need to see, how are you going to measure
them, when do you need to start, when do you expect to be finished, who's in charge, what
resources do you need to accomplish that action? Walk through that process for every one of
those steps. Then we have a whole section on knowledge management because that is a
big issue for a lot of agencies.
In each one of those steps the design that we came up, so when you go through step one,
risk analysis for funding. Step two, risk analysis for workload. Every one of them follows
this consistent format. In this step this is what you will do. This is what you will
need to accomplish it, here's how you will use that information, here's how long it will
probably take you to get through this step.
Then we go through overview, instructions, tools. That context is repeated in every single
step so that when a manger sees it, they get accustomed to it. It allows for consistency
as well as repeatability so that they understand, 'oh I'm going to do this.'
At the end of each one of those steps we will say, "Now that you've gone through risk analysis
for funding, what are the actions you need to take to mitigate that risk? Now that you've
gone through risk analysis for workload, what are the actions you need to take to mitigate
that risk?"
That was very much intentional as well because what we didn't want to do was go through all
this and say, "Now review all that work and come up with an action plan." The easiest
way to do that is as we go through the process, design your actions associated with the risk
you're assessing.
Because at the end, we can consolidate all of those action plans from each of those steps
and say, "Now simply combine them, prioritize them. Which ones can be combined and kill
several birds with the same stone. Which ones are most urgent, which ones are the most priority?"
You can take that information and have an action plan that helps you mitigate risk to
sustain your organization over the long period with mission critical work and mission critical
skills. Setting the strategic direction. Next slide.
First thing I want to do is establish and align it with the mission in the vision. What
is it we're here to do, why are we here? As Pamela told you, that's what we do in the
Department of the Interior, is to manage the natural resources of this nation. What is
your course of action and define success.
One of the first critical questions that we need to understand is, what does success look
like and how will you know when you've gotten there? Define it now, because all of our other
actions are going to be bumped up against that process. Then identify critical questions.
This is a sample of some critical questions. I know in the process we've done this morning,
the folks that are here in the auditorium and I'm pretty sure that the folks that are
on webinar, will have access to a handout and a take away which is an overview of a
lot of this information. It's certainly not all inclusive, but it will give you some context
as to the type of strategic questions that we ask that are related to workforce restructuring
in each of the steps that are in the model.
As we walk through here you'll see, what are the challenges that exist that are emerging?
Technological, economic, political. What do you know? What legislative policy regulatory
changes are you going through? Are you looking at organizational changes you need to go through?
What are your challenges, and again setting the strategic direction about what is it you
know, and where do we need to head. What do we do about what we know? Next slide.
The other thing that's very important here is when you get to looking at, what are the
drivers? Are they internal or external? If they are external what are they, where do
they come from, what do they mean to your organization? If they're internal, same questions.
Understand that if we need to change or there's directions we need to head, what are the drivers
so we understand them and can respond to them accordingly.
Do you see opportunities for a combined or consolidated services? One of the other things
you will notice as you go through this, for anybody who's walked through this model, one
of the things we tell people, you may see a specific question get asked more than once.
That was intentional, not redundant. The reason we did that, very specifically was to draw
the picture that you may be able to have the same risk.
This is one of them, do you see opportunities for consolidation of services. That question
may get asked in several, two, three or four steps. It wasn't expected or because it was
redundant it was meant to draw the picture that there may be risks that are associated
with several steps that you can kill several birds with the same stone. It's drawing the
picture for people of how to look at things horizontally in an organization as well as
vertically.
The fact that those questions get repeated was intentional, not necessarily an oversight.
Risk assessment for funding, next slide. Anybody who has ever done some level of risk assessment,
this is a really important piece of information, because as we go through this process and
do risk assessment and guided inquiry, and data, and analytics we have to understand
the context for risk assessment. Probability and impact.
What is the probability that this is going to occur, what is the impact if it does. Because
then we can look at where do those two things intersect at high or severe risk, so we know
where to focus our attention, why we need to focus it there, and what we need to do
about it to mitigate the risk. Next slide.
One of the things that we do is to identify sources of funding. I don't know how many
other agencies are like the Department of the Interior. Not all of our funding comes
from appropriations from congress. We have reimbursable agreements, we had shared service
agreements, we have repayment agreements, we have shared costing agreements. One of
the things that we walk people through is, do this level of risk assessment. Is it increasing,
is it stable, is it decreasing for each one of those sources of funding.
This goes back to the question the young lady was asking in the audience about looking at
some of that process. Well, if we know that it's declining by zero to three percent that
may be small risk. If it's five to seven percent that may be high.
Then we start to identify the impact of that on workload and we can start to identify where
those risks lie. It's a methodology by which to get the information we're seeking. Again,
one of the other questions you'll see here that is very important is, for each one of
those funding sources, identify it's percentage to your total funding requirements because
you may be dealing with an issue for funding sources declining by 15 percent.
That particular funding source may only be 20 percent of my total funding, but if it's
60 percent of my total funding I would rate that risk differently. So how many funding
sources do you have? What is the risk of their consistency? What is the percentage of that
funding source to the total funding you have for your programs? Again, start to be very
strategic with some of these questions and this is the process we walk people through.
Next.
Workload for funding, again we're using the same scale. Probability, impact. How stable
is the workload? What program or project management processes do you need to look at because a
lot of times workload in itself follows a cycle of project management. That it has a
beginning, it has an end, and there's a critical path to getting the work accomplished and
where are you in relationship to that workload as it relates to is it ongoing work, is it
stable work?
The other thing, I don't think it's up there, but I know the other question we ask folks
is: Are there program areas that are being emphasized? Are there program areas that are
being de-emphasized and does that impact what you need, how many you need, and where you're
going to focus attention and resources to accomplish work?
Number of positions corresponding to programs. Number of workforce deployment, where is your
workforce deployed, how flexible is it? Volume, and type, and kinds of work as well as the
percentage of labor costs to your total funding. That's again, one of the things you need to
look at because we all look at labor costs as a percent of total funding.
Do I need to make decisions there and where is an acceptable level, where is my current
level, and do I need to take actions to get it to where I want it to be? One of the things
that is important, that I think you need to understand, when we walk people through this
process, here are examples of the things that we have people look at, and things that people
need to consider and then we ask very strategic guided inquiry questions about them. Next.
Now we get into the people and positions. This is a database, I don't want to confuse
you with this, it looks confusing. The important point here is, we have risk assessments. You
see those green columns, position risk, attrition risk, positional elimination factor, skill
level. So when you start to talk about risk assessment for people and positions, we start
talking about attrition risk. What is the risk of the person in the job leaving it?
Now, we look at some statistical analysis and I can tell you that the average length
of time that people stay after becoming eligible for retirement in the Department of Interior
is a little more than three years.
Three years ago it was less than three years, it's creeping up towards four years. Why is
that? OK? We start with a defaulted number there that comes out of [inaudible 43:32]
is the personnel system that we use in the Department of the Interior. It takes the person's
retirement eligibility date and adds three years and gives a default piece of information
there. If the person's been eligible to retire for more than three years it defaults as five
but you can change it based on what you know.
Pam always likes to use me as an example of when we do this. If you look at my piece of
information because I'm eligible to retire, but I've been eligible for less than three
years, my default number would be four. But Pam knows I just had my first little granddaughter
and I have this really expensive, nasty golf habit.
I'm not going anywhere anytime soon so based upon what she knows, she can adjust that risk.
The other thing that gets to be important here is, not everyone who leaves the organization
leaves because of retirement.
I have an employee who's working for me who I know is very interested and working towards
career development. I know that person is a risk to leave that job that they're in because
they're seeking to advance their career.
So even though they're nowhere near retirement, I can put their attrition risk of the job
they're in based upon information that I'm aware of. Then you have position risk, what
is the risk to the mission if that job became vacant, or wasn't filled, or wasn't filled
for a period of time. This isn't an Access database, you see those green columns? At
the bottom of those green columns you see a question mark. Next slide.
Click on that question mark and there's the rating scale. Here is the rating scale for
position risk and it's in the system in which you're working. The position risk of five
is that job is going to be critical to my mission and if it becomes vacant there is
a risk to safety, reliability, mission critical work, or something not being done. When I
did this in reclamation, a construction inspector working on a dam...Five. A clerk in the mail
room? Less than that. You can do position risk.
The reason you do this is because then you have this other third column here called Total
Succession Factor. Position risk times attrition risk and if that number is 20 or more, you
better have a game plan, because it's a risk to your mission if it becomes vacant and the
person in it is likely to be leaving based upon your own risk assessment.
I just want to say the other important part when we go through this here, when Pam was
talking about the appropriate level in the organization, to do this work. This is the
one area where you have people's names.
The critical piece of this process here though is important. When we get to reports, and
we start drawing data off of these reports, it no longer has names it just has data. You
do have to have information because Pam can't assess attrition risk unless she knows me,
but at the point and time we have the data about how many positions have a total succession
factor of 20, how many positions have this?
Now we are looking at the analytical aspect of the data. At that point and time you no
longer need to see names, you need to see the results of the information. So understanding
where in the organization is it most appropriate to get this information, we can do that.
The nice part about this, because it's in an automated environment, we can put it at
that level, and a park superintendent can assess that information. The regional director
doesn't see names, but sees the assessment from all of the park superintendents.
At the bureau level they see all of the parks and at the department level we see horizontal
risk assessment and where we can have economy of scale decisions that have impact on several
people because we've identified similar risk. This is why and where common methodology becomes
critically important. To be able to give ourselves the ability to look at things from that point
of view and make assessments that based upon apples and apples. Not fruits and vegetables
or other issues. Next slide.
This is a skill assessment, the other thing, I'll just be really quick here. Understanding
when you use skill set, this is not a competency model, it is not a performance assessment,
it is simply a 50,000 foot scale of on a level of one to five, five being an expert who can
train others in a line of work, where would you consider this individual? It's the data
that comes from that it becomes important, not this.
The one area that becomes sensitive because it has a person's name attached to it is this
one. There's some criticality there. Next slide.
Now we get into reports. I won't read through these. This is what this goes through, and
it starts to tell you when we start talking about data, and analytics, and guided inquiry
and risk assessment, this is where those three components come together, because it will
ask you very specifically...Here are all the positions, the total succession factor of
which, position risk times attrition risk, is 20 or more.
What that would indicate to you is that it's a risk to your mission if that job became
vacant and the person in it is likely to be leaving. What are you going to do about that?
That's exactly how that's written.
The next one says here are all the positions where the total succession factor is 16 or
more. Pipeline, they're not yet risk at 20, but what are the issues you need to be aware
of to establish actions to create a pipeline to prevent the risk from becoming a 20. One
of the things you'll see here. Do any of those positions require more than one year of development?
Yes?
Then would the Pathways program be a valuable way for you to not only get the people in
that position but also then to be able to diversify your organization, hire individuals
with disabilities or veterans. It not only gives you the data, it tells you the indication
of what that data should mean to you and then asks you a very specific question about what
are you doing. When we've talked about a guided inquiry it is very guided from that perspective.
Next slide.
And then we get into Position Risk times Skill Factor. How many positions do you have where
the position risk is five, it means it's critical to your mission, and the skill factor of the
person in it is less than three? Does that mean you need to commit some of your resources
to employee development, because wouldn't you want to develop the people more expertise
in mission critical work? It gives you the information, it points you in a direction
of where do I need to focus my attention.
Why do I need to focus there and what is it about that I need to know and what am I going
to do? Next slide.
Again, these are just a bunch of different reports. When you look through the process
and you look through the slide deck, there are 10 different reports that come out of
here. It just goes you through this. This last one here, the reason it's highlighted,
is because we start looking at attrition. One of the things that is important about
getting more data is because turnover rates are historical data. Eligibility for retirement
is current information.
Attrition risk is a future projection and it's the combination of all three of those
that give you a better picture of where is your risk for people leaving jobs.
Don't just rely on one piece of information, it's the combination of that data, they looked
at it in its entirety and say, "Oh, if I know that my turnover rate in that occupation that
I'm looking at is 22-percent and the attrition risk is five or three, but the retirement
eligibility is X, I know where I can actually see the potential for people leaving the organization."
It gives you a way in which to close those loops.
Again, what you're looking at is money, workload, people, positions. Every one of those will
impact your organization. My money may be stable but my workload is changing, what do
I need to do? My money is changing but the people are stable, what do I need to do? My
money is changing, but my workload is remaining steady, and I have a risk with people, what
do I need to do.
It's those four combinations of money, work, people, positions that we find most often
have the largest degree of impact on our capacity to plan for actions that mitigate risk. Next
slide. Then we talk about organizational demographics, some of the things that we are all accustomed
to.
These are things that Pam very much specifically talked about. Percent of eligibility by grade.
It was very interesting, very eye-opening for us to look at that and say 60 percent
of the SESers are eligible to retire. 58 percent of the 15s. 60 percent of the 14s. Oh my word.
Do I need to have a game plan for pipeline?
So, don't just assume that because 60 percent of my 15s are eligible to retire, I need to
be filling them. You'd better look at your 14s, 13s, 12s, and 11s to say, do we have
a pipeline now, or do we need to pay attention to that? Again, it goes back to risk assessment,
guided inquiry, data and analytics, and decision making to mitigate risk. Next slide. Now,
again, we'll start talking about demand. And demand coming before supply, intentionally.
When we go through the demand analysis, and there are some very specific...You can go
to the next slide. There are very specific questions that we ask about demand. What do
you know about your work load? What do you know? And this is one of the first places,
you'll see, you may see that that question about what do you know about economic and
political environments?
It's not because we're intentionally trying to be redundant. We're trying to paint the
picture that when you set the strategic direction, it has an impact on your demand. And ask you
the question. Here's how you answered question, when you answered it in this step. Does that
information or strategy need to change because you have that same risk associated in another
step of the process?As you walk through here.
Pamela: I just wanted to add something.
Roger: OK.
Pamela: This is one of the areas, can you hear me? This is one of the areas that our
managers tend to struggle with the most. It's, "But, I don't know. I can't see three to five
years out. My crystal ball, it's still foggy." I think the lower you go on the organization,
the more difficult that is for some managers to do.
Then we talk to them about scenario planning. So what do you know? Can you begin to look
at what potential scenarios there might be? There are some tools for doing that. What
are the components that might influence one scenario over another? Well, do you have the
talent that you need to do the work, is a big one. Do you have the money you need to
do the work, is another one.
Those are the two axes on a graph that most managers can understand. Can I get the work
done with the people that I have, or what do I need? And, Am I going to have the resources,
the money, to be able to pay them to do that work?
You may not know which scenario is going to play out. OK, fine. So, put it in a quadrant.
High likely, low likely, on those two axes. Now, put that on some place where you can
see it and every day ask yourself...And we do this. I mean, I try to get managers to
do this. Every day when you come in you look at that quadrant map, what do you know today
as evidence that might be pointing you toward one of those scenarios over another one?
You can read the newspaper and you can look at the pass back from next year's budget,
and you can look at attrition and what talent you might have lost in the last month. I mean,
there are lots of ways to say, OK, I thought it could be one of these four scenarios. It
looks like it's going to be door number two.
But it gives them a way, if they're not comfortable with saying, this is the future I anticipate,
it's one of these four is most likely that I'll have to deal with. And again, it goes
back to making this a living activity as opposed to shelf art.
Roger: It's not shelf art. I mean, if you're really going to do a strategic work force
plan, that's a really point, Pam. Because when you start looking at that and say, you
know...Because we get that a lot 'God, Roger, I don't have a crystal ball.' I understand
that. But if you can do some scenario planning and there are a couple of analogies I talk
to people about.
We do a pretty good job. Most of us do, as all of you know, when it comes to emergency
management. What's that predicated on? Scenario planning. If this occurs, this is what we
will need to do, and if it doesn't occur to that degree, we know how to adjust.
Take that same frame of reference and that same frame of mind to work force planning.
"What will you do if?" And the other part that we will talk to people about, when we
get to this part and they're saying they struggle with the crystal ball, we'll look at the information
that you've already collected about work load and money risk. What have you identified?
And what does that tell you?
I was talking to Martin Pursely, he's another gentleman I work with at the Department of
the Interior, he's our program manager for diversity and veteran's employment. We were
talking the other day and he said, "Here's another analogy, look at a snow globe. You
shake it up, and all the snow comes falling out. You know what? All those flakes, that's
information, that's events, that's priorities."
The foundations of what it relies on doesn't change, the landscape it falls onto may. And
just as you say, "It's all settled and I have a plan." Somebody comes by your desk and knocks
it over and starts to shake up again. But if you look at it from that perspective, and
understand, "What am I trying to do? What is the direction I'm trying to head? What
are the things that I know can or may occur based up some risk assessment."
"What are the components that would lead me to a decision to say that particular scenario
is occurring, is not occurring, or is occurring not to the degree in which I planned?" And
if you know that, you can make adjustments. Connect the dots. If things change, when,
where, and how those dots are connected, we can make educated, informed decisions about
making adjustments to the impact. OK?
I understand, this is probably the one that gets people the most about, "I don't have
a crystal ball. I can see the budget for this year. Very difficult for me to look five years
down the road and know where we are." We know what our mission is, we know some information.
We'll go back to some of that strategic direction question. What do you know about the political
environment? The economic environment? The technology environment? Are there some scenarios
you could plan for if those occurred? We simply take a step back and say, "Now let's just
keep this in frame. That's why this isn't shelf art."
You need to keep that in your mind, so as we know the things occur, is that solidifying,
or not, one of my scenarios that I've planned for? I think of a part of this, that they'll
talk about, just for a second...When you talk about value to end user managers. We have
people who have gone through this, and they say they find value in it.
There was no more reaffirming or reassuring thing for me, that when I was in the Bureau
of Reclamation, I was sitting in a room and I had a construction engineer talking to another
engineer. The second engineer was talking about, "I think we're probably going to be
looking at maybe needing to do a VERA VSIP."
The constructioneer looked at him and said, "What is your total successor factor, position
and relation factors, and don't you have the data that would support that that's a valuable
strategy to solve your problem?"
If they understand how this information relates to them, their work, and their mission, that's
where they will find value, "Because it means something to me." OK, next slide. Then we
get into supply, but walk through this process. And again, we're going through asking. These
are actually guided inquiry questions that are samples that come from the workforce planning
model we have in DOI.
What is the planned organizational outlook for the future? How do you plan to meet those
goals? What skills and competencies are needed by the organization? Are they changing? And
is that related to technology, environmental influence, the way in which you work or the
progress of the work that's being done?
Changes in organizational structure, diversity objectives, hiring initiatives, employee developmental
needs? Again, that's one of the things we look at, because now we have the data if you
walk through the system, but it's a very important point.
When we went through risk analysis for money, risk analysis for workload, risk analysis
for people in positions first, before we did demand, supply, and gap analysis, because
when you get into supply and demand and gap analysis, some of the information which will
allow you to make decisions is information you dealt with and information you've already
collected when you did the risk assessment for money, work, people, and positions. Here's
where it actually has impact for decisions you want to make.
Next slide.
So, turnover and supply. Again, how will turnovers of key staff impact your information? And
you know that, because you can go to risk assessment for attrition. Staff will rate
in a manner that matches workload patterns. How am I organized?
You can start to see a lot of these guided inquiry questions go back to recruitment,
engagement, development, multi-sector workforce planning, retention, people and knowledge,
organizational structure and design. We don't lose that context with the questions we're
asking. We're now putting them in context of where they make the most sense and have
the most impact. Next slide.
Then you have a whole bunch of gap analysis questions. Now that we've assessed demand
and we know supply, now gap analysis becomes a little bit more straightforward to do.
How well does your current workforce align to support your business strategy? How flexible
is your workforce? Are there other strategies we need to do to mitigate or reduce those
gaps, that we know that now occur between the demand of where we're going and the supply
of what we have and the process and actions we need to take to get ourselves there. Next
slide.
This is another thing to do. We start doing gap analysis. This is a really important point.
We start walking through the process saying, "You can look at what does your current workforce
look like, short term losses, short term expected hires, and long term losses?" Where do we
get this information? From some of the risk analysis we've already done. Now we start
to say, "Here's where it has impact about what you know in supply and gap and demand
analysis."
The next slide you'll see is very important. We're not just limited to a specific occupational
series. We can look at an organizational entity. Say, for example, we use US Geological survey.
How many people do we have in the science arena?
OK, we know we have geologists and we have a whole lot of different people in the scientific
series. But rather than look at individual series, we can look across the board and say,
"How many people and where are they in science? Is that going to remain constant? Do we need
to focus attention? Do we need to do something?" Next slide.
Let's not forget about skills. We can do gap analysis for positions, occupations, workload,
and skills. Are the skills changing? Do the people we currently have have the skills we
need? No they don't. Then do we need to develop the people we have or do we need to fill the
gap by hiring people with different skills?
And again, guided inquiries, strategic questions that get asked to help steer you in the direction
to say, "This is where your attention needs to be focused. Here's what you need to do
about it, why you need to focus your attention on it." Next slide.
Then we have a whole bunch of final guided inquiry questions. We close the loop with
recruitment, engagement, development, multi-sector workforce planning, retention of not just
people but knowledge, organizational structure and design, succession planning as it relates
to skills not just positions, and budget formulation and execution. We ask questions specifically
about that.
Here's an example. What difference exists between the future workforce and will there
be a surplus or shortage? We have that data now so go back and look at your data and what
does it tell you? One of the things we do ask, what is your biggest workforce challenge?
What do you see in the future as the biggest thing you need to wrestle with? Next slide.
Now we get into action planning. Now we start to close the loop with workforce restructuring.
You'll see here, prioritizing and right sizing programs, hiring controls and position management,
administrative efficiencies, consolidates functions or shares services, re-engineering,
leveraging technology, partnering or strategic sourcing.
Really important, we start using that term. Partnering and strategic sources. Can we use
other bureaus? Can we use other federal agencies? It does not mean contracting work. It means
work that can be done outside your organization by a host of different individuals. As in
the BLM, we can use people in reclamation to do that work because they're already familiar
with it or we can use people in the Department of Agriculture versus Interior.
It doesn't necessarily mean contracting out federal work. That is a component but when
you start looking at strategic sourcing you have federal employees within your own agencies,
within your own bureaus, and federal employees outside your own bureau, outside your own
agency, contract work, volunteers, et cetera, and looking at it from those perspective.
When we go through this process, you'll notice very specifically, very intentionally, the
one strategy that wasn't on that last slide, across the board cuts because every one of
those strategies has attached itself to the making smart cuts in the partnership or public
services publication. We incorporated that into our strategic workforce planning process.
We didn't just leave it there because for every single one of those strategies what
we walk managers through is here is an example. Prioritizing and right sizing work. Here's
the definition, here are the advantages, here are the disadvantages, what do you need to
consider, what do you need to do. That process, that model, will be repeated for every one
of those seven strategies.
Leveraging technology, here's what it means, here are the advantages, here are the disadvantages,
what do you need to consider, do you have recommendations? We walk them through that
process very specifically as we go through.
Bottom line, then we can roll this up, business processes being an effective and efficient
way to do work. Leveraging technology to gain the best we can from the technology that's
out there and optimizing the skills of the people we have.
It's those three major components that lead to workforce and organizational performance,
that we have effective business process, we leverage technology to our advantage, and
we optimize the skills and utilization of the people we have or the people we need or
the people we hire. It's those three components that lead to organizational performance.
Then we end up with an action plan. All of that is very similar, folks. Again, if you
walk through this process what happens is in each one of those individual steps you
identify the actions you need to take, deliverables, resources, and timelines to mitigate the risks
as you went through the steps.
Simply collect them all now, and say put all of your actions together from each of the
previous steps and say which ones are similar enough that they can be consolidated so you
can kill several birds with the same stone, economy scale decisions, and do things horizontally
as well as vertically. Which ones are your priorities and which ones are urgent? You
end up with an action plan. Next.
Again, this shouldn't be unfamiliar to any of us in terms of doing the program, the barriers,
cause, definition of success. Remember when we started with that? What did the success
look like? When we outlined it...One of the very first questions we asked, when we did
setting the strategic direction "What does success look like and how are we going to
know when we get there?"
We close the loop and say let's go back to that and ensure that our action plan is going
to result in the success we identified when we set the strategic direction. Next slide.
Look familiar? Action plan in terms of actions, deliverables, dates, resources needed. Next
slide.
I just wanted to talk really quickly about one of the things we do at Department of the
Interior, and I'm sure everyone else does, we had a need to ensure that our mission critical
operations were linked to our strategic plan. One of the things we did in relationship to
workforce planning was to look at this and say we have mission areas, we have goals,
we have strategies, we have performance measures in the strategic plan.
Let's identify the bureaus that are responsible for them and the occupations and skills that
are needed to accomplish them. When we did that, I can tell you from work, we have five
mission areas, 18 goals, 42 strategies, 122 performance measures in our strategic plan
for the department. We then went through that process and identified which bureaus are responsible
for each one of those performance measures and there are several.
One performance measure may have three or four bureaus that are contributing to it.
We simply went out and said from that perspective, bureaus, then what are the mission critical
occupations or skills that you need to ensure that you accomplish your responsibility in
meeting that performance measure? When we did, we ended up with our mission critical
occupations and we found a very strategic way in which to reduce that number to a workable
point.
We ended up with natural resource specialist, civil engineer, geologist, wildland fire,
law enforcement and security. Interesting enough, when we went through this process
every one of those mission critical occupations attaches itself ...At least one of them was
present as a mission critical in every single bureau and they attach themselves to 86 of
the 122 performance measures. Pretty good validation from there.
If you look at it from the perspective, you have transferable skills to occupations, you
have transferable skills to performance measures, you have occupation to bureaus, and you have
occupations to performance measures. That's the metrics by which we use to make sure that
our mission critical occupations are linked to our strategic plan. Also, now we keep that
information in mind when we do strategic workforce planning.
Here's the other thing that's really interesting. You go through all of this and we all have
this responsibility to accomplish the human capital accountability and assessment framework.
By a natural consequence, by doing strategic workforce planning, you have accomplished
every one of those five elements. Talent management, strategic alignment, leadership and knowledge
management, result oriented performance culture, and accountability.
I have that process of attached here and I can go through the guided inquiry risk assessment
process, I can attach it to strategic alignment, talent management, leadership development.
Because we've aligned our mission critical occupations to the strategic plan, we have
strategic alignment, talent management, and because we have an action plan with measurable
results, it's a results oriented performance culture that has accountability.
Because the result you get is what is important to you. That's the whole process. I think
it's from that point of view when you see that perspective, and people say, "Human capital
economy assessment framework is not a duplicative effort or a separate effort that we need to
make." That we have that ability to detach ourselves to that process, because we followed
a strategic workforce planning model.
So that being said, a whole lot of information in a short period of time. Trust me, I can
speak faster than that if I needed to. So I'd really like to take questions at this
point, either in the audience, or people on the webinar. Any questions whatsoever, be
happy to ask and answer...Or I can repeat it? OK...So the question is capturing attrition data from current employees in your
organization. And how do you do that?
There are two ways to do that. When you download the information out of the personnel system
you use, we use FEPS, there is a column that auto-populates based upon retirement eligibility
date. But there's a column that you can then change that number based upon your knowledge...Correct.
That column that you can adjust, this is the one that comes default out of the system,
but I can change it from four to two, or from one to five. And my ability to change that
is based upon what I know.
Pam: Can I address that?
Roger: Sure.
Pam: So we use this one as a great teaching moment for managers about why it's so critical
to be engaged with your employees. So that you can gather intelligence about what's going
on. You can't predict everything. There are going to be people, they're going to be very
closed about, they're going back to school. They're planning to leave and they're never
going to tell you, because they don't feel safe about doing that.
You can't anticipate that perhaps. But the more you engage with your employees, the more
intelligence you'll have about what they're intentions are to better you are able to plan...What
I said earlier, we want to do workforce planning at the lowest practical level. So if I go
down to a work unit that's 10 people, that's probably not very practical, because that
first line supervisor may not be able to put this into a strategic context.
But I probably would want to do it, for us it would be a park unit. So now you're talking
40 to 500 people. A science center. A major office that has a mission that's fairly homogenous
and what have you. But it's high enough in terms of grade level or managerial responsibility
to add a strategic piece to this. It's not one answer. OK? It just depends. But you try
to use intelligence about your workforce, and that comes from knowing your people.
Roger: But I think a part to go off on that, is that you get that information, you may
have to get down to a certain level to get information for attrition risk. But there
are other aspects that a manager may not have from a practical level. But it's the combination
of engagement of people in a process that's a common methodology that you will eventually
get the information that you need to make good decisions.
[silence]
Woman 1: All right. I just wanted to say I appreciate how thorough and detailed the questions
that you ask in a process are. And I wanted to ask, it's actually a three part question.
When you're dealing with workforce planning and managers, oftentimes a process is seen
more as a drill or a required exercise versus a culture change. And the first question...Well,
I'll read all three questions.
How many times have you been through this cycle? How long did it take to complete the
whole cycle? And have you ever received a request to simplify the process? And how did
you respond to that?
Roger: How many times have I been through this.
Pam: Let me take that question.
Roger: Yeah, go right ahead.
Pam: So where we are in the process is we've created the methodology, and we have the tools,
but they're not in a most user friendly environment right now. We want to put them in a web-based
enabled environment. Right now they're desktop tools. We have piloted them with the office
of the secretaries. Everyone of our secretarial offices have been through this.
So these are essentially SES level managers with functional responsibilities at the department
level. And we got feedback from them about the value, how difficult it was, so on, so
forth.
We're currently in the process of having each of our bureaus perform a pilot within their
organization. And it's a mixed bag. Some of them are looking at headquarters functions.
Some of them are looking at park unit. For example, in the park service, they're doing
three park units, a small, medium, and a large one. They want to see if there are any differences
in thinking that occur at different scales. Fish and wildlife service is doing their human
capital function.
USGS is doing a headquarters program, sort of program management or oversight. Not execution.
More of a strategic function. We've got an IT piece. So it's horizontal across the organization.
So we're in the process of gathering input from that. I can tell you managers are somewhat
resistant naturally.
'I've got a full-time job as it is, and you want me to do what?' But when you can capture
their attention long enough to talk them through the value of it. And right now, Roger and
I are trying not to be the drum majors on this.
We're letting the managers who've been through it become our apostles. They're the ones saying,
"This is one of the most valuable things that I have been through." And these are managers
that are highly respected as good managers. So we were very strategic in who we selected
to pilot this. Because we know that they are looked to as leaders and as role models. Will
we ever convince 100 percent that this is the right thing to do? No.
And one of the big culture changes that I worry about is, "How do I make sure that we
reward and recognize more of what we want?" As opposed to when people don't do this and
they fail, we provide a safety net. That's a negative reinforcement for not doing workforce
planning. So reinforcement not to do it. But that's a culture change. So hopefully, we
can start shifting the needle here that says, "When you do the right thing you get the rewards."
Not when you do the wrong things.
Roger: I think what Pam is alluding to, one of the critical points is, "What's in it for
me?" You need to pay attention. Do you even know that? Because managers will look at that.
Again, if I don't see something that's in it for me, I will perceive it as a check the
box exercise. So it's very important when the education and the rollout, and getting
people exposed to it that you talk very specifically in their language about what's in it for them.
I'm talking to all of you in the context about what's in it for us about doing strategic
workforce planning. I have a different level of conversation when I'm talking to managers
about understanding their business and the benefit they can get from it. Because once
they have that and they can see a potential, OK, I'm willing to try it. Carrot versus stick.
Gotta have a big...
Pam: Big carrot.
Roger: Big carrot. That they understand that they want to take part in it. As far as making
it more simplified, the other thing I would allude to is what Pam is looking at...Is one
of the things that we are very, very specifically looking at doing, is putting this in a web-based
environment. And my analogy for people is TurboTax for workforce planning.
Walking you step by step by step. When you get done with TurboTax, you don't have to
fill out all those tax forms. Right? Because it knows that when you gave it information
where it goes. I can tell you when you answer these questions I know where all that information
is going. And make it from that so they can see it usable that you can start and come
back without having to be on a desktop. But that's our next phase is looking at it in
a web-based environment.
Pam: Yeah, and I got to shout-out to agriculture on this one. That's another agency that we're
looking to partner with to do this. And hopefully we can provide this as a federal tool. So
you guys, you can engage with Roger. If there's some specific things you haven't seen that
you think should be there, we'll keep growing this. But our intention is not turn it into
just an interior product. This is something that we hope we can share with everybody.
[silence]
Woman 1: Just one quick thing to add, I guess my question is: Has it been evaluated by an
outside entity, your model? Like GAO.
Pam: No. We have not shared it specifically with GAO. Although that's probably next because
we are due up on some of review of our workforce planning activities. We have actually talked
with a contractor who we have under contract right now helping with some of our IT transformation,
workforce management issues.
We've shared it in a number of venues like this across the federal government. So it's
been, I don't want to use the word validated, because that comes with the connotation. But,
yeah, people are sort of nodding their heads. The number of people who are asking for copies
of it tells me that we're onto something.
Woman 2: [inaudible 81:32] .
Roger: Yeah, the question was, "How do we get the managers engaged to do this?" Because
it is a big elephant. And yes, we do facilitation. But I think the other part of that that's
important is understanding when we started this process we have a workforce planning
team of people that helped design this who are from each of the bureaus and major offices
within the departments.
We have champions already who are then also engaged in that process. So they also not
only...We introduced them to it, and talked to them about what it is, what you should
expect when you should get it, what you do with it when you do get it so that they know
what's coming before it gets there.
But also then they have a local resource that they can tap into at their local bureau level
of somebody who understands this who helped develop it. Both of those pieces are fairly
critical.
Woman 2: [inaudible 82:33] .
Roger: Oh yeah. I think when you start looking at it, because what we look at is I think
the two things when you start talking about that.The common methodology is critically
important. Because at that point in time we can roll it up by office, region, bureau,
department. But we can also look across functional components, finance, HR, IT. Because everybody
who's gone through the process, has followed the same methodology. But that does come at
different and higher levels.
One of the things that Pam and I look at is, "OK, who does what at what point in time?"
And that's part of the design process of knowing what you want to get out of it and who you
need to engage in the process.
Pam: Yeah. Maybe an example I could use is we run our SCSCDP obviously at the departmental
level. The candidate development program. So if we're seeing maybe not at the park unit
level. Because there's very few that are SES level. But at the regional level begin to
see some succession questions around executive development.
And then you look a bureau level, then it tells me, at the department, I have a demand
for running multiple cohorts through a CDP. Is it 20 or is it 60 people that I need to
be thinking about in terms of getting those competencies developed? So you wouldn't run
a CDP at a park unit or at a regional scale, or even a bureau scale. It's more of those
departments. It rolls up.
Woman 2: Would the assumption, kind of going back to the earlier question about gathering
that initial attrition. Would the assumption be that you start at the lowest level and
then the people at the next level are relying on the below information, and then it would
flow up to the high level? Or would those levels be doing it at the same time?
Pamela: So, where we are right now is in the pilot process, and our plan for 2013 is to
deploy it department-wide, so we'll have one cycle that will be essentially on the same
time table. That would allow then a regional director to look across multiple units underneath
them and make some assumptions about their workforce issues within their scope of control,
their span of control.
There might be things that are very specific to the mission of their organization and the
region within which they are. But at the department level, let's me look across the board. Or
not just me, but my peers look across the organization of senior leaders, functional
leaders. At that point it becomes a living document, and I think it's going to be not
on a regular cycle or periodic, it's going to be based on changing demographics.
We may want to take a look annually and see if anything has changed, we need to make adjustments
in our departmental plan. I would hope that bureau levels would do that kind of thing,
and regional levels. I'll keep going back to lowest practical level. I don't know what
that is. I'm not going to prescribe what that is.
When I was at USGS we did this in our southeast area as a pilot, and so we went down to the
science center level, and those ranged from a size of about 40 to a size of about 250.
But that was the level of management that had the intelligence, the strategic perspective,
the control of resources that could answer those questions. If you push it too low, they
can't answer the questions.
Roger: One of the things you can do, the nice thing about this, when you start looking at
the common methodology, because there are components of it that you could push down
farther than other aspects, and that's the nice part of it.
You may push down the risk assessment for people in positions to a lower level then
you would push down risk assessment for funding and workload, and that's fine. Because you
know where it goes. You know where those dots and how those dots are connected, so you can
tailor it to your own needs.
Because the other thing you're going to run into, we have a 60 to 75,000 person organization,
somebody else who has a 1,500 person organization may want to do the same thing. That's the
nice part about it, because it's common, consistent, it's tailorable.
Pamela: And scaleable.
Roger: Scaleable. OK, questions for the...
Lucy: I think I'm going to ask the audience that's webcasting that we'll respond to your
questions offline. We only have about 15 minutes remaining, and I want to be sure we get through
the content of the practical exercise. Because that's the greatest takeaway from this session.
Roger: OK. You're talking about the takeaway, Lucy? OK, so if it's from that perspective,
if you look at the folks that are here in the auditorium as well as the folks...What
I have for you is a takeaway that's a practical process to say...It's a broad overview of
workforce planning. What is it and how do you do it, as well as walking through each
individual step and having a series of strategic guided inquiry questions that are exported
from the model.
This are not all the questions that were asked. I tried to keep this in reference to workforce
restructuring. When you see the questions in here associated with the step to which
they're identified, they are in context to strategic workforce restructuring. It's from
that perspective, I'm not sure if you wanted to go through that at any level or not, Lucy,
or just let people know that's what it is, and the value that I would want and expect
them to get from it.
Lucy: I think just kind of walking through the format design. When we first started developing
the session, at least upon our [inaudible 89:03] people wanted us to be able to [inaudible
89:06] PowerPoint, [inaudible 89:08] for that and perhaps contemplate what it would [inaudible
89:13] and then recommend acts of direct action. I asked them to [inaudible 89:19] and just
picking up with [inaudible 89:25] .
Roger: Yeah, and I think if you look through, it goes through the process, and from that
context, because you may have to have that conversation with folks at your agency. Workforce
planning, what is it? Unless we start from a common ground of understanding, we have
the potential to say we have 77 different definitions.
When you walk through here and you look at the step one settings, strategic direction,
these are critical questions that I got out of our model. It's not all of the questions
that are in there, it's simply the ones that are associated with workforce restructuring
implications.
Step two is in funding. You'll see here about is the total funding, and it will give you
some guidance as to what is high, extremely high or moderate. The workload, I think you'll
see six or eight questions there. Risk assessment for people in positions. Again, this is done
in a database. I didn't provide a whole lot of information there.
Step five is reports that's associated with the data that's collected in step four. If
I skip some steps here, it's not because there aren't issues associated with them, it's because
unless you have the model and know what the data is, it really doesn't provide you context
to understand it to the point that you can use it.
When you start going through supply and gap and demand analysis, these are very specific
questions that we do ask that are very much related to opening eyes or establishing the
vision of where do I need to focus my attention, why do I need to focus it there.
I'll go back to the very beginning, understanding that workforce restructuring does not need
to and is not necessarily synonymous with downsizing and reductions in force. Because
if we go through this process strategically we can identify strategies, directions, and
approaches that will allow us to accomplish the mission in a reduced budgetary environment
without processing adverse actions.
And I'll go back to that model where I had the second or third slide before we ended.
Business processes, leveraging technology, and optimizing the skills of the people we
have to accomplish performance, organizational performance, and if you get the information,
you know why you're getting it, and how to use it, and what questions to ask about it
strategically, you could take very specific strategic actions that accomplish what you're
trying to do, and it's a way to be more proactive in a reactive world that we live in.
Just because we live in a reactive world, and we're in a reduced budget environment
doesn't mean we have to wait to go, "OMG, what do I do? Let's cut people." It's let's
understand where are the skills needed? What skills are transferable? What skills do I
need? What skills do I develop? How do I pass on knowledge? How do I use the resources available
to me to mitigate risk that I've identified about my mission, its structure, its organization,
its function, its funding, and its work.
Pamela: Are there any questions about the handout? I mean I just want to reiterate.
It's a sample of what is there, and Roger pulled it together in the context of what
this workforce restructuring focus has been. It's incomplete in terms of the workforce
planning model overall.
Man : Will the fuller model be available to us in some form for our use, by our agencies?
And I had another question regarding your methodology.
Pamela: The short answer is, yes.
Man: OK.
Pamela: The longer answer is...And this just comes from my role sitting at the Chico table,
if we just hand it out, and all the agencies start trying to build it at the same time,
the cost of doing that in a redundancy standpoint, I don't think is a productive way to do this.
That's why we've been stepping it out.
We'll do briefings all day long. We'll share stuff. But we are really trying to say, "Join
us if you want to help us build this out in an automated tool." We just happen to have
found that Agriculture's willing to put some resources towards this in terms of building
the technology for it. It's an adaptable model. It's public domain.
My biggest...And I shouldn't say it this way, but don't be surprised if you don't find it
in a vendor catalog. The vendors out there in the private sector are anxious to get their
hands on this, build it and sell it to you. And we want to try to make it available inside
the federal government. We've used public resources to do this. Let's make it available
to all of our agencies.
Man : Terrific. Thank you.
Roger: And I would say from that perspective...Because I've given presentations of this nature to,
not only just Agriculture, but Homeland Security and Department of Treasury, and a number of
different federal agencies. Be happy to do it from that point, because I think the good
part about it is exposure of this to the right people in your agency and then what do we
do, how can we help, and are there things that we can share?
And that's what I say, when I ended up with this gentleman at U.S. Department of Agriculture,
he and I are right on the same page, and [inaudible 94:41] from that perspective feel free to
get a hold of myself or Pam.
Man : Great. Thank you. And the other question has to do with it seems that the methodology
that you use includes both subjective and objective components. So, for instance, what
you get off the payroll system number of years until eligible for retirement or past eligibility,
versus managers on a scale of one to five, how close do you think this person's coming...
So, therefore, do you have plans to sort of evaluate after each year how accurate various
components were, the subjective versus the objective, and maybe change the weight that
you give each as you move forward accordingly?
Roger: I don't know that'll be so much as changing weight as to change to how accurate
were your predictive elements, and did they occur? And if they occurred, then how valuable
were they, how accurate were they? Rather than change the model I would say, "How well
did we predict what we thought was going to occur?" That seems to be the more valid process
to me.
Man: Thank you.
Pamela: We just sort of acknowledge that there's variability in this. Managers are going to
make different...You know, are you a conservative thinker, or are you more liberal in your thoughts
around the possibilities? We just have to assume that there's going to be variability.
I don't think we can ever sort of say, you have to use this gauge to measure with. It
just won't happen.
Angela: Well, as you can tell this is really an engaging and interesting topic for a lot
of us, particularly as the environment is unfolding. I really want to thank Pam and
Roger for showcasing what they've been working so diligently ***, and their management
team, in building something that hopefully we're all going to be able to leverage.
In particular we really do appreciate the guide inquiries. It's just a sample, but it
gets you to start thinking in terms of how to provide key thought provoking questions
to help to build your footprint and your game plan going forward, so it really means a lot.
We thank you very much, and also to all of our guests that were here today. We hope you
enjoyed the seminar and the discussions, and that this information will help you with your
restructuring efforts.
The PowerPoints from today's presentation will be posted on workforce restructuring
max page. We will provide the link, as well as to our audience that's participating through
webcast, they can also expect to receive that information as well. Each and every one of
you that are in the auditorium today, you received a survey. If you could please take
a few minutes before you depart and complete the survey, your feedback is very important
to us, and leave it in the tray that we have right outside the doors.
For our participants through webcast, you will also not only receive the Power Point
slides, but you'll see the survey as well. Again, we want to be able to gauge your input,
your feedback, and your suggestions for future planning down the road.
Finally, I want to thank our core team, design team for putting this together and working
with our presenters as well as all of our volunteers who were here to escort and make
sure that everything ran smoothly. Don't know what I would do without you guys. I thank
you very much. This is our final event in terms of hosting forums under the four challenge
areas, this was challenge one. And you guys knocked it out the ball park.
So, again, thank you all for attending the entire series, all the information, again,
is on Max Workforce restructuring site. And those here, please complete the survey. Thanks
again and have a wonderful day. Thank you.