Guide offers workforce planning techniques

Each federal agency faces unique challenges in recruiting and retaining employees. For example, the Homeland Security Department needs to quickly hire and train workers with diplomatic, language and risk assessment skills to implement port security programs -- a task the General Accounting Office calls "daunting."

Agencies would find themselves better prepared for such major recruiting efforts if they spent more time predicting future challenges and building staffs with the right skills to address these challenges, GAO concludes in a new guide on federal workforce planning. Agencies should think about situations likely to crop up over the next year and a half, and should consider long-term challenges separately, GAO recommends.

The guide, "Key Principles for Effective Strategic Workforce Planning," (GAO-04-39) is based on interviews with federal managers and officials at the Office of Personnel Management. The guide also culls information from academic studies and experts at think tanks.

The guide notes that the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, a federal agency created in 1974 to protect Americans' retirement incomes, looked five years into the future and identified six skill sets its workforce will likely need. PBGC officials found that while contract management and information technology expertise will become increasingly important at the agency, it is actually losing experts in these areas. To fill the talent gaps, PBGC is considering mentoring programs, rotational assignments and one-on-one training for current employees.

The National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health decided that over the next few years, its scientists will need to focus on applying genetic discoveries to medical research. The research group is conducting workshops to help its current staff get up to speed in such research, and to develop strategies for attracting and hiring more experts in clinical medicine.

Agencies should use targeted recruiting programs to fill skills gaps, GAO recommends. The Labor Department has a plan to attract more managers with business degrees, Chris Mihm, GAO's director of strategic issues, writes in the guide. For example, in February the department launched a fellows program for people with M.B.A. degrees. Labor is also courting such candidates by offering recruitment bonuses and student loan repayments.

Such workforce planning techniques will not work unless agencies involve multiple layers of managers in implementation, the GAO guide cautions. PBGC started a program that allows lower level managers with leadership potential to help in the process of identifying skills gaps and formulating recruitment and training strategies. This way, future top managers will be involved early on in hiring and shaping the workers they will eventually supervise.