Workforce Planning and Professional Development Task Force - Final Report

In the past decades, the nature and direction of transportation issues facing this country have changed substantially. A strong economy challenges both government and industry to be innovative in recruitment and retention practices.People are more able and willing to change jobs.There is more cultural, ethnic, and skill diversity.Portable pension plans, recruitment bonuses, and other features have encouraged even greater change.According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of those aged 25 to 34, prime workforce candidates, has decreased by 10.1 percent, a decrease of over 4 million people. Transportation must compete with other sectors and other programs for funding and people resources. Increases in the rate of government retirements and other separations have made this challenge even more daunting. Also, there is a need to develop a workforce that thinks creatively, solves problems, builds consensus, and communicates and works effectively with diverse entities.This involves both professional and personal development.

The FHWA Strategic Plan recognizes this evolution and sets in motion a broad direction for its future. The Plan is supported by a set of Corporate Management Strategies that address specific issues critical to the agency's development as a quality organization. Central to all of those strategies are the 2874 employees that make up the FHWA workforce - the single greatest asset that the agency has for the delivery of programs, expertise, and quality service to its customers. The continued development of employees is critical to the achievement of FHWA's strategic goals and objectives.

This chapter introduces the Task Force that was created to address these challenges, the process the group used to carry out its work, and the key framework and definitions that form the foundation of the rest of this report.

1.A.Task Force Formation

On April 5, 2000, the Executive Director established the Workforce Planning and Professional Development Task Force to "evaluate the current and future needs of the FHWA workforce, and to move forward with implementing actions to address those needs." The purpose of the Task Force was to assist FHWA in adapting to recent changes in the economy and the transportation industry, and plan for the future.

Though working with less staff, FHWA continues to have more program responsibilities, and be more responsive to its expanded partner and customer base.FHWA's responsibilities continue to change and become more challenging (e.g., increased sensitivity to environmental resources, increasing complexity of the planning process, innovative financing, promotion of improved traffic operations and intelligent transportation systems (ITS)).Because of these changes, FHWA has needed to work even more with other transportation modes in the integration of both passenger and freight movement.With increasing technology and competition for resources (natural, people and financial), the development of projects and solutions has also become more complex requiring new approaches and commitments.This has required FHWA to modify its processes to assure its people have the talents and skills to bring together diverse interests to achieve solutions.In order for FHWA to stay competitive today and in the future, the agency must develop a workforce, and have processes in place that provide the flexibility to more quickly adapt to rapid changes in its operating environment and changes in the needs of its customers.Addressing these issues was the challenge given to the Task Force.

The Objectives of the Task Force were to:

• Establish a vision for FHWA's future workforce.


• Assess the agency's needs to achieve that vision, including needs in specific disciplines, needs for succession planning and leadership development, and the needs for new areas of expertise and development.


• Develop strategies to meet those needs.


• Based upon accepted recommendations, implement programmatic changes to carry out those strategies. These changes, which would be monitored by the Office of Professional Development, may include implementation of new programs or enhancements to existing programs, establishment of budget priorities, and redefinition of organizational roles and responsibilities in the area of professional development as well as an emphasis on the role of each employee in his or her development.

The Task Force was given broad authority to recommend measures to carry out these objectives.The primary support of the group was provided by the Office of Professional Development and the Office of Administration.Although the Task Force reported to the Executive Director, it coordinated its recommendations with the Management Council, Leadership Team, the Human Resources Management Committee, and other organizational units.Ultimately, all units of the agency provided the Task Force with support that it needed in conducting its work.

The scope of this Task Force was broad and affected every major element of the agency; therefore, the membership of the Task Force drew on a broad representation from throughout the agency.

Core Business Units
*Vincent F. Schimmoller - Infrastructure
Carol Jacoby - Infrastructure (formerly with Federal Lands)
Jeffrey A. Lindley - Operations
Susan Lauffer - Planning and Environment
Frederick "Bud" Wright - Safety

Service Business Units
*Joseph S. Toole - Professional Development
Jerry Hawkins - Human Resources
Fred Hempel - Corporate Management
Paula Ewen - Office of Information and Management Service (formerly with Research, Development and Technology)

Peter Markle - Program Manager for Change Management

Directors of Field Services George Ostensen - Midwest
Gary Hamby - West (formerly Resource Center Manager - West)

Resource Center
Jo Blackstone - East (now retired)

Division Offices
Leonard Brown - Ohio
Alan Steger - Minnesota
Melissa Ridenour - Rhode Island
Joyce Curtis - Virginia

* Task Force Co-Chairperson

1.B.Introduction to Workforce Planning

1.B.1. Defining Workforce Planning

Simply stated, workforce planning is a "systematic process for ensuring that the right people with the right skills are in the right place at the right time."Many definitions of workforce planning can be found by reading current literature on the topic.The working definition that has been adopted by the Department of Transportation (DOT) is:

Workforce planning is looking at what an organization needs to accomplish in a given period of time; what knowledge, skills, and experience are required to get the job done; and how large and what type of workforce is required to provide that mix of knowledge, skills, and experience.[1]

Whatever definition is used, the basic purpose of workforce planning is the same:to provide managers with a framework for making human resource decisions (e.g., recruiting, developing, training, retaining and placing employees) based on the organization's mission, strategic plan, budgetary resources, and a set of desired workforce competencies. In other words, to build the "workforce of the future."

1.B.2. The Importance of Workforce Planning

Organizational success depends on having the right employees with the right competencies in the right place at the right time.Workforce planning provides managers with a strategic basis for making human resource decisions that will achieve this end result.Workforce planning provides an effective means of:

• Identifying competencies needed in the workforce, both in the present and the future;
• Selecting and developing the workforce;
• Anticipating change rather than being surprised by events; and
• Addressing present and anticipated workforce issues.

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

Workforce planning also allows managers to systematically address issues that are driving workforce change.One issue is age and growing retirement eligibility. The Federal workforce is universally aging and the government seems assured of a huge talent drain within the next five years.About 30 percent of the career civil service will be eligible to retire and an additional 20 percent could seek early retirement.At the same time, most Federal agencies are finding it difficult to hire top-notch college graduates, particularly those with high-tech skills.Many agencies are turning to workforce planning in order to determine how many and what types of employees they require, where and when the employees will be needed, and what steps must be taken to hire and retain these employees.

Finally, workforce planning provides managers with tools to address changes in program direction that will have an impact on the type of work performed (and hence the competencies needed) in the future, and allows managers to identify ways in which technology may affect competencies required in the workforce.

In short, workforce planning helps ensure that there will continue to be an adequate supply of individuals with appropriate professional qualifications or sets of skills, by providing the information needed to guide and inform future investments in such areas as recruiting and hiring, retention, professional development, leadership development, and succession planning.

1.B.3 Approaches to Workforce Planning

Many organizations, both public and private, have developed models for workforce planning.Other than variations in terminology, the processes are all very much alike.Most include:

• identification of competencies needed in the future,
• an analysis of present workforce competencies,
• a comparison of future needs with the present workforce in order to identify competency gaps and surpluses,
• the preparation of plans for building the workforce needed in the future, and
• an evaluation process to ensure that the workforce competency model remains valid and that objectives are being met.

This process may seem simple but it depends on rigorous and comprehensive analysis of the organization's functions, workforce, and strategic direction.Traditional workforce planning models generally include the following activities:

Demand Analysis: Demand analysis deals with developing measures of future activities and workload, and describing the competency sets needed by the workforce of the future.Demand analysis must take into account not only workforce changes driven by changing work but also workforce changes driven by changing workload and changing functions.Technology and process improvement will continue to have an impact on how work is performed and must be considered in the demand analysis process.

Supply Analysis: Supply analysis focuses on identifying current organizational competencies, analyzing staff demographics, and identifying employment trends. Competency analysis provides baseline data on the existing organization and present staff.Trend analysis provides both descriptive and forecasting models describing how turnover will affect the workforce in the absence of management action.Trend analysis is essential to effective solution analysis (see below).

Gap Analysis: Gap analysis is the process of comparing information from the supply analysis and demand analysis to identify the differences -- the "gaps" -- between the current organizational competencies and the competency set needed in the future workforce.Gap analysis identifies situations in which the number of personnel or competencies in the current workforce will not meet future needs (demand exceeds supply) and situations in which current workforce personnel or competencies exceed the needs of the future (supply exceeds demand).

Solution Analysis: Solution analysis is the process of developing strategies for closing gaps in competencies and reducing surplus competencies.It is also a process in which trade-offs need to be considered between various strategies.Such strategies include planned recruiting, training, developing, and placing of employees, as well as use of contractors.Solution analysis must take into account employment trends that may work either in the favor of or counter to the direction of planned workforce change.Realistic forecasts of retirement and other separations by discipline and skill sets are also critical to this analysis of solutions.

Evaluation: Evaluation involves performing periodic and systematic review of the workforce plan and making adjustments as required by changes in mission, objectives, and workforce competencies.

The methodology, developed by the DOT Workforce Planning Work Group, incorporates these activities to answer the following questions:

• What work must your organization do to accomplish its mission?
• Who can do the work that needs to be done?
• What are the right strategies for addressing these needs?

The workforce planning model followed by the Task Force (see Figure 1-1 below) combines the traditional workforce planning activities and the DOT focus on functions and people, with a multidimensional view of the gap analysis.As with other models, the principal gap is the difference between demand (Future State -- Functions) and supply (Future State -- People).However, effective workforce planning also requires consideration of the gaps between the future and current states for both functions and people (e.g., changes in the agency's functions or changes in workforce demographics).

The model developed by the Task Force also reflects the need to consider the impact of internal and external environments on both functions and people. For example, the future vision of FHWA and/or the FHWA workforce could be affected by significant changes in one or more of the following areas:

• Mission, function and strategic goals and objectives
• Funding levels
• Legislation
• Organizational structure
• Technology
• Social and economic trends
• Workforce demographics
• Workforce supply and demand (e.g., trends in turnover and shortages in key skill areas)

Finally, the model reflects the need to develop effective strategies to close the identified gaps.These strategies could fall into many areas such as recruiting, hiring, retention, professional development, leadership development, quality of worklife, and succession planning.The cyclical layout of the model reflects the need for ongoing evaluation and adjustment of the entire process.

1.B.4. Framework for Workforce Planning

In approaching workforce planning, the Task Force recognized that one of its greatest challenges was to develop a framework that could be used to characterize both the future and the present workforce.The need for this stems from the fact that the agency is extremely diverse in the functions that the employees perform and its mix of skills. Analyzing general trends in this diverse mix required an ability to look at some of these functions and skills on a "macro-level" where patterns might become more apparent.

The framework that the Task Force defined is a matrix that looks at both the functions that are at the core of the agency mission, as well as the broad positions that characterize the employees' work.The advantage of using this matrix was its simplicity, which was also its greatest limitation. However, as a starting point it proved to be an excellent tool for capturing the essence of both the future and current workforce.

Below are a list of terms and definitions that the Task Force used to establish this framework.The first group defines the functions that the Task Force felt generally captured the core areas of the agency's work -- of its mission.These general groupings are extremely broad, but provide enough distinction to be able to make some general observations about the current and future work of the agency.The four functions are:

Oversight:Activities undertaken to ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations, and consistency with federal policies and program direction. Although oversight activities may be carried out in conjunction with partners, FHWA accepts full responsibility for the findings and conclusions.

Program Assistance:Activities related to the provision of program assistance and necessary approval actions associated with the use of federal funds.

Advancing the state-of-the-art:Activities to develop and implement new technologies, materials, processes, and practices.

Policy:Activities undertaken to provide national direction for the transportation program, including development of legislation, regulations and policies.

The second group defines the core positions the Task Force felt could be used as a general framework for characterizing all FHWA positions.The desire of the group was to define a limited set of positions which could be compared across the agency, and upon which some general observations could be made.These four are:

Generalist/Program Specialist:A generalist/program specialist has expertise in the application of laws, regulations, and administrative policies and requirements relative to an administrative program.Program and process expertise is generally developed through experience in oversight of administrative programs, and through the training programs of government agencies which developed the applicable regulations or which are responsible for administering them, rather than through academic study.The position may or may not have supervisory (or team leader) responsibilities.This category would generally cover those employees that are the front line, day-to-day deliverers of the Federal highway program.

Technical Expert:A technical expert has developed true expertise in a technical area. Expertise is in the practice or application of a particular science or field of study.Such expertise would be of benefit to FHWA and its customers, possibly even without knowledge of the Federal highway program. Their expertise would be delivered by themselves, or with the assistance of someone with general knowledge of the Federal highway program such as generalist or program specialist.

Administrative Support:Administrative support includes those people who are necessary to keep the organization operating.They provide critical contributions on a daily basis in the areas of data management, computers, secretarial support, procurement, personnel, logistics for travel, and hosting of conferences/workshops. Some of these positions are found in virtually every office.

Executive:An executive sets the vision, provides direction, sets goals, and provides guidance and management of an office/unit.The executive is held accountable for accomplishment of the agency's goals. Responsibilities include management and/or leadership of other employees as supervisor to set direction and guide the actions for the benefit of the FHWA.Executives may or may not have special knowledge in the overall and/or particular area of the Federal highway program and/or technical expertise.Some examples are: Division Administrators/Engineers, Directors of Field Services, Resource Center Managers, CBU/SBU Heads and HQ Office Directors.

1.B.5. Workforce Planning's Relation to Other Planning Processes

Workforce Planning is not a separate planning process, but part of an integrated approach to defining and preparing for the future.It integrates many other processes that support the management of human resources. Planning for the professional development of employees (ensuring that "right people with the right skills are in the right place at the right time") and succession planning ("having the right people prepared for the right positions at the needed time") is essential to the Workforce Planning process.