	Background

Strategic human capital management is a pervasive challenge facing the  federal government. Comparing these models, NAPA and IPMA found that the following four  steps are generally common to strategic workforce planning efforts:  examining future organizational, environmental, and other issues that  may affect the agency’s ability to attain its strategic goals;   determining skills and competencies needed in the future workforce to  meet the organization’s goals and identifying gaps in skills and  competencies that an organization needs to address;  selecting and implementing human capital strategies that are targeted  toward addressing these gaps and issues; and  evaluating the success of the human capital strategies. Principle 1: Involve Top Management, Employees, and Other Stakeholders in Developing, Communicating, and Implementing the Strategic Workforce Plan

Planning, developing, and implementing workforce planning strategies,  such as those that involve reshaping the current workforce through early  separations, managed attrition, or increased hiring, can cause significant  changes in how an agency implements its policies and programs. Principle 2: Determine the Critical Skills and Competencies That Will Be Needed to Achieve the Future Programmatic Results

It is essential that agencies determine the skills and competencies that are  critical to successfully achieving their missions and goals. 3 for information on NHGRI’s  approach for determining critical skills and competencies needed to  achieve its strategic goals.) Principle 4: Build the Capability Needed to Address Administrative, Educational, and Other Requirements Important to Supporting Workforce Strategies

In a December 2002 report, we identified key practices that agencies need  to employ to effectively take advantage of existing and new human capital  authorities. Principle 5: Monitor and Evaluate the Agency’s Progress toward Its Human Capital Goals and the Contribution That Human Capital Results Have Made toward Achieving Programmatic Goals

High-performing organizations recognize the fundamental importance of  measuring both the outcomes of human capital strategies and how these  outcomes have helped the organizations accomplish their missions and  programmatic goals. We also met with officials from  organizations with governmentwide responsibilities for or expertise in  workforce planning, such as the Office of Personnel Management and the  National Academy of Public Administration, to identify additional guidance  available and to obtain their recommendations of federal agencies engaged  in effective workforce planning. Foreign Assistance:  Strategic Workforce Planning Can Help USAID  Address Current and Future Challenges. GAO-03-2.
Why GAO Did This Study

The federal government is in a period of profound transition and faces an array of challenges and opportunities to enhance performance, ensure accountability, and position the nation for the future. Effective results-oriented management of the government's most valued resource--its people--is at the heart of this transition. This report is part of a large body of GAO work examining issues in strategic human capital management. Based on GAO's reports and testimonies, review of studies by leading workforce planning organizations, and interviews with officials from the Office of Personnel Management and other federal agencies, this report describes the key principles of strategic workforce planning and provides illustrative examples of these principles drawn from selected agencies' strategic workforce planning experiences.

What GAO Found

Strategic workforce planning addresses two critical needs: (1) aligning an organization's human capital program with its current and emerging mission and programmatic goals and (2) developing long-term strategies for acquiring, developing, and retaining staff to achieve programmatic goals. While agencies' approaches to workforce planning will vary, GAO identified five key principles that strategic workforce planning should address irrespective of the context in which the planning is done: (1) involve top management, employees, and other stakeholders in developing, communicating, and implementing the strategic workforce plan, (2) determine the critical skills and competencies that will be needed to achieve current and future programmatic results, (3) develop strategies that are tailored to address gaps in number, deployment, and alignment of human capital approaches for enabling and sustaining the contributions of all critical skills and competencies, (4) build the capability needed to address administrative, educational, and other requirements important to support workforce planning strategies, and (5) monitor and evaluate the agency's progress toward its human capital goals and the contribution that human capital results have made toward achieving programmatic results.