Human capital assets are defined as the accumulated value of the intellect, knowledge, skills, and experience that an organization’s employees bring to the workplace. By 2005, it was believed that a human capital crisis existed in the federal government for a variety of reasons: loss of key human capital assets due to retirement, changing perspectives on work, failure to keep pace with technology, and limited resources associated with the development, evaluation, and measurement of employee performance and related work processes.
As a result of the Bush PMA, my company, an HR Outsourcing (HRO) firm, was contracted between 2006 and 2007 to work with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to accurately assess the staffing needs of its headquarters human resources function. At the time I arrived to begin the staffing assessment, I learned that the agency had not authorized the replacement of departing HR staff in approximately two years, nor had any new positions been approved.
As a result, the HR workforce had experienced an estimated staff reduction of 50 percent over the previous two years. Moreover, many of their best and brightest staff members were departing to other agencies that they deemed to have a brighter professional future.
I began the staffing needs assessment by conducting line management interviews with agency-wide stakeholders. My first job was to understand service-level expectations on the part of the customers of the HR department. The next step was to determine what HR line management considered the obligations of the HR department. Finally, and most importantly, I worked with the employees of the HR department, function by function, to obtain input from each of the employees of the HR department. By including rank-and-file employees in the assessment process, the intent was to obtain their buy-in in relation to this project.
The end product deliverable was a comprehensive staffing model that allocated employee resources based on job duties and responsibilities, workflow, work volume, and work complexity.
One of the findings of the staffing model was that the human resources function for the agency, although involved in a two-year downsizing, were actually over-staffed for the amount of work that needed to be accomplished. The offices in the field, it turned out, were more lean, but much more efficient.
The director of administration was excited to have detailed staffing model that provided a universal view of the HR staffing needs of the agency. As a result, my consulting company planned to use this model going forward as future consulting agreements called for the use of viable staffing metrics and analytics.
For a deeper dive into this topic, join me September 7 at the Government Workforce Conference.
