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U.S. Office of Personnel Management - Ensuring the Federal Government has an effective civilian workforce

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Workforce Planning Critical Success Factor

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Definition: The organization identifies the human capital required to meet organizational goals, conducts analyses to identify competency gaps, develops strategies to address human capital needs and close competency gaps, and ensures the organization is appropriately structured.

When the key elements of the critical success factor Workforce Planning are effectively implemented, agencies will realize the following results:

Select this link to view the key elements and suggested performance indicators for this critical success factor.PDF File [94 KB]


Effectiveness Results

  • The agency approaches workforce planning strategically and in an explicit, documented manner. The workforce plan links directly to the agency's strategic and annual performance plans and is used to make decisions about structuring and deploying the workforce.
  • Mission-critical occupations and competencies are identified and documented, providing a baseline of information for the agency to develop strategies to recruit, develop, and retain talent needed for program performance.
  • The agency's documented workforce plan identifies current and future workforce competencies and the agency is closing identified competency gaps through implementation of gap reduction strategies such as:
    • Restructuring
    • Recruitment
    • Competitive sourcing
    • Redeployment
    • Retraining
    • Retention (e.g., compensation, quality of work life)
    • Technology solutions.
  • A business forecasting process is implemented that identifies probable workforce changes, enabling agency leadership to anticipate changes to human capital that require action to ensure program performance.
  • Based on functional analyses, the agency is appropriately structured to allow the right mix and distribution of the workforce to best support the agency mission.
  • Based on analysis of customer needs and workload distribution, the agency has the right balance of supervisory and non-supervisory positions to support the agency mission.

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Compliance Result

The CHCO assesses workforce characteristics and future needs based on the agency's mission and strategic plan in accordance with the CHCO Act of 2002 (5 U.S.C. 1402).

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