strategically balancing the dhs workforce for operational ......department needs to align its...

By:

Donald M. Styer | Director of Innovation

Albert G. Moseley IV | RPM Team Lead

Strategically Balancing the DHS Workforce for Operational Excellence

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Strategically Balancing the Workforce for Operational Excellence

2 | Whitney, Bradley & Brown, Inc. Proprietary

Problem Identification

With more than 240,000 employees engaged in a diverse set of missions and components, DHS is facing significant workforce resourcing challenges in a period of sustained budget constraints and rising costs. At the same time, DHS and component agencies within DHS are expected to meet ambitious stakeholder performance objectives, take on new missions, or even transform their organization to meet current mission and policy demands. Leaders within DHS need the ability to make rapid, analytically-informed workforce planning decisions, but typically lack integrated data, standard processes, internal objectivity, and defensible models to rapidly formulate workforce requirements and optimize their use. More effective analytical tools to capture diverse arrays of data (e.g., strategy, operational metrics, functional work requirements, and workforce data) are needed to provide insight and help shape decisions.

Based on our experience, the confluence of these challenges and limitations can result in severe organizational risks including chronic inefficiency, performance degradation, and failure to meet customer and stakeholder expectations. “To ensure DHS has the workforce it needs to accomplish these missions, and effectively manage the human capital challenges it is facing along with the government as a whole, such as increasing turnover, the department needs to align its strategic planning with programmatic goals and budgetary realities to develop long- term strategies for acquiring, developing, and retaining staff to achieve these goals.”1 This white paper considers ways DHS and component agencies within DHS can:

■ Accelerate implementation of strategic workforce planning.

■ Move to a centralized strategic human capital decision support to ensure the department and components are staffed to achieve strategic priorities with the efficient numbers, skills, and labor mix.

■ Economically implement supporting data integration, and powerful data analytics to “operationalize” and measure workforce contributions to strategy.

1 GAO, DHS Strategic Workforce Planning, GAO- 13- 65 (Washington, D.C., December 2012)

DHS can rapidly increase oversight and

effective management of strategic

workforce planning across components

by adopting a holistic and data-informed

workforce design methodology. The

integration of innovative technologies

and powerful business intelligence will

facilitate the rapid transition to

transparent and agile workforce

governance. This will result in fully

resourced staffing and improved

alignment across components.



Our Approach

To accelerate the implementation, governance, and performance measurement of DHS strategic workforce planning, this white paper proposes a streamlined organization design and resourcing approach. Over the last six years, and through the course of more than thirty studies, WBB has been refining a rigorous, repeatable, but highly configurable staffing analysis and decision support capability incorporated in our Organizational Design and Resource Planning and Management (RPM) solution. RPM provides an innovative process and enabling technology to operationalize and resource an organizations strategy (Figure 1).

■ Align resources to current operational needs and strategic priorities

■ Identify organizational performance issues and solutions

■ Identify and “lean out” non- value added and low priority work

■ Identify, value, and implement improvements to process, workforce, and technology

■ Identify and address resource shortfalls/excesses

■ Plan for change and perform “what- if” optimal staffing excursions based on emerging or anticipated changes to the environment (mission, budget, political) and the resulting impact

■ Monitor and measure strategic workforce planning and performance

Figure 1: Holistic systems approach strengthens strategic workforce balancing



WBB’s RPM solutions integrate a web- based relational data model, survey capability, and decision support application (RPM Decision Support System or RDSS©) in a standardized methodology. The RDSS is a highly tailorable web-based SQL server relational application that provides automated data integration, modeling, visualization, and dissemination of information required for benefit/risk based staffing. The RDSS aligns missions and strategic objectives to processes (work) and then measures the contribution of current resources available to perform the work. The difference between the required capability and current output identifies a performance gap that allows decision makers to better understand how changes to organizational structure, work performance, resource mix (skills, labor type), and levels (e.g., staff, IT) impact the overall performance of their organizations. RDSS provides efficient collection and quality assurance of critical data, as well as incorporating powerful web- based reporting and analytics.

Figure 2: Decision Quality Data Supported by Powerful User-Driven Analytics

The RDSS is supported by a robust organizational discovery and visualization dashboard powered by QlikView™. RPM delivers an enhanced level of transparency for the organization by directly linking mission, strategy, and key success factors to the work, staff, and workload. The resulting capability pushes past traditional static measures to more strategic predictive analysis that allow leaders to rapidly respond to anticipated or emergent changes (e.g., increase or change in mission, reduction or increase in labor budget).



WBB works closely with the organization to capture relevant available data from multiple sources leveraging previous and ongoing work. Traditional models require users to spend the majority of their time collecting, collating and fighting to integrate and display the data. Our alternative approach minimizes imposition upon your workforce, reduces time to delivery and accelerates “data informed” senior- level decision making.

Benefits of Change

DHS can rapidly increase oversight and effective management of strategic workforce planning across components by adopting a holistic and data-informed workforce design methodology. The integration of innovative technologies and powerful business intelligence will facilitate the rapid transition to transparent and agile workforce governance. This will result in fully resourced staffing and improved strategic alignment across components (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Immediate and enduring value to DHS and component agencies

As the third largest federal Department, we understand that strategically and effectively managing workforce resources is a strategic necessity to meeting your performance goals and protecting the nation. Adoption of a holistic, repeatable process enhanced by integrating technology and advanced analytics will have an immediate positive impact your agency’s mission and allow component leaders to operationalize a fully resourced strategy. Greater transparency of workforce contribution to the mission will help control costs, measure workforce performance, and allow agencies to strategically govern an agile workforce.

Visit our website for more information www.wbbinc.com or call one of our offices:

Corporate Office Reston, VA 703.448.6081 • Washington, DC 202.310.5000 • Hampton, VA 757.896.2390

Virginia Beach, VA 757.213.8170 • Patuxent River, MD 301.737.0358 • Dayton, OH 937.320.9904

For over 30 years, WBB professionals have helped hundreds of clients

successfully manage their most complex mission-critical business

problems. By working closely with their clients, WBB is able to deliver

sustainable, measurable results. WBB has become a trusted partner in the

areas of Transformative Change, Enterprise Planning and Execution, and

Mission Performance Optimization and focus’ on providing the information

clients need to make an informed decision and take appropriate action.

strategically balancing the dhs workforce for operational ......department needs to align its...

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