Positioned: Strategic Workforce Planning That Gets the Right Person in the Right Job

by Dan Ward, Rob Tripp

Overview

Shortages and downtime are deadly for businesses. So what strategies are other organizations using to solve their workplace challenges?

Positioned captures the best workforce planning practices from leading organizations such as Boeing, HP, the US Intelligence Community, and others in the private and public sectors to help businesses address the constant challenge of having the right people available when needed in order to maximize creativity, efficiency, and productivity.

World-renowned thought leaders including Dave Ulrich, John Boudreau, James Walker, Jac Fitz-enz, Peter Howes, Dan Hilbert, and Naomi Stanford weigh in on the future of:

• strategic staffing, 
• virtual workplaces, 
• disruptive technologies, 
• globalization, 
• and what practices will and will not help organizations succeed.

By examining the evolution of workforce analytics and the roles of human resources professionals, and by incorporating input on best practices from expert people strategists, Positioned provides invaluable insight about how your organization can adjust to turnover seamlessly and do so in a way that produces even better results.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814432488
Publisher:	AMACOM
Publication date:	11/30/2012
Sold by:	HarperCollins Publishing
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

DAN WARD is associate department head, Cyber Intelligence and Intelligence Community Workforce for the MITRE Corporation.
ROB TRIPP is workforce planning manager for Ford. BILL MAKI is the retired director of strategic workforce planning for Weyerhaeuser and past president of the Human Resource Planning Society.

Read an Excerpt

SECTION 1

Historical Perspective

Dan L. Ward

THIS FIRST SECTION OFFERS insight into earlier practices in

Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP). In 1969, James W. Walker authored “Forecasting Manpower Needs” in the Harvard

Business Review, which created quite a stir when senior executives were introduced to the concept. In the 1970s a he founded the Human Resource Planning Society, now known as HR People & Strategy (HRPS). We asked

Jim to write the first chapter of this book because no one is more qualified to talk about how this field gained its prominence over the past forty years. His chapter, “The Origins of Workforce Planning,” allows the reader a chance to sit beside

Jim as he describes the professionalization of our field.

Borrowing the title from an old George Gershwin song, “How

Long Has This Been Going On?” is my own sometimes lighthearted but sincerely heartfelt look at the ascent of SWP. Our tools and techniques have evolved. We continually refine our terminology, but the fact remains that humans have always been concerned with the fundamental concepts of SWP, even if our tools and terminology have become sophisticated only in more recent years. We can claim this is a brand-new field and define it carefully to support that claim, or we can recognize clues that it may actually date back to recognized community construction projects that began 13,000 years in the past. One can accept or reject the historical time line offered in this chapter, but I am personally proud to be practicing in a career field that can simultaneously be portrayed as both one of the world’s oldest and youngest career specialties.

Alex G. Manganaris’s “The Evolution of Strategic

Workforce Planning Within Government Agencies”

offers another opportunity to sit alongside someone who was there during some of the most significant

SWP efforts of past decades. SWP seems to flow in and out of favor in a cyclical fashion within private industry a but it has been steadily applied within many government agencies.

Dan L. Ward is the associate department head for the

MITRE team providing support to the U.S. government on workforce strategy and human capital topics. In this role, he leads advisory support for workforce planning a organization design, people strategy, and change management activities. Dan has provided advice and counsel to a variety of U.S. government agencies.

Ward earned his bachelor’s degree in social science and his master’s in workforce economics from the University of North Texas. Prior to joining MITRE in 2006, he held senior level roles in HR, knowledge management, and strategic planning at GTE, Texaco, and EDS. One-third of the Fortune 100 companies have sought his counsel on advanced people strategies.

He started his career as a management scientist with

Western Electric, developing workforce simulation studies.

His cost-benefit studies on alternate staffing strategies have been cited in Fortune, BusinessWeek, the Wall

Street Journal, and the Work in America Institute, among others. He is an award-winning photographer and has published three photography books, the latest being

Tribute, a photohaiku study of Civil War memorials.

Bill Maki was an equal partner with Dan and Rob at the beginning of this book project. He was one of the earliest members of the Human Resource Planning Society and a past president of the group. With a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Washington and a master’s in statistics and operations research from Oregon State University, Bill was one of the pacesetters for workforce forecasting and modeling.

He retired after thirty-nine years with Weyerhaeuser and continues to write and speak on workforce planning related topics. Bill helped design the layout of this book and suggested some of the contributors.Due to a health problem, he relinquished his editing role on the book but continued to provide advice, counsel, and moral support to Dan and Rob.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Preface: Rob Tripp and Dan L. Ward with Bill Maki v

SECTION 1: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 1

Dan L. Ward

The Origins of Workforce Planning 3

James W. Walker

How Long Has This Been Going On? 9

Dan L. Ward

The Evolution of Strategic Workforce Planning Within

Government Agencies 18

Alex G. Manganaris

SECTION 2: CURRENT PRACTICES 25

Rob Tripp

It’s Not Just Data: Workforce Planning and Change Management 29

Robert D. Motion

Strategic Workforce Planning at Boeing 42

Dianna Peterson and Tina Krieger

The Role of Workforce Planning in Mergers and Acquisitions 51

Mary Boudreaux Carroll

Workforce Planning: Does It Hurt Enough to Begin? 62

David Howerton

When Workforce Planning Worlds Collide 69

Jeff Buchmiller

Workforce Planning in China 79

Naomi Stanford

Workforce Strategies for High-Growth Markets 93

James David Eyring and Alison Romney Eyring

Strategic Workforce Planning in the Federal Government:

A Work in Progress 110

Marta Brito Perez

Strategic Workforce Planning: Vital Tips for Professionals in

the Public Sector 118

Rachel Bangasser

Do as I Say, Not as I Do! 128

Laura Chalkley

SWP: A Rigorous Simulation Optimization Approach 135

Marco Better, Fred Glover, Dave Sutherland, and Manuel Laguna

Wisdom on Workforce Planning 165

Peter Howes

Pioneering New Business Frontiers: Unaware of What

“Shouldn’t” Be Done 186

Dan Hilbert

SECTION 3: ANALYTICS 201

Rob Tripp

The Rise of Talent Analytics 203

Jeremy Shapiro and Thomas H. Davenport

Workforce Analytics 213

Leo Sadovy and Christian Haxholdt

Predicting Analytics 231

Amit B. Mohindra and J. Allan Brown

SECTION 4: FUTURE DIRECTIONS 249

Dan L. Ward

Disrupting the Future 251

Jac Fitz-enz

Workforce Planning Across the Great Divide 258

John Boudreau and Ian Ziskin

Plan Your Own Development: It’s Up to You to Build Your

Leadership Skills 270

Steve Arneson

The Future Targets or Outcomes of HR Work: Individuals,

Organizations, and Leadership 276

Dave Ulrich

Postlude 285

Dan L. Ward

Index 291

Editorial Reviews

"...this book is so good...that everyone in the field of strategic workforce planning (SWP), and anyone who has an interest in the topic, should own this book." —People & Strategy

From the Publisher