STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

This is the accessible text file for GAO report number GAO-04-39  entitled 'Human Capital: Key Principles for Effective Strategic  Workforce Planning' which was released on December 11, 2003. This text file was formatted by the U.S. General Accounting Office

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Report to Congressional Requesters:

HUMAN CAPITAL:

Key Principles for Effective Strategic Workforce Planning:

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: