For example, a workforce plan can include measures that indicate
whether the agency executed its hiring, training, or retention
strategies as intended and achieved the goals for these strategies, and
how these initiatives changed the workforce's skills and competencies.
It can also include additional measures that address whether the agency
achieved its program goals and the link between human capital and
program results. An agency's evaluation of its progress implementing
human capital strategies would use the first set of measures to
determine if the agency met its human capital goals and identify the
reasons for any shortfalls, such as whether the agency's implementation
plan adequately considered possible barriers to achieving the goals,
established effective checkpoints to allow necessary adjustments to the
strategy, and assigned people with sufficient authority and resources.
Further evaluation may determine that although the agency achieved its
workforce goals, its human capital efforts neither significantly helped
nor hindered the agency from reaching its programmatic goals. This
could occur if an agency misjudged the relationship between human
capital and programmatic goals when developing workforce plans and
consequently has mistakenly estimated the magnitude of changes in human
capital strategies that were needed to achieve program goals. These
results could lead to the agency revising its human capital goals to
better reflect their relationship to programmatic goals, redesigning
programmatic strategies, and possibly shifting resources among human
capital initiatives during the next planning cycle.