Staffing Analysis - Selected Case Studies

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)

 Client Objective: To support its budget requests and to allocate resources among its component organizations, USAID needed to develop a valid and easily understood methodology for determining staffing requirements for its mission critical workforce.

FMP Approach:  FMP identified internal and external drivers impacting USAID’s work and mission and analyzed those drivers to define their impact on staffing requirements.  FMP completed the following activities:

• Benchmarked staffing levels for comparable work functions across the Federal government.
• Defined and validated key workload and staffing drivers.
• Analyzed data collected to define relationships between workload drivers and staffing requirements.
• Developed an automated tool for projecting workload and staffing requirements in USAID’s overseas missions.
• Collected baseline data and applied the automated tool to identify and explain staffing requirements.
• Provided consultation and assistance to USAID personnel in the use of the tool to develop and justify FTE requirements for submission to OMB.

Results:  USAID was successful in justifying its staffing requirements using this model.  OMB and OPM both identified the methodology and tool developed by FMP as a best practice that could potentially meet the needs of other agencies for explaining their staffing requirements.

U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC)

Client Objective:  USITC needed to define an integrated plan and process for staffing across the Commission, to ensure individual hiring decisions were aligned with long-term strategic workforce requirements.

FMP Approach:  Working through the USITC’s Human Capital Council, FMP defined an approach for meeting the requirement and then conducted a “clean slate” review of the Commission to define long-term staffing requirements for each organizational component. FMP completed the following activities:

• Compiled data on current and historical staffing, workload, and budget.
• Conducted in-depth reviews with management teams in each organizational component to review future plans, workload changes, current staffing issues; provided consultation and facilitation to support management teams in designing the workforce structure and staffing required to meet long-term goals.
• Compiled staffing requirements developed for each organizational component, identified integration issues or overlaps, and analyzed budget implications of the staffing plan.
• Facilitated reviews of the integrated Commission level staffing plan with the Human Capital Council.
• Defined an on-going process for updating the staffing plan and using it to make workforce decisions.

Results:  The USITC implemented the long-term staffing plan and on-going processes for using the plan to make staffing and workforce decisions.  This approach ensured that workforce decisions were aligned with strategic goals and eliminated the need for individual hiring and other personnel actions to be approved by the Commissioners.