Bringing human capital to the forefront at USDA: the HR director of a major federal department offers a case illustration of how human capital management is supporting the goals of the President's management agenda

Public Manager, The, Summer, 2003 by Joe Colantuoni

Imagine a 100,000-person organization that is composed of 340 different occupations being transformed into a cohesive, nimble agency ready to respond quickly and strategically to change. This was our vision at the Department of Agriculture (USDA) when we began a process that altered how we prepared for our future.

When the administration asked federal agencies to focus on human capital as one of President Bush's five management initiatives, it offered USDA human resources (HR) professionals a wonderful opportunity to become a strategic partner for the rest of the agency. Today, we are setting the course to ensure that USDA has the necessary skills to provide effective leadership in food, agriculture, and scientific research.

HR Faces a Significant Challenge

At the same time, the opportunity posed a significant challenge to our team. USDA is a very diverse organization with a variety of responsibilities to the American people--from overseeing the nation's 192 million acres of national forests and rangelands to leading the federal anti-hunger effort. The department also facilitates domestic and international marketing of US agricultural products, improves the health of Americans through a safe and secure food supply, and leads research in everything from human nutrition to new crop technologies. In addition, its workforce is comprised of over 340 different occupations, and most of the positions at USDA require college degrees or college course work.

Nevertheless, we knew that our workforce was aging with the average age at 44 and more than one-third of USDA employees over 50 years old. One of the biggest challenges we face is the fact that about 40 percent of this workforce is expected to retire in the next 10 years. And there will be a significant loss of leadership and management skills due to a projected high rate of Senior Executive Service (SES) employees eligible for retirement. It was critical for us to conduct an assessment of USDA's business environment and come up with a plan that would set USDA on a strategic course to deal with this potential resource crisis.

To add to the challenge, we had a highly decentralized department with agencies operating independently. It became clear to us that we had to pull a USDA-wide team together to study our workforce, find the skill gaps, and start setting priorities based on our strategic goals. We knew that if we did not begin the process of transforming our organization strategically we would lose our edge as a leader in world-class research.

We also knew that we needed to partner with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Office of Management and Budget to ensure open and continuous communication on progress and issues.

Establishing a Human Capital Plan

In summer 2002 we got to work. We established a team of HR professionals throughout the department and each of its mission areas and agencies, as well as other President's Management Agenda (PMA) leaders to develop the human capital plan. The plan would be the uniform guidance for all of the mission areas and agencies in supporting the secretary's vision.

We knew that the human capital strategies in our plan had to support the USDA strategic plan, so an internal infrastructure was developed to assure that we were aligned with the secretary's vision. The structure flowed from the USDA's secretary and deputy secretary to the executive team, whose members were responsible for all five PMA initiatives, down to the human capital team leader and into the new human capital planning team.

The planning team wasted no time in rolling up its sleeves and defining USDA's human capital imperatives based on an analysis of the strategic plan. With senior leadership input, the team developed goals with respect to the six standards of OPM's Human Capital Assessment and Accountability Framework, a resource used across the federal government that defines and operationalizes standards and initiatives for human capital performance.

The team also reviewed and incorporated human capital best practices to develop the plan. Most importantly, the team identified the role of the department and the agency. If we were going to be truly strategic, it was necessary that the department's office of human resources management would play the leadership role in human capital planning. The department would identify action strategies for agency implementation in the form of corporate standards.

First Steps: Finding the Gaps

At the same time the human capital planning team was outlining a unifying structure, USDA contracted with an outside consultant to find where the skill competency gaps existed in the department. The inventory took into account the number of workers required for the next five years against the inventory of workers currently employed. To do this, we looked at our current workforce and projected ages and historical separation figures for each occupational series and then made projections based on the number of employees available each year with and without accessions.