Case Study: Workforce Strategy and Planning

Situation:

A large county department, with over 1000 employees, identified that anticipated staff retirements would affect an entire division of the department within five years.  As a result, they were seeking workforce strategy and planning to address the situation.

Approach:

After reviewing the current state of the positions within the division, Direct Effect Solutions (DES) facilitated a brainstorming session of possible options to address the potential loss of the entire staff within the division.  The resulting possibilities included staff replacement, partnerships for staffing and outsourcing or insourcing of the division.  After identifying all possibilities, DES facilitated discussions to determine feasibility, risk, costs and impacts to each of the options.  DES collaboratively determined the indicators to identify when an option would be deployed based on retirements occurring and drafted a communication strategy to support the new plans.

Results:

A workforce strategic plan to apply to the division based on retirement indicators determined through the process.  This plan is scalable or repeatable to other divisions within the department in the future.