Workforce planning in North Carolina state government is essential as we strive to compete for the talent necessary to deliver quality services to our state's citizens. Governments and organizations from a variety of industries are reporting talent shortages and other workforce management problems. These problems are the result of increased demand for talent, and wide-ranging challenges such as shortages of highly qualified graduates, pending retirements, an aging workforce, and lack of experienced talent. As competition for talent increases, organizations will not only have trouble attracting employees, but also will have trouble retaining talent as competitors raise compensation packages and offer other attractive employment benefits. North Carolina state government has already begun to experience significant challenges in attracting and retaining the workforce needed in a number of occupational areas. We anticipate continued challenges as competition increases and shortages become more widespread.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there will be 77 million baby boomers either retiring or getting ready to retire in 2010. The baby boomer generation (people born from 1946 -1965) accounts for approximately 26 percent of our total population. In North Carolina state government, baby boomers comprise 58.14% of the total number of employees. More than one-third of the baby boomers are over age 50, and many of them will be retiring in the next 10 to 15 years. In addition, 9.40% of current state employees will be eligible to retire in 2010 with a dramatic increase to 34.42% in 2015.
The retirement of baby boomers is of particular concern because they represent a large percentage of the state's workforce and a large proportion of an organizations' leadership. When this group of workers begins to retire, we will be looking at a workforce crisis in terms of having the right talent to perform needed work unless proactive workforce planning begins immediately.
The aging of the workforce, along with other attrition, means that agencies must take the necessary steps to preserve critical institutional knowledge, skills and leadership capabilities. In addition to attrition, organizations today are challenged to manage a diverse generational workforce. This diversity calls for attention to and management of the values and interests of the different age groups to successfully attract and retain top talent.
As the population of North Carolina continues to grow, the need for services will increase along with the complexity of many of those services across state government. To meet our goal to provide state-of-the-art governance and quality services, we must begin thoughtful and deliberate planning for the talent needed now and for the future.
The uncertain labor market requires proactive workforce planning for expected and unexpected shifts in business demands and talent supply. To obtain a competitive advantage, organizations must be able to successfully attract, motivate, develop and retain high-performing employees. In today's business climate, organizations must work not only to attract and retain talent but must also equip their talent with the necessary skills to successfully fulfill short- and long-range goals. Organizations must concentrate on developing employees in ways that challenge their current capabilities, align with their developmental goals, and meet the business needs. As such, conducting strategic workforce planning is one of the most critical human resource management functions in the public sector today.
An important concept in the Human Resource arena today is building an employment value proposition (EVP). An EVP is a set of attributes that employees perceive as the value they gain through employment in an organization. Organizations increasingly have recognized the power of an EVP to better attract and ensure the long-term commitment of talent. Research reveals that there are specific attributes that initially attract employees, and specific attributes that help to retain employees. Consider that North Carolina state government has an annual turnover of 17.19% for employees with less than two years of service, and 18.27% for employees with less than five years of service. To achieve a competitive advantage in recruiting and retaining a high-performance workforce, we must be knowledgeable about what employees value in their work lives, and strive to provide work environments and work opportunities that encompass those values.
To address these challenges in North Carolina state government, it is important for an organization to develop a strategic workforce planning process that will identify human capital needs to meet business objectives. Workforce planning is the strategic alignment of an organization's human capital with its business direction. It is the on-going process of analyzing the current workforce, determining future workforce needs, identifying the gap between the present and the future, and implementing solution strategies to enable an organization to accomplish its mission, goals, and objectives. In its simplest terms, workforce planning is having the right number of people, with the right skill set or competencies, in the right jobs, at the right time.
Specifically, workforce planning involves:
- Gaining a thorough understanding of your current workforce
- Envisioning the operating environment that will most likely exist in the future
- Identifying the staffing levels and skill sets or competencies needed in the future
- Eliminating gaps and surpluses by proactive action planning and
- Developing and implementing strategies that can build and sustain the workforce needed for the future.
In response to the increasing challenges that we are facing today, the Office of State Personnel (OSP) is leading an initiative that has been specifically created to introduce a suite of services, programs and tools that offers a variety of solution strategies to hire, motivate, develop, and retain the talent necessary to carry out the state's business. Meeting this challenge will require aggressive recruitment and selection practices to ensure that employees are highly motivated and engaged in their work, and investing in developing people to retain top talent.
This Workforce Planning section of the website provides workforce statistics; background information on workforce planning; a workforce planning guide that includes a step-by-step workforce planning process and analytical tools and templates for conducting workforce planning; and an introduction to the NC Workforce Outlook and Retirement Knowledge System (NC WORKS), a workforce planning data warehouse that is currently under development.
