**BLM Workforce Planning\
Distance Learning Series\
**Course 1400-24

A Telecast Originating from the

BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona

Day 2 of 3 Days: October 9, 2002

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: The Bureau of Land Management Satellite Network presents live
from the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona, BLM Workforce
Planning, a three-day interactive television course outlining the basic
concepts and practical applications for successful workforce planning.
And now, your course instructors.\
\
J. Romero: Good morning. Good morning, everyone. I was listening as Greg
was checking in people, and I understand that it\'s gorgeous all over
the country. Certainly is here in Phoenix. You know my partner Gary. And
he I will be working with you throughout the morning, and as yesterday,
we want to sincerely invite your input. As we shut down yesterday, what
we realized was that we had a little technical difficulty, so not sure
that we were able to do a last sweep of any questions or concerns, so we
want to make time to do that this morning. Where I\'d like to get
started is to first of all review what we did yesterday very, very
quickly. Yesterday was about what is workforce planning. It\'s about the
right people and the right place and the right time. Why would we bother
to do it? Well, we\'ve got demographics, we\'ve got changing skill
needs, we talked some about that. We also spent some time talking about
the steps, the actual process, if you will, for doing, conducting
workforce planning. So we spent a fair amount of time around what is it.
We also began to move into the area of how would you do workforce
planning, and we had you thinking about what are the future kinds of
issues that you\'re all going to have to deal with, and then today
we\'ll keep moving along that continuum of how. So we started to define
the future work that you all are going to be paying attention to, and I
want to comment that we were very happy to get all of the input that we
got. We had a number of faxes from all over the place yesterday, and
everybody did a great job. We\'re very curious to get started this
morning to find out what kind of insights and things you all got from
going through that exercise, the futuring exercise, et cetera. What I
want to do is start out with what is it that we\'re going to do today?
Again, we\'re going to continue down the path of how do you do workforce
planning. We\'re going to start where we began, which is with the model,
so that you can see what steps it is that we\'re going to be working on,
in fact, I\'m going to move over to the Elmo right now and have you take
a look. This is on page 11 of your workbook, the \-- I call it the
model. But it\'s basically looking at the steps of workforce planning,
and what we did yesterday was we began to look at step 1, which is the
workload analysis. We looked at it actually from the future perspective,
which is what are the things that are out there in the environment, both
internally and externally, that you might need to pay attention to.
Today we\'re going to focus more on step 1 because we\'re going to be
looking at how about your current workload? What is it you\'re doing
now? So we will spend a fair amount of time there. We\'re also going to
look at given your assessment of your current program efficiencies and
gaps, we\'re going to look at program gaps today and we\'re going to use
a lot of data to help you do that. We\'re also going to move into step
3, which is what are the skill gaps that you need to pay attention to,
and we\'ve got some good data to help you do that. That\'s a tough step.
But we\'re going to give you some tools to do that with. And then the
last thing we\'re going to focus on today is really step 4, which is
taking a look at. What are the options for addressing those gaps. So,
again, we\'re going to very much follow the process here and give you
some tools for how to do that. So that\'s what today is about. As we get
started in that, I want to back up again to yesterday and ask you to
call in using the push-to-talk and give us some information, if you
will, take you back to the exercise, what are some of the key insights
that you got from working through that exercise back at your locations?
Is E.K. with us this morning?\
\
G. Dreier: I don\'t think so. I did get a call from the Washington
Office, and apparently they hung around after we signed off and they
worked on the futuring wheel for quite a while. I would be curious to
hear what came out of that with Washington. Ok. The call that I got said
that they had spent some time and it was a pretty interesting exercise
just to get through it and see where they\'re going and I would suspect
most people had some new insights that came out of that as they got
farther and farther expanding that model.\
\
J. Romero: You know, as we looked at the information that came back, it
was clear to me that there was a lot of work done. I\'m going to give
you some examples and if the folks that worked on these are there,
please let us know if we\'re on target in analyzing these. Essentially
what we had asked you to do was take a look at the internal environment
at BLM. That would include your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats. To assess how much \-- how well satisfied you are with the
level of attention that you\'re currently paying to that issue and then
to identify some possible actions for addressing. Of course, these would
be future issues, and the kinds of things that we got back, again, they
were all, I thought, quite insightful. One was from New Mexico, and the
issue was to reduce \-- the issue was the reduction of skills and staff
that\'s likely to occur in the future, and the action that they talked
about was to focus on streamlining or reengineering processes. Vince, I
heard you sign in this morning, so any insight on that? I mean, it
really made sense from this perspective. Go ahead \-- I wonder if the
push-to-talk is working. So what we had was the notion of streamlining,
reengineering some of the processes to get at some of the reduction in
skill levels and you can assume there that they were thinking either
flat or reduced budgets. Other options that were identified was to focus
on mentoring, development assignments, training, cross-training, again,
a number of specific workforce issues that might be addressed that way.
When we heard from Eastern States, their issue was loss of program
dollars for the wild horse and burro program, and their action was to
reorganize the program. Anybody from Eastern States want to comment on
that? We may not be getting the push-to-talk. Ok? Anybody from Eastern
States? I know you signed in earlier. Let\'s look atlas last. \-- at
Alaska. Alaska looked at the issue of aging workforce, that was
definitely a threat and that leads to the potential retirements we have
been talking about, and in Alaska they talked about hiring and retaining
the SCEPs as a future workforce population. So any comment from Alaska?
Again, what I wanted to do was let you know that I thought many of these
were just really good examples of, if we look out ahead and we begin to
analyze potential trends and things that are going on in the
environment, we\'re likely to identify issues that could impact us and
it\'s important to identify potential actions. Now, as it turns out, as
you look at the internal issues, clearly these are workforce planning
kinds of issues, and the kinds of things that you would hope would end
up in your workforce plan. Another one that I thought was quite
interesting was Colorado, again looking at the same kind of issues of
potential loss in staff and the demographics associated with
retirements. What they talked about there was consolidation,
consolidating work, knowledge transfer, working with other clients, both
in the public and private sector. I know that that whole issue of
knowledge transfer has become an important one and there are a number of
folks that are developing and using a significant investment in trying
to identify how do we transfer the knowledge that some of the long-term
employees have with them. Portland, again, I thought identified one that
was quite out of the box, and I want to share that with you, and I hope
to get some comment from Portland. Portland, are you there? Ok. What
they talked about doing with the issue of addressing retirements and the
potential skill loss associated with retirements was they talked about
contracting out the services that do not require direct public contact.
So, again, I thought that was quite, shall I say, proactive. Washington
Office again dealing with the issue of retirements as a threat or
weakness identified a possible action of doing succession planning, and
one of the things I want to say about succession planning is that it
really is a part of the cadre of development options that we\'re going
to really speak to over the course of today and tomorrow, because it is
something that, given the demographics, people are really focussing on,
succession planning, not meaning one on one replacement \-- in other
words, if so and so leaves, so and so would fill it, but rather looking
more broadly at what are the kinds of skill losses that we\'re likely to
have, say, in the management arena and who are the candidates, pool, if
you will, of folks that we ought to be intentionally developing. So
succession planning has been put on the radar screen far more succinctly
and closely than I\'ve seen it in the past. Fire and Aviation has a
little bit of a different problem as we interpreted it. In fact, do we
have Fire and Aviation online? Ok. With Fire and Aviation, and with my
experience working around BLM, I am aware that their problems are a
little bit different. They have a lot of new players and a newer
workforce, and so their issues were more about how do I get the skill
level up and how do I integrate the fire folks into the workforce in a
more expedient way, and the options that they talked about were making
sure that they were transferring the cultural and the behaviors and the
values to the new workforce, and they talked about orientation for new
folks and also looking at ways to expedite their development. So, again,
what I wanted to do was to review with you the kinds of things that
actually got submitted to illustrate that when you are conducting this
assessment or analysis around workload it\'s important to also focus out
into the internal and external environment to look for what are the
issues, what are the trends and how does that translate into action.
Which ultimately ends up being skill. So I know that we\'re checking to
see if the push-to-talk is working. If it\'s working, can somebody just
let us know, and if it were working, I would be curious to know, again,
as you went through that exercise with the folks that are online with
you, was there value in doing so and what were the insights that you
might have had while working with this exercise?\
\
G. Dreier: Jo Ann, you know, one of the first steps always in workforce
planning is you have to have your resources around the work and that
always has to be the first step at some level, whether it\'s done in
concert with a total view or just partitioning it out and looking at the
work itself. Even with our strategic plan we talked about this yesterday
and had several people call up and ask about it, is this strategic plan
the only tool? I think that this exercise should point out to the folks
that if you ran the exercise through several of the levels \-- if you
use the future wheel or decide to go straight to the forms, it should
start showing you you know a lot of it, a lot of it is out there for
you, but there are a lot of opportunities to redefine and define a lot
closer not only the work you are going to be doing butt impacts and how
you are going to meet that impact, the skill requirements you will have
to have and the capacities to do that kind of work.\
\
J. Romero: One of the things I am a huge advocate of, and so I totally
agree, Gary, and one of the things I advocate is as a matter of course,
at least once a year, and even better twice a year, for people to step
back and just very quickly do what I call a S.W.A.T. analysis,
strengths, weaknesses, and threats because it\'s always important to
periodically step back and take a look at what\'s happening and how does
that impact the work and how does that impact the skill? You will find
as we go through this and talk about it I believe those issues are
critically important and that it\'s also imperative that managers step
back, especially around performance review time and development time,
that they step back, do a S.W.A.T. analysis, and figure out what are the
skills that if I had would fundamentally improve my operation or my
ability to deliver value and then tie those skills into the I.D.P.s and
into the development plans that you\'re creating for people. For me,
that is a practical, easy tool to expedite development and learning in
order to meet the work demands that we\'re talking about and also to
make the most out of the training and probably the few training dollars
that you really have. So I think it really does fit together. As we go
to figuring out what\'s happening with the push-to-talk and I am sure I
will be told if we find out it\'s working and we\'ll come back to you,
we want to turn the dial just slightly \--\
\
G. Dreier: I guess it has gone offline, they got disconnected, they are
reestablishing the connection. As soon as we get it back up and it\'s
fully functional, we will let everyone know.\
\
J. Romero: So this means we get to say whatever we want and people
can\'t talk back to us?\
\
G. Dreier: I can interrupt you. There\'s always a check somewhere.\
\
J. Romero: Absolutely. What we want to do is get back to the model and
take a look at the issue of workload analysis. We\'ve talked about the
future. Now we\'re going to focus on what about doing a workload
analysis of your internal current workload. So I want to refer you to a
slide that is in your book on page 42, and it\'s called \"workload
analysis.\" The essential of it is the purpose is, as we\'ve said, to
make sure that you understand the current work and the current FTE
that\'s allocated against that work. A workload analysis should be a
systematic approach to let you gather and review existing and relevant
data and information. So that\'s what we\'re talking about here, is how
do I take a look at not only all of the reports and sort of the moaning
and groaning that\'s going on because people are overworked, but how do
I gather the various features of data to do that. We also believe a
workload analysis provides an opportunity for you to have a very open
dialogue and, again, this is the second bullet, to have a dialogue about
the future work that\'s coming. I think using your key knowledge experts
is critical. It allows you to do that. The other part about workload
analysis, again it\'s on page 42, is it allows you to review your
current workforce, to look at what you\'re doing, and I want to stop
here, because I would submit that in the throe of all the chaos and
pressure that goes on day to day, we do not typically have time to stop
and take a look at what are we really doing, am I allocating an adequate
amount of resource or level of FTE to our priorities. Or am I just
segmenting the time that people have all across different pockets of
work? So a workload analysis allows you to take a look at what you\'re
doing, how much time you\'re spending on the various tasks. It allows
you to look at how work is being allocated, does it make sense, and we
hope that it will allow you to understand the data, the trends, what\'s
required. As we look at this, one of the other side benefits that I
think is quite significant is, as you look at a workload analysis, it
really does allow you \-- there is a use for it, there is a relevant and
meaningful use of the data that you gather. One of those, I think, is
justifying your FTE requests. Now, because I grew up in the government
and managed programs, I can remember personally being involved in what I
fondly refer to as food fights. Who screams the loudest? Who makes the
most noise? I believe as I look back that what was missing there often
was data. So in doing a thorough workload analysis, you are generating
for yourself some relevant, current useful data from which to have
meaningful discussions with the decision makers about where the
resources and FTEs go \--\
\
Caller: Jo Ann this is the Training Center upstairs? Are you hearing us
on the push-to-talk?\
\
J. Romero: Training Center, you\'re in.\
\
Caller: I think we\'ve reestablished contact. Maybe some other sites
around country could push and talk to make sure we have the magic
working once again. (various callers).\
\
J. Romero: Washington Office, who sit that checked in?\
\
Caller: Monique.\
\
J. Romero: Hello, Monique.\
\
Caller: This is Arizona.\
\
G. Dreier: Very nice.\
\
Caller: This is the Carlsbad office.\
\
G. Dreier: I think we have them all and understand the system is
working. Unless you have a question, I think we\'re ready to go. I would
like to backtrack to maybe that Washington question earlier. I know you
did spend some time with E.K. and worked on the futuring wheel. How did
that work for you?\
\
Caller: It worked very well. We did have some insights. The topic we did
choose was changing leadership and the insights we did have is how they
connected the \-- the wheels started to connect to other areas, and also
we noticed the areas we were most familiar with we had more comments, we
had more wheel connections. However, in areas where we were less \-- we
had less information, we gave less \-- less topics, so we figured we
could talk to others, maybe political types, ADs, SDs or contract \--
people with contracting backgrounds to give us more information on those
areas.\
\
G. Dreier: Isn\'t that really the reason we\'re pushing dialogue from
our teaming? The more you can have at the table to talk about those, the
broader the breadth and I think that kind of points that out. That\'s
why you need to have as many people at the table as you can get.\
\
J. Romero: I want to underscore that also, because when we talked
yesterday about the continuum, we talked about the continuum of
involvement from sitting alone in the room to getting everybody in the
room, and this is another underscoring of how important it is to get as
much involvement as is practical. What I thought was good about what you
said, Monique, was the idea that you recognized we don\'t have enough
information, we need to get other resources. So great point. Anybody
else?\
\
Caller: This is Melissa in Lakewood. One of the things we discovered as
we talked about the workforce planning process because we are working on
readiness, there is a significant amount of fear. So we\'re just at the
beginning stages of employee involvement, but without that participation
involvement, this could turn into a real morale buster.\
\
J. Romero: I\'m sensitive to that having been around a number of BLM
offices, and as I understand the history, there\'s been other exercises
in the past that have led to somewhat of a fear mentality. So, first of
all, I want to acknowledge that that\'s real, and I want to say also
that it\'s extremely important when you are soliciting employee
involvement that you are very, very clear about what is the product of
that, what\'s going to be done with the information, and keeping people
informed as you go forward about how their participation is going to be
used and how it progresses. Gary, did you want to add to that?\
\
G. Dreier: I have kind of an alternate view. I tend to believe that
workforce planning is going to actually be a better benefit for
employees. I think we have an efficient workforce can that multi-task
and I think as we go through workforce planning I think that will become
more apparent and I think we have some efficient organizations out
there.\
\
J. Romero: You do. I have become a believer in that. I want to
underscore or tag onto what Gary said. If you look back at the material
we presented yesterday, there\'s the five steps of workforce planning,
and in those steps it speaks to the benefit. So I don\'t want to lose
that issue of benefit, because if there is data to support the fact you
will be losing people f there is data to support there will be some you
a fruition going on \-- some attrition going on, I translate to that a
benefit. If I am an employee and know that, then I am well positioned to
look at my career here at BLM and to figure out what are my interests,
what value can I add, and what kind of growth might these opportunities
present for me? So I think it\'s important to not lose that notion of
let\'s be involved and a part of this because in the end there is
probably opportunity.\
\
Caller: Jo Ann, this is Joe in Roseburg and I have a comment about the
internal and external impact exercise. It would seem like there would be
a lot of redundancy if every Field Office were to do their own. I can
certainly appreciate that every office has their own particular issues
that are unique to them, however, it would seem to me it would be more
efficient if it were done at a national or a regional scale because I
think 85% of the same answers would come up with either the futuring
wheel and the internal and external scans. Do you have any comment about
that?\
\
J. Romero: Well, I do, Joe and I think it\'s a great observation. The
dilemma, in my view, is how to do it at the local level and then roll it
up in a meaningful way to the State Office and to the national level. So
my notion about it is twofold: one, I think there\'s real value at the
local level for the discussion, the participation and the dialogue that
occurs among a management team, say, and perhaps some employee input. I
think there\'s an awareness. Now, having said that, I don\'t ever
believe in duplicating effort, so to the extent that you can engage the
next level, I think is always important. If I look ahead as what would
be the perfect way to do it, it would be members from the Field Offices,
the State Office, and even some from the national level engaging in a
conversation. The reality is that may or may not be practical. But
you\'re absolutely right. Let me validate that, Joe, because as we
looked at all of the forms that came in, there was probably a 70 to 80%
overlap of issues and solutions, you know, things like do
cross-training, do mentoring, do succession planning, et cetera. So you
have to weigh the local benefit with the redundancy question, and I
guess I would turn to Gary and ask if there is anything you would add to
that.\
\
G. Dreier: I think you are absolutely right. That\'s part of why we want
to dialogue s to put all the players at the table at the same time if
possible. We know that\'s not realistic. There is also another side,
there is a local level knowledge, and because they are so close to the
work and worker that we continue to need to look at their level and find
out what\'s going on down there and make sure that translates up. There
is going to be duplication and we need to stay out of those arenas. We
know skills are \-- we have an aging workforce and we are going to be
losing skills but we also want to know what are those things that are
particular to a certain area that need to be translated up.\
\
Caller: Jo Ann, this is Nancy from Alaska. Another benefit of involving
local offices is the buy-in that they have for the workforce planning.
Too often if it\'s done in Washington and no one knows about it and then
it\'s inflicted \-- or implemented, then people don\'t have that buy-in.
They\'re not part of it. So maybe a little more inefficient but I think
you get a better product and a better buy-in from involving everyone.\
\
J. Romero: Nancy, you\'re preaching to the choir here. I think it\'s the
buy-in but also the recognition of I need to be responsible. If I have a
critical skill and I know I\'m going to be retiring, I need to feel
responsible for making sure I don\'t leave BLM high and dry. I need to
be willing to participate in coaching, mentoring, doing \-- taking a
role, an active role, in making sure that the skill loss is addressed.
Again, it\'s a good debate. How much involvement, I think, the practical
factor gets in there, but I want \-- I don\'t want to lose the fact that
Nancy\'s right on that involvement is a good thing to the level that you
can afford to do it. I want to move on just a little bit, and unless
there\'s any last comment I\'d take from the audience, and then we will
kind of get back to, ok, if I bother to go through all this data
analysis, what\'s the benefit and how can I use it? So any last comment
from the audience? So great that you\'re able to check in. Ok. We were
talking about the benefit and the use of the data. Once you\'re able to
extract the data and we talked about the notion of having good
information from which to justify FTE requests. We also talked about
moving to the idea of decision-based \-- excuse me \-- database
decisions. So when you\'re making a decision, what data do you have? I
know I\'m preaching to the choir here because the BLMers that I\'ve run
across tend to be somewhat data oriented and like to use data. Also I
don\'t want to lose this, either\... if you are going through a fairly
rigorous structured process for doing workload analysis, it also should
identify what areas of process improvement makes sense and that\'s
something we\'re going to focus on a little bit more. The other thing. ,
and if you get down to a level I am going to be sharing with you in a
moment, I believe that it\'s very important to understand what work is
not getting done. I mean, let\'s face it, there\'s a lot going on.
What\'s the work not getting done at all, not because you have bad
people, but because you can\'t get to it? What\'s the work that\'s being
done but not at the level it should be? If there\'s work that\'s not
being done to the level it should be, you run the risk of putting BLM at
risk. So a thorough workload analysis enables you to take a look at
that. And, of course, bottom line, it does give you the data from which
to think about consolidating, eliminating, minimizing or expanding work
if that\'s appropriate. So there\'s lots of reasons for why and how you
would go about using data. So what I want to do now is turn it over to
Gary to talk a little bit data. We\'re really kind of focussing in now
on workload analysis, what the benefits are of doing a workload
analysis, and now we\'re going to hear from Gary in terms of the
existing data that resides within BLM, because you\'re clearly not
starting from scratch.\
\
G. Dreier: Let\'s hope that\'s the case. I believe it is. First of all,
as part of the template and the other issues that the field committee
came up with, we wanted to have data that drives this process as much as
possible. We recognize that our corporate data is not complete and it is
somewhat flawed as is any data. But it also is a new story to tell that
we haven\'t had a chance to read before. So we want to take advantage of
that. To provide that to you, one of the first initiatives was to join
FPPS and MIS data and the reason is to come up with a join between the
work and the worker and this data includes things like diversity and
skills, the process, the cost of doing work and the cost and time do
having work, competitive sourcing inventory. All those things contribute
to that join and give us a better and more robust picture how work is
getting done. What has come out of this is we\'ve contracted with a
group called SAS to HR vision to do this join for you in an ought made
application. That application is going to produce five reports for us.
The five reports are going to deal with skills availability, worker
costs, working structure, diversity and current staffing. Some of this
information I\'m sure sounds somewhat familiar and in fact it is. The
diversity reports are simply those reports that you have seen before,
but we\'re trying to provide them in a one spot that gives you easy
access to all this inform at one time. Kind of a one picture view.
We\'re also trying to use this data as the foundation. We wanted to make
it the starting point for your analysis. We wanted you to start from
some data points rather than assumptions we all have to generally start
from. We always have felt that workforce planning could be more data
driven, and we had the opportunity because of cost management to apply
and that join it with the personnel information and come up with
workforce planning issues that can be easily address \-- more
efficiently addressed with data. The first screen or the screens you\'re
going to see in workforce planning is going to be something like this.
This is part \-- this is just one of the reports. We don\'t want to get
into the report but I would like to thank Clark Collins, the SAS staff,
Stan Curtis, and the department and HRM center for getting the data
joined in this application. The application, you will be able to find
information on the workforce planning website which will include some of
the FPPS data codes and definitions. If you are personnel, you\'re quite
familiar. If not, they\'re there for your assistance. Also provides some
basic description of the tables and we\'ll talk tomorrow about how to
access and use the SAS reports. One of the important things about this
approach is that we have data in front of you in a way that\'s somewhat
easily understandable. When I say somewhat is because there\'s a lot of
information, metadata around this data, lot of information it talks
about and it doesn\'t complete the picture and you will have to fill in
the voids but it provides you with a new understanding and new look you
never had before. So the first one is the skills availability report.
Its purpose is to provide a skill potential losses and the type of
worker and where the work skill is applied. This primarily is a join
between FPPS on typical organizational issues but also the key here I
think is it joints with the program element. So now you have skill
information along with business activity information along with how long
we expect some skills to be around. So we are moving toward a better
look at the entire workforce this way. The information includes things
we are familiar with, the organizational codes, job series and the
occupational name. The occupational name in this category is for the
OPMs occupational title. And the grade level. It will also include the
program element and program element names for an easy reference. It will
also include the employment type. Are you a career employee or a career
conditional? There are several codes that go into this that provide a
better viewpoint of kind of what your workforce resource or human
resources look like and what their availability will be. Finally, we\'ve
put in those that are eligible to retire in less than five years and
those eligible to retire in over five years. The reason we used the
five-year mark is to match up with the requirement for this plan to be a
five-year plan. So that\'s our skills report and this report is to give
you an understanding by your organization the kinds of skills you have,
where they are employed and are they susceptible for loss either through
retirement eligibility or they may be temp employees by the code by
authorization of how they\'re employed. The other is a worker cost. I
think this is the most important table that we\'ll get into. The reason
is because this one deals with providing how skills are associated with
the business activities and the time costs and funding that we\'re going
to devote to those. This is really the join of work to worker. It\'s
important to understand this one because I think this is a new look that
we\'ve never had before. Only half this table is coming from FPPS,
personnel data. The rest of this information is coming from MIs the cost
side or work side of the information \-- organization. I won\'t talk
about these components because we talked about these. But let me get
into the new things the table provides. It will provide the subactivity
code with the subactivity name, it will also provide the hours and the
labor costs assigned to those hours, and then these costs should be a
benefits plus salary, and if Stan Curtis is out in Washington he can
probably elaborate on any of these labor cost calculations that come out
of MIS. This table, the working \-- the cost of work, is really very
important because it provides our standard for starting a new way of
looking at workforce planning. Then we can take the next step of looking
at working structure. The purpose is to provide a current and full
performance of skills, the supervisory status, special program emphasis
and we\'ll get into that but basically there is codes on whether it\'s
fire or trust or \-- some of those that are high departmental visibility
right now. It will also include the competitive inventory organization.
A lot of the information we\'ve seen before. Let\'s get to the new
information this table provides. Again, this is almost a personnel table
\-- personnel report. But it does have one additional component and that
is competitive sourcing. So we have joined the competitive sourcing
inventory with personnel information to provide this report. So you\'ll
get the full performance level of your workforce, you\'ll find out
whether it\'s a supervisor or a non-supervisor, maybe a team leader.
You\'ll find out whether it\'s a direct service, and that was part of
whether they\'re field, headquarters or at the state level, where they
are at in the level of the organization. We\'ll also be delineated
whether it\'s a trust management position and how much percent of time
they spend in trust or whether it\'s a fire management responsibilities,
whether it\'s a temporary or permanent or support. Finally, it will give
you the competitive sourcing categorization. Is it commercial or
inherently governmental? Our hope in doing this was to provide you with
an understanding when you start looking at skill replacement whether \--
what are opportunities are open to you. If it\'s inherently
governmental, obviously your capability to contract that are limited,
however, don\'t be restricted that just the position \-- just because
it\'s inherently governmental doesn\'t have subtasks under it that could
be commercially contracted. That\'s part of what Jo Ann was talking
about earlier when breaking these down from the business activities to
the tasks. We have smaller components of our workforce and our work that
we could use and break out and deal with in several fashions. Our next
is current staffing. This is to provide the worker makeup and
appointment authority. So this really is primarily an FPPS or personnel,
and then just a calculated row to assign the total of what\'s going on.
So all these categories are basically account. So what this form will do
is by organization it will give you where your workforce is by account.
So you will get a quick thumbnail of your organization, like whether
they\'re full time or part time, 12 people working full time, eight
working permanent part time, whether it\'s career, seasonal or career
seasonal fire. Whether they\'re SCEPs or STEPs employees. Or whether
they\'re temps or terms or seasonals and the count. So part of what we
want to have on that form is a quick thumbnail understanding of where
your workforce currently is doing \-- currently employed, whether
they\'re terms, temps and that will give you a quick thumbnail \--\
\
Caller: Gary, this is Max from Washington. I have one question about
competitive sourcing.\
\
G. Dreier: Go for it.\
\
Caller: Will managers who don\'t have a lot of experience with
competitive sourcing and the contracting process, will this program
break out costs of government employees versus similar practices being
conducted in the private sector, or will they have to bring in a
competitive sourcing person or a contracting officer to help them out
with that?\
\
G. Dreier: I think the latter is the answer to that. What this
information will do is provide them with an employee costing structure.
This information is derived from the time and attendance reports that go
in every two weeks against the individuals that have been joined with
the personnel data. So all this will really do is start raising flags
and start the question and answering period again. So they\'ll have to
get together with the contracting expert, and that\'s part of the
dialogue we were talking about and the kind of information that\'s not
included in here that needs to be brought into the process. So you are
absolutely right. When they see the categorization, it will just be the
first flag that this is something we need to ask some certain questions
about and then begin to ask those questions and start looking for
answers to those questions. Did that get at you, Max?\
\
Caller: Yeah, that\'s fine. Thank you.\
\
G. Dreier: Ok. The last report that will be provided for you is the
diversity report. This isn\'t a new report. Its purpose is to get a
picture of the balance of minority and gender represented within the
BLM. So just for those that haven\'t seen it very often, it totals out
the minorities and gender in this column, it makes them specific
categorization information, it provides an overall change from last \--\
\
Caller: Gary, this is Monique from the Washington Office. I have a
question before you go on. What about areas that are covered by
volunteers? How would we even look at that current staffing?\
\
G. Dreier: Well, volunteers are handled out \-- again, they\'re not
employees. Our T&As aren\'t capturing this data. That information is on
the website \-- on the Washington website. So you\'ll have to apply that
also and bring that in. That\'s part of the options that Jo Ann was
talking about earlier. We have options of supplemental workers that
include the contractors, volunteers, partners that we need to deal with
under this. This is only providing the first step of that look, and this
is the employee side, and then we have to bring in these other factors
from different venues. Did that get to it, Monique?\
\
Caller: Yes, thank you.\
\
G. Dreier: So to get back at the diversity form, the first one is the
overall change and all that is telling you is that from last year to
this year, have we changed in our numbers in the organization. It also
ties it to the CLF, which is the civilian labor force figures, and I
haven\'t heard whether those have been updated lately. If Connie Stewart
is online she will be able to tell with us we\'re at. It will tell you
how retention has been doing for our minorities and women and also will
tell you replenishment, whether we\'re getting promotions and skill
balancing. This form is nothing new but an important part we need to be
looking at in starting out with data \'ground us and bringing in the
other facets for the information. The one thing I want to be sure to
point out in all the forms is we\'re using the occupational series and
the grade as our skills indicator. Now, we recognize this is a pretty
macro look at skills, that these categories of skills that appear in the
occupational series are very broad and we know we have multi-it is aking
\-- multi-tasking individuals but we have to start somewhere and we have
the data captured on here. So this is our starting point to deal with
skills. So our occupational series will be our skill categories and our
grades is we\'re trying to denote as our skill proficiency and that\'s
just our first cut at trying to get to the to this and trying to get
towards competency based management. Do you have anything to add?\
\
J. Romero: I would say as an observation BLM is ahead of the game with
many of the clients I am working with. You are trying to take the data
you capture through MIS and making it into meaningful management
reports, so I want to encourage people out there to get familiar with
the data and try to use it because it\'s a big plus. You have a lot of
data.\
\
Caller: This is Monica \--\
\
Caller: This is Ken in Idaho. Gary, you said that we\'re using the
occupational series as our skills indicator, but right next to that we
do have program element PE and PE descriptor so I am assuming that each
position series is going to have a fairly extensive list of PEs shown
next to it that really does define the work that\'s happening, not
necessarily the skills, but the work that that position is doing. Seems
like a pretty valuable part of the information to me.\
\
G. Dreier: Absolutely, and I agree with you. Here is what kind of put it
in perspective. The download for information for the \-- basically
individual or skills against the PE was something like 350,000 records.
So that join was fairly difficult, but you\'re absolutely right. Now we
have skills against \-- we have skills against the work that they\'re
doing, and so, yeah, it\'s changed the way we now can look at our
organization. We didn\'t have this available to us a couple years ago
and now we do, and I think this will provide some valuable insight and a
great starting point.\
\
Caller: Just to follow on, Jo Ann. We\'re showing that then when we go
to the worker cost column, we\'re showing worker cost really by program
element, it sounds like. Safe statement?\
\
G. Dreier: That\'s correct. It will be program element, by
organizational unit, by job series. So it\'s starting to array these in
a more discreet fashion than we\'ve had the opportunity in the past.\
\
J. Romero: I want to make sure we hear from Monica from the Washington
Office. I think you had a comment as well.\
\
Caller: I\'m from Oregon. For your diversity reports, where will you get
your national origin information?\
\
G. Dreier: National origin. I think all that comes from \-- it comes
from the \-- just lost the term. The surveys or background information
that\'s asked for. It\'s basically provided by the individual.\
\
Caller: When they don\'t provide something, what will you do?\
\
G. Dreier: Frankly, I don\'t think there\'s many options. If they don\'t
want to provide it, it\'s up to them.\
\
Caller: Because a lot of people don\'t put anything on the background
survey.\
\
G. Dreier: That\'s right. We know our information is not complete, but
we do believe that it\'s a good \-- it is fairly accurate \-- not
fairly. It\'s accurate to the point it provides a great starting point
and an excellent, I think, overall view. The numbers may not be exact,
five here, ten there, but I think the percentages are pretty good.\
\
Caller: Gary, this is Melissa. The way we capture that data if the
employee declines to give us background, we first ask the supervisor to
identify it based on personal observation. If there is no observational
data, we can\'t tell, we do classify them as white.\
\
G. Dreier: So there is a fallback position we take on that. So if
anything, we\'re kind of underscoring ourselves; is that right,
Melissa?\
\
Caller: Yeah.\
\
J. Romero: Ok.\
\
Caller: This is Nancy from Alaska. I have a question. This data is
really good as far as technical skills, but do you have any suggestions
of collecting data on maybe soft skills or any other skills that people
may have outside their jobs?\
\
G. Dreier: Let me first respond to that. It is, in fact, very confined
to technical skills, and the reason is because it\'s based around
business activities which been selected for those primary activities
that are mission oriented. So you are absolutely right. These are, in
fact, primarily shot at the technical skills. To get at the softer
skills which I think are probably some of the most important skill needs
in the Bureau, for instance, like conflict resolution, communication,
you\'re going to have to use an alternative system. Part could be done
through the Training Center has their LAN net. It is a 360 degree
evaluation of leadership skills which include a lot of soft skills, and
that can be done quite easily. I realize at this point in time your
workforce probably doesn\'t have that defined very well but from a broad
base, that is a lot of good data we could use.\
\
J. Romero: That\'s a good point. Again, I think you\'re at a distinct
advantage because you have this data to start from, which is where I\'d
like to go next because I\'d really like you to think about starting
this step 1 workload analysis with the existing data that you have, and
as Gary indicated, the data is collected under the level of business
activity. So you might know, and I\'m sure many of you do, that there
are some things that are not collected specifically and categorized
specifically, and one example of that might be NEPA. NEPA is calculated
under the rubric, if you will, of program level, but if you were
interested in doing your workload analysis to know \-- workload analysis
to know how much time and effort are we spending on NEPA and are we
doing it the way we should, you may want to augment the existing data
with information or data at the task level, one level below the business
activity level. So to help you do that, we have a tool, and I\'m going
to move over to the Elmo to share with you that specific tool. This is
on page 39 of your workbook, and this is a format, again, that will help
you get to the task level. As you can see, what we have here is, what\'s
the program, and in the sample in your book is botany is the program.
The task level would be T&E species, weeds, restoration, surveys, et
cetera, and here you\'re beginning to do some analysis at the task level
and then looking at what level of FTE am I currently spending on that,
and then the next page on page 40 begins to look at at the task level
what\'s the work that\'s not being done or the work that\'s not being
done at the level it should be. So this is offered to you as an
augmentation tool. If you\'re satisfied and it\'s enough to look at the
existing data at the program level or the business activity level, then
you may not need it. If, on the other hand, you\'re wanting to get some
more task information, this is the tool that you can use as well, and I
know, Max, you\'ve had this tool as many of you others if you have taken
the three-day workforce planning course. So what we wanted to point out
is what we\'re asking you to do here is start with the existing data in
the new reports that are coming out. If you need more information, you
can go down another level to the task level and use the process that
we\'re recommending there. So, again, the data as Gary said comes from
FPPS and MIS, so you have a collection of information, and it strikes me
that what we\'re asking you to do, it\'s a judgment call on the part of
the workforce planners to determine, \"do I have enough data, how much
more do I want to get, and what are my avenues for pursuing that?\" You
will notice on page 39 it talks about the column of FTE, and one of the
things that we say about this is it\'s just a place holder. If you
decide to calculate the workload analysis at the task level, you may
want to have another column that says workmonths and then translate it
back to FTE as you turn the information in. So just wanted to point that
stuff out to you. As we look, I\'d like you to turn to page 42 \--\
\
Caller: Jo Ann, before you lever that one. Idaho.\
\
J. Romero: Yes, Idaho.\
\
Caller: The deficit column, I\'m not sure where that came from.
Obviously this is \-- I\'m projecting my workload, so somewhere I
subtracted my current workload?\
\
J. Romero: Let me clarify that. Thank you for pointing it out. The
deficit column is intended as a tool to help you quantify the work
that\'s not getting done and the work that\'s not getting done to the
level it should. So what we advocate is moving from left to right, from
program to task to FTE, and then over to what\'s the work within that
task that is not getting done and what\'s work within the task that\'s
not getting ton to the level it should be, and then to back up and say
if it were getting done, what is the level of FTE, again, because
that\'s just a label for it, what is the deficit, in other words, what
would it take, minimally acceptable level of FTE it would take to get
that work done, and we believe that\'s an important data point to
collect because it helps you to figure out, again not from a position
description, but from a work position what is it that it would take to
get it done. So that\'s what the column is. So thank you for pointing
out our failure to speak directly to it.\
\
Caller: This is Joe in Roseburg. I have a question about the FTE
numbers. I\'m a little new to using those kinds every things for
analysis. What is the time frame, for example, that is covered in that
botany example? I see a conversion factor of 8 hours per week equals .20
FTE, but if you added all the botany FTEs up, you would see that\'s
probably about a week or two\'s worth of work.\
\
J. Romero: It\'s very interesting, because this example was taken from
an actual Field Office that was performing botany, and what they did was
they asked the folks who were doing botany work, in this case it was the
T&E species, to add up their collective time that they were spending,
and in doing that what they discovered was that in T&E species they were
only spending .12 of an FTE, which the data, if you will, or the
implication was, we\'ve got important work and we can\'t get to it. The
truth is, it\'s on the planning, it\'s in our plans, we know we have to
do it, but we can\'t get to it. So what we try to do when we get people
to estimate their time is two things\... one, make sure you include all
of the information, who is working on it, and, two, be as specific and
correct as you can that. So that\'s a good example of where the data
jumps out at you. This is an important area and we\'re not able to spend
much time on it.\
\
Caller: I guess I\'m a little unclear because in T&E species, .12 FTE
would equal a little over maybe four hours a week, and therefore,
they\'re just doing on that a weekly basis? Is this one person, one
individual, that\'s only doing four hours of T&E species work a week?
It\'s not showing a deficit there.\
\
J. Romero: It\'s not showing a deficit, so you could make some
assumptions. When we do the exercise and when we have you think about
doing the exercise, if you want to look at the task level, you should
include everybody in the office that\'s doing \-- I mean, what level of
effort is actually being expended for the program within the local
level. So the fact that this is very low, we can only assume that maybe
they only have one person and the person is very segmented in how
they\'re spending their time. That\'s what one could imply from that. In
another office, it might be in a high botany area like California, it
might be that you have something much more significant. But, again, I
think it does illustrate, Joe, that by getting down to this level you
get a lot of data. You get a lot of information about what\'s really
happening. Now, if it were another office where there were high T&E
species demands, you probably would have a lot of work that was not
being done or being done to the level it should be, and that would
translate to a pretty good deficit. So your observation is good.\
\
Caller: Jo Ann, this is Max from Washington, and I\'m relatively new to
the BLM, but in my field, what I have experienced is sort of an egg
sample of \-- example of this, folks in the field tend to be
multi-talented, multi-job oriented, even if they have a job title, they
end do you knowing many other jobs. How do you plan for this, and just
because you do one of these plans now, how do you know how to anticipate
future needs, and then also how to potentially hire somebody who could
potentially deal with five or six different jobs?\
\
J. Romero: First of all, before I want answer that, I think Joe had a
follow-on comment and we will get back to that, Joe. Max, you\'re
hitting on the complexity that was identified yesterday. I mean, this is
not an easy problem. But in order to address the problem, you\'ve got a
come of choices. You can either look at your TO and say these are my
positions and I\'m going to keep them filled or I can delve into
existing data, I can do as much planning as I can, I can look down to a
task level to figure out how am I allocating my current resources and
what options exist for doing it more efficiently. That would mean maybe
more process improvements, it might be I\'m going to reallocate people
instead of being so segmented, I\'m going to focus people on specific
work and have \-- so you\'re basically reorganizing work. So there\'s a
number of issues that can come up, but our point with this is in
workload analysis, it affords the opportunity for you to take a critical
look at what\'s really happening, and it should identify the management
decisions that need to be made, and you\'ve alluded to some of those,
Joe. For example, if I have people that are very fragmented, can I
refocus the work so that I have people focussing on T&E species or NEPA
and not being 5% of your time and 10% of your time. So the issue is
doing the analysis and going it through, using the data you have, adding
data as needed and standing back and saying, what am I going to do about
it? That\'s the point.\
\
G. Dreier: To kind of amplify from the data right now, if you look at
the occupational series, more and more we see 401 series appearing,
301s, 201s, rather than the specific series you would normally see 15
years ago. So there\'s a recognition that these people during more than
just like range science or botany, that they\'re doing multi-tasking,
and if you look at how they\'re trying to code and hire people they are
using more generalized job series.\
\
Caller: Gary, this is Colleen in D.C. Do you anticipate any future
collection of this data at the national level, at the task level
detail?\
\
G. Dreier: Our model right now is in fact not to. We\'ve only asked at
this point for those data sets that we will be covering tomorrow and
we\'re only looking at a very broad base of the national level right
now.\
\
J. Romero: I also want to go back to Joe, and then I want to add
something. So, Joe, I don\'t want you to lose your comment that you were
saying.\
\
Caller: That wasn\'t me, Jo Ann. That was someone else.\
\
J. Romero: Oh, who was it we cut off? Accidentally, of course.\
\
G. Dreier: We must have got their question.\
\
J. Romero: We must have or they got mad and went away. One of the two.
The one thing that I wanted to say again, bringing you back, these are
tools, and if they are used appropriately, what you\'re going to get out
of the tools is a surfacing of issues you need to address. The data
itself is not going to do anything for you except raise issues. So when
you\'re doing a workload analysis, I think it\'s critical to understand
that therein lies the basic foundation for improvement and change. For
example, if I figure out we\'re spending too much darn time doing X or
Y, then it says either we\'ve got to get smarter about it or we\'ve got
to fix the process or we\'ve got to get an outsider, a volunteer, a
contract person to do data input so we can do something else. It forces
you to leverage \-- leverage. So I want to bring us back now if there\'s
not any other questions or issues \--\
\
Caller: Wouldn\'t want that one to pass us by, Jo Ann. This is Ken in
Idaho. If you looked at the sample workload analysis worksheet and I
understand it\'s an example, how would we use that and the Bureau\'s
program elements or workload measures? It seems like that\'s the best
definition of tasks we have.\
\
J. Romero: So \-- Ken I want to be sure, is your question how do I
identify the tasks, the label for the tasks, or how do I step back when
the analysis is complete?\
\
Caller: I\'m saying, how would we use that form or that process and use
the workload measures?\
\
J. Romero: I think you\'ve just uncovered another dilemma because having
gone through a number of these workload analyses with a variety of
folks, what they often find is that there\'s \-- the discovery is that
there is a disconnect sometimes between where we are actually focussing
our, where we are \-- and the workload measures. In other words, people
say, you know, we\'re being measured against X but in fact we\'re
spending all our time on Y. So, again, in the follow \-- following the
notion that the data surfaces the issues, what that would lead to in my
mind is having a conversation with the folks in Washington about, are my
workload measures, in fact, what they should be? Do they need to be
altered? Or do I need to refocus my effort on those things that are
being measured? So, again, it\'s like taking a snapshot or photograph of
what\'s happening so you can surface the issues. Ken, I want to check
with you. Is that what you were asking?\
\
Caller: I think that that\'s one of the conclusions that we would end up
drawing, but I\'m still trying to take the information provided to me in
the contractors\' reports, specifically if it\'s identifying where I\'m
spending my money on workload measures, and bring that back into my
workload analysis here so that the two match so that I can compare one
to the other.\
\
J. Romero: Ok. So what we\'re suggesting again is start with your
existing data. If you find that the business activity level information
that you have is adequate, you don\'t have to even use the worksheet.
If, on the other hand, you look at the business activity data that you
have and you decide I could really use a bit more refining of the data
or I really want to know where am I spending \-- I know I\'m spending
time in certain areas that are not clearly delineated, then I might want
to use a further task analysis. In terms of doing that, you would start
with the business activity descriptors and say, given this business
activity, what are the tasks that I perform to get it done?\
\
G. Dreier: I think what you\'re trying to get across is this is one tool
that you can use out of a tool box of many, but it doesn\'t provide you
an opportunity to drill down a little bit from where we\'re starting our
base level data.\
\
J. Romero: I think that\'s good. Again, I come back to there\'s some
judgment calls on the folks of the people trying to get to the workforce
plans. I want to move on so that we have time to do the exercise that
we\'re really wanting to do, and I would refer your attention to your
workbook on page 42. On page 42 it really begins to say, ok, you\'ve got
your data, and now what happens, what do I do with it? Well, one of the
things that you want to do, and I\'ve mentioned this a couple of times,
is the day you a \-- data should begin to surface those areas that might
need process improvement. How could I improve the efficiency? Another
thing we\'ve mentioned before is it also begins to surface, do I spend
\-- really spend my time on the organizational priorities? Because if
I\'m not doing that, then I\'m frustrated as a manager because I\'m not
being able to focus on the priorities and, frankly, my results aren\'t
going to be the way I would like them to be. So that\'s a critical one.
There are some questions to consider, then, as you begin to look at the
data at whatever level you decide is appropriate. One of the things that
should surface is, do I have the right skills and knowledge to do the
work? So, for example, in the NEPA, if we were to go to the task level
and decide that NEPA \-- looks like there\'s a lot of work not getting
done or getting done to the level it should be, I might stand back and
say, you know, do I really have the skills to do the NEPA analysis or do
I want to contract out the first part of it before the approval, the
analysis? It \-- the other thing it might do is surface whether or not
you have the right amount of skill, whether skills are being over or
underutilized, what can be done differently to accommodate the skill
levels, and here is where you might say, we really do \-- it looks like
our realty work is really high volume and there are some things that
have happened that are going to do nothing but increase that volume. I
look at my FPPS data and I see that I\'ve got some retirements coming in
the realty arena, and now I have to begin to ask myself what can I do
differently? You might say, development is the issue. I have got to get
very focused on making sure that I\'m developing realty specialists
behind the people that we have here. I know that realty is not something
you go out and hire. Takes years to learn it. It\'s a very specialized
skill. And the answer might be, I\'ve got to do some development, I have
to do some very focused development. So, again, these are some questions
you can consider as you begin to look at the data, and I would submit to
you that we haven\'t really identified all of the questions, that in
fact there\'s probably others that will surface, but the point we want
to make is, regardless of the level of data that you use, we\'re asking
you to step back and think critically about the implications of the data
and what it is that it is that\'s being implied to you so that you can
take action. Gary, would you add anything else as we move ahead?\
\
G. Dreier: I think you\'re right on target, and actually we\'re on
target on our timing, which is pretty amazing, so I think we ought to
move to the exercise, because I think this will give them the
opportunity to put to use what we\'re talking about and see if we\'re
getting our point across.\
\
J. Romero: Good enough. As we move to the model, I want to check in with
my audience out there and find out if there\'s any last wrap-up
questions as it relates to workload analysis or sort of the concept of
using the data to do the workload analysis? I love it. That means
everybody is with us. I\'m going to call your attention to my friend
Elmo here, and I want to point out that what we\'ve been talking about,
as I\'ve said, is the workload analysis. What we\'re going to do now is
we\'re going to move over to steps 3 to 5. That is, what are our skill
gaps and our capability gaps, and what options do we have for working
those? Let me make sure I have step 4 here pretty clearly. So we\'re
going to go to step, 3, 4 and 5, and that\'s where we\'re headed. The
way that we are going to do this, and we\'ve had lots of discussion
about the way to do this, is we are going to introduce an exercise that
we\'ve fondly labeled the cumulative exercise. This exercise consists of
three parts, and it is hinged on a scenario. The scenario is page 62 in
your workbook. So I would invite you to stay with me as I go through
this and review. So the first part you\'re going to be doing, part 1,
and we\'ve created a business \-- a case study or a scenario to
illustrate the work. What we\'re going to be asking you to do is to
practice reading the data and interpreting the data that we\'ve been
talking about this morning. So on page 62, what you will see is that the
scenario is as follows: It\'s a resource unit of BLM. It\'s a BLM Field
Office, and it\'s resources within that Field Office. This organization
or this unit is working very hard to implement the management actions
from a recent land use planning exercise that they went through. In this
Field Office, grazing administration is a big priority and the intention
through the plan is to clean up the backlog and correct permits and
leases to reflect new allocations. \-- to reflect new allocations. This
particular Field Office has been attempting to get a handle on invasive
plant species that are rapidly expanding and new plants that have been
recently identified through some of the inventories. The State Office is
putting \-- not the State Office, but the state that the office is \--
resides in is putting a major transportation artery through the area and
has asked that the plants be made available to the public through sales
rather than transplanting or destroying them. Consequently, vegetation
sales are going to be up significantly over the next four years. That\'s
going to be a huge upswing, if you will, or spike in the work. The
project has also increased the interest in land feature location for
communities, businesses and individuals so that they can know their
relationship to the transportation plan. So as you can see, it\'s
somewhat realistic. It\'s not farfetched that some of you might be
dealing exactly with that kind of situation. So what we\'re going to do
is have you work with this scenario, and the first thing I want to do is
let you know that the purpose of the exercise is to get you to use that
worker and work information that Gary talked about to help you
determine, \"do I have enough information? Do I need additional
information?\" So what we\'re going to ask you to do is look at the
scenario carefully, take a look at the data, and, Gary, do you want to
say anything about the data they will use?\
\
G. Dreier: Included with the scenario we have included a data sheet 1,
worker cost, page 1 and 2, which is pages 63 and 64, and this portrayal
is our unit here, our office, and the reason we have shown this is to
portray, first of all, this is the same format that you will get in your
form in the worker costs. This is to give you a first look at the kind
of information and how it would be arrayed so you would get some
familiarity with that. As we go through it, we\'ll summarize this
information, and you won\'t have to be referring back to it through the
scenario. But it is back there if you want to look at it where we\'re
building our inferences and our tables, summary tables from, and it\'s
there and available. So now I guess we get into the actual exercise on
1?\
\
J. Romero: Yeah, and I want to make sure you understand, what we are
trying to do is get you look at the data, figure out what information
you still need, you don\'t have, so the outcomes are if you fill out
form number 1, a and that\'s on page 66 in your participant\'s workbook,
and you\'ll see the fax number is crossed out because we are not going
to ask you to fax this one in, but we need you to fill out the form and
list additional information beyond what\'s provided in the sheets that a
decision maker would need to use to make sound business decisions or
planning decisions. So here\'s an example, as you can see. The example
is what I need to know is the workload measures that have been committed
to \-- that we\'ve committed to. So that\'s not obviously going to be on
the form. The other thing you\'re going to do is list ideas for how
would you get that information if it\'s information you need. So in this
example we\'re saying, I would review a copy of the annual performance
plan and the employee performance evaluation forms so I would know where
those measures exist. Now, I should point out that what we are assuming
in this exercise is that a full-time employee performs a thousand hours
of work during this work period. Ok?\
\
G. Dreier: That was just a simple plying so you don\'t have to do a lot
of calculations.\
\
J. Romero: Then in the data you are going to be looking at, the eligible
retirees, folks that could retire, in less than five years have been
asterisked, and that\'s in table 1.1. So that gives you some additional
information. So the instructions \--\
\
G. Dreier: How about let me describe table 1.1 a little bit for them.
Table 1.1 is really just a summary of the earlier data sheet I talked
about, data sheet 1. But we tried to put all the information on a
one-view look. We\'ve got the job \-- business practices, business
activities on the top, we\'ve got the names, their job series, their
grades along the left side, and then we\'ve got the hours they worked
and the cost to do that work. So it\'s \--\
\
Caller: Gary, this is Nancy in Oregon. I don\'t know if anybody else has
this problem, but none of us in this room can actually read this table.
The way it reproduces, it\'s not readable.\
\
G. Dreier: That\'s unfortunate.\
\
Caller: We have that problem also.\
\
G. Dreier: Oh.\
\
J. Romero: That is not good.\
\
G. Dreier: We will address in that a minute. We will see how we can
solve that for you. The table was an attempt \-- it wasn\'t an attempt,
it is and it\'s great, believe me \-- I did this one \-- it\'s to move
the data from the data \-- the data sheet in the scenario into a one
look so you don\'t have to try and be moving things around and see where
all work is being performed. So it\'s the same thing but it\'s just in a
different portrayal and different view. So that is the starting point.
We\'ll have to see how we can deal with \--\
\
J. Romero: Bad copies. Let\'s think \--\
\
G. Dreier: How many do we have that are having this problem?\
\
Caller: You can only read it if you get a direct original from the
printer. We\'re all \-- anybody has a Xeroxed copy pretty much can\'t
read it. We have one person who has a clean copy.\
\
G. Dreier: Well, there is a fallback. How is the data sheet one look?\
\
J. Romero: Gary, one of the things I\'m going to do is might up on the
Elmo and walk you through it.\
\
G. Dreier: They\'ll have to see the whole thing. That won\'t help them
too much. I don\'t have a great solution. Let\'s start and it see if we
can get some solutions. The fallback is we can use the data sheet 1. Has
the same data that will it will be a little more cumbersome to analyze.\
\
J. Romero: So you can use the data sheet on page \--\
\
G. Dreier: 63 and \--\
\
Caller: Those are the same way.\
\
G. Dreier: Those are the same way. You\'re out of luck.\
\
J. Romero: Ok. We\'re going to punt. It\'s called punting in the world
of instructors \--\
\
G. Dreier: While they are doing that, it would also be good for those
that are having a tough time reading it to go through the rest of the
data for this cumulative exercise, this is for cumulative exercise 2 and
3, and this would be a good time for those who can\'t read it to go
through and see if that\'s a problem as we go through this process.\
\
Caller: Gary, this is Russ in Idaho falls. I had that same problem, and
what I did to solve it was to go to the original PDF file, bring it
occupy my screen, and then do a print for current page. Don\'t print the
whole thing, just print the pages that are giving you a problem seeing.\
\
J. Romero: That\'s one potential option, if you are near your computer
and you can pull up your .PDF file. What I want to do, we are working a
come things behind the scenes here, so we will come back, but what we
wanted to do, let\'s not lose sight, what we are trying to do here is
get you somewhat comfortable with the idea of translating the data
that\'s there and beginning to think \-- and think about what data is
missing. So if you do not have access to our \-- or can\'t read the
data, what I would ask you stood to sit and think about your own unit,
your own business unit, and think about the kinds of information that
you think you\'re going to need to conduct a workload analysis and to
identify those. If you have the data, if you have the \-- you\'ve got
readable sheets, then the instructions are on page 65 of your workbook,
and essentially with a we\'re asking you to do is to get together in
groups of two or three, if you have the sheet and you can read it, take
a look at it to get a feel for the organization, the work that\'s being
done, et cetera, the workers you have, and then figure out what kind of
work is being done now, who is doing what, how much is it costing to get
the work done, and then begin to think about what additional information
do I need or might I need to help me make sound workforce planning
decisions. If you can\'t read the data, you can skip to number 4 as your
starting point and begin to ask yourself, what kind of information do I
really need to make good workforce planning decisions beyond the
information that I know is available. So either way, I\'d like you to
spend some time thinking about it, because what we\'ve been talking
about this morning is the value of trying to get into some of this
analysis and data, whether it\'s qualitative or quantitative, so that
you can move beyond just filling positions. So that\'s really the whole
point. So let me clarify that everybody understands what it is we are
asking you to do and to let you know we have 25 minutes, and that
includes a break. So I\'m sure you will want to take a five-minute break
and work on the exercise for 20 minutes. Or some combination thereof,
but we will be back online in 25 minutes.\
\
G. Dreier: We will stay here available to answer questions as well.\
\
J. Romero: Absolutely. We will be here.\
\
G. Dreier: And we will take questions on the exercise or any other
things we\'ve done to this point.\
\
J. Romero: So for the first 15 minutes, all joking aside, work on the
exercise. So, clarify, is everybody clear about what it is we\'re asking
you to do? Silence means yes. Ok. Let\'s go for it. As Gary said, we\'ll
be here. If there\'s any questions, the product that you\'re being asked
to create is on form 1. What do I need to know and how might I go about
getting it? So we\'ll be close by.\
\
G. Dreier: If you have a PDF file close by and can print those for
continuing the exercise this afternoon, it would be extremely helpful
and we\'ll see what we can do from this level.\
\
J. Romero: We\'ll be back.\
\
J. Romero: Welcome back from break. I trust everybody\'s in place and
has got a lot of things to debrief and we do have some time to hear from
you and we\'re very interested in what you have to say. As we get
started, Gary has been working on a solution. He didn\'t take a break.\
\
G. Dreier: That\'s not exactly entirely true, but we did try to come up
with a solution to your problem and that was there\'s two facets you can
do now to get a better or another copy of this. First of all, we have
e-mailed all the participants a word file to their addresses. They\'re
in your e-mail box, a word file that has all the same information. The
page numbers may not directly correspond to the .PDF file, but it will
be reasonably close. The other is if you go to the website, the website
has a quick link to the .PDF file on the first page, and that is
web.tc.blm.gov/workforceplanning We will talk about some information in
that in the next exercise coming up in about 45 minutes to an hour, but
you don\'t have to have all that information to do it and you are going
to have some time after we close out. So at your leisure, you can print
them.\
\
J. Romero: Good job. Let\'s hear from some of the folks. How did the
exercise go. We will start with the people that had the data to work
with. Can you tell us a little bit about what you found in looking
through the data? What was missing, in other words?\
\
Caller: This is Melissa from Burns, Oregon and we were curious what the
status of NEPA may be because it\'s real important to know as far as
time frames and the skill needs that you need to complete NEPA.\
\
G. Dreier: Did you think NEPA was captured at all in some of the data
that was there? Is it buried in there somewhere?\
\
Caller: I felt that we would have to ask the question. We weren\'t real
sure.\
\
J. Romero: Ok. So you\'re finding \-- your finding was we probably need
to go to the task level with NEPA. Doesn\'t surprise me a bit. I\'ve had
some pretty big aha\'s with folks going through the process looking at
NEPA to find out, A, how much time they\'re spending and, frankly, it\'s
a level of frustration because they\'re not getting it to the level they
need it. Any other findings? That\'s a good one. So \--\
\
Caller: This is Nancy from Alaska. One of the things we found out,
wanted to know, was what was the backlog and also what was the projected
workload, and also how some of the functions interrelated into the
priorities that they were already doing.\
\
J. Romero: I\'d like to address backlog and, Gary, you might want to
address future work. As far as backlog, that is one of the things that I
think the task level forms are useful for determining. I think that by
asking the right people and getting some level involvement along with
some of the data that\'s available you can figure out \-- get your arms
around the backlog, how big is it. So I think that\'s a useful \-- a
very good use of it. You want to comment on the other piece of it?\
\
G. Dreier: The future work, obviously we haven\'t revealed that to them
yet, and they will see that late or in the exercise two, what we
consider to be the future solution. At least the future work. But,
you\'re right, before you start looking at where we\'re going to go, you
need to also be looking at where we are. You need to combine those two
things. That\'s part of what the exercise is about. You need to say, ok,
here is my current work, I see what\'s happening and there are a lot of
passes that aren\'t revealed but the one that isn\'t revealed at all is
where are we going. That has always been one of our biggest plagues in
the Bureau to try to strategize for the future. That\'s why we did the
futuring yesterday and this morning because we felt that was so
important. You hit right on it.\
\
J. Romero: Sounds like those will be useful forms. What other kind of
information were you able to identify as being necessary to know?\
\
Caller: Gary \--\
\
Caller: This is Bob \--\
\
Caller: This is nick from Washington \--\
\
Caller: Not having a realty specialist on staff with some of the
exercises going on.\
\
J. Romero: We had a traffic jam. We had two people talking at once.
Let\'s go ahead and have a repeat of the question and then we\'ll go to
nick in Washington. So not question, but can you repeat what you were
able to find, Bob?\
\
Caller: Do you want nick in Washington or Bob in Wyoming?\
\
J. Romero: Let\'s take Bob in Wyoming since he started out and didn\'t
get to finish and then we\'ll go to Nick.\
\
Caller: We were discussing that there was not an archaeologist or realty
specialist on staff, and there\'s certainly going to be need for with
road activity and earth moving disturbances.\
\
J. Romero: So you were looking at the future component of what might not
be there.\
\
G. Dreier: And we purposely had some folks misplaced in their jobs.\
\
J. Romero: So that you would find them and you did. Good job. Nick?\
\
Caller: I was going to say that there appear to be some redundancy with
regards to staffing. If you look at E.A. coordinators, seems like
everybody is up and about doing their thing. Looks like there needs to
be better organization to determine who is doing what. And then so the
office, as they sit now, appears to be doing work, but it is not
coordinated enough to determine how much work each person is supposed to
be doing.\
\
J. Romero: Very good.\
\
Caller: That\'s one part. Number two observation is you are going to
make a sell, you are going to be selling in your plant. Is this a
candidate species or listed species? I don\'t see this as it\'s
presented today people with expertise to do the biological opinion that
is needed or to do the conferencing or the section 7 consultation that
may be required to be able to get the T&E part of it met. Then you go to
the NEPA part of it, you got two NEPA coordinators doing the front
things, adding up to 2,000 hours between the both of them, ready to
retire. Somebody is talking about how do you replace them, but NEPA is
going to generate conflicts. I don\'t see any room there for all the
conflicts and appeals that you may run into. I don\'t see any public
outreach plan to allow to discuss that new sell of plan with the public.
That\'s a lot of work that I see here that needs to be first organized,
prioritized and decision made.\
\
J. Romero: Nice job.\
\
G. Dreier: Good work.\
\
J. Romero: Sort of a master analyst there.\
\
Caller: This is Lorraine from NTC.\
\
J. Romero: Go ahead NTC.\
\
Caller: We looked at it similarly, identifying existing skills that are
missing. For instance, we need \-- there\'s no \-- doesn\'t look like
there\'s anybody on staff who can do community partnering and public
affairs, community affairs, urban planning, thing like that. Again, it
was focussing on how to get \-- how we should be getting those skills
maybe by contracting partnering, volunteers, retraining people.\
\
G. Dreier: So you saw a skills deficit, then, is that right?\
\
J. Romero: I think Lorraine is also pointing out that through taking a
look they were very \-- pretty quickly able to identify some specifics
and to get down kind of at the task level. So nice job, Lorraine.
Anybody \--\
\
Caller: This is Max in Washington. We are looking at the different
positions and asking what percentage of the job is being done by
volunteers or outside organizations like contractors and also it
doesn\'t mention \-- it does show that the position is being allocated
towards a job. It doesn\'t say whether the job is being done properly or
if they have the time to do it.\
\
J. Romero: That\'s right, Max. That\'s where you might want to use the
next level down, the task level, to look at that particular task and
look at what\'s not getting done or done at the level it should be. To
your point about the supplemental worker you brought up yesterday and I
think it goes here as well, if you were looking at the task level and
using the work sheets, you might want to add the column you talked about
so that you could get a better handle on what the supplemental workforce
really looked like for your particular area. So great. Gary, would you
add anything?\
\
G. Dreier: No, that sounds good.\
\
J. Romero: Now let\'s hear from some of the folks who did not \-- were
not able to read the day you a. What did you do with \-- data. What were
you able to identify as possibly information you needed?\
\
G. Dreier: Obviously made it very difficult or they\'re out printing.\
\
J. Romero: They could be out printing. So, again, we\'ve been talking
about what was the pieces \-- what were the pieces of information that
you were able to glean as being necessary. Now, what we didn\'t talk
about was what were your ideas for getting the information. A couple
comments on that, please. What did you decide?\
\
Caller: This is Nick from Washington.\
\
Caller: The information \--\
\
J. Romero: Hold on. Time out. We\'ve got two going at once. I didn\'t
\-- somebody start up and we\'ll get you both.\
\
Caller: Look to existing inventories that have already been completed.\
\
J. Romero: Good. So your solution is look at existing inventories that
we\'ve already done. Good job. What about the other person who was \--
who came up with some solutions?\
\
Caller: I didn\'t think I came up with solutions. I just wanted to make
a suggestion of the information I would have needed. Part of that would
have been what the gentleman said you need, an inventory, is anyone
available, also need to know if there is an existing E.A. or E.I.S. or
whatever covering that area, and on top of that, somebody needs to give
me some information on how we are going to determine the value of the
plan to be sold, because there is not \-- plants to be sold, because
there is not an economist in sight.\
\
J. Romero: Good point. Underscores one that came up yesterday. Maybe a
skill gap is an economist. I am going to turn the dial a little bit and
have you look at page 68 and while you are doing that, I am moving over
to the Elmo to bring you back to our process and where we are and,
again, you know, we\'re looking at options for how to address some of
those particular gaps that you\'re in the process of identifying. So
with a we\'re going to be talking about here is what we\'re calling gap
analysis. So if you look on page 68, the purpose of a gap analysis is to
walk you through the critical thinking that\'s necessary to help you
identify the gaps or deficits and the future skill requirements. So in a
nutshell, that\'s why we do the gap analysis. There are some options,
obviously, for acquiring skills, and the questions that you might think
about are what are the processes that need to be adjusted, updated or
changed? Can work be reshaped via consolidation, zoning, centralizing
functions or work automation? So, again, as we go through this, these
are the kinds of things that you want to think about. Another thing you
want to think about is what are the other options? Because clearly there
might be several other options that you might be able to think about,
and can the gaps be minimized through the development of existing staff?
So the development piece again rises its head, and it begs the question,
should I be looking at how I\'m acquiring skills? Now, if I look at what
are the options for acquiring skills, I mean, this is something we\'ve
touched on, but there are several options for acquiring skills. That
might be contracting out. That might be agreements. That might be
partnering, volunteers, temporaries, students, that kind of thing, and,
clearly hiring. So you do have a number of options for addressing the
skills. So as we shift over to thinking about the gap analysis, what
I\'d like to do is have you turn to page 69, because on page 69 we have
a little questionnaire to get you to start thinking about future gaps.
So take a look at page 69, and let me find it here in my book. If you
look at page 69, it\'s called a gap analysis questionnaire. Essentially
with a we\'re asking you to do is through the use of data to step back
and look at the kinds of questions 1 through 5 that we have here. The
questions are things like: what is the work that\'s not being done that
should be getting done? What work are you doing that you could back off
of? And one of the assumptions that I have in working with folks in your
industry, and particular BLM, is that all of the work is important. I
mean, it\'s not as cut and dry, why don\'t you prioritize because
typically what people tell me is we have to do it all at some level, but
when you are trying to figure out the gaps, I think it\'s important to
really do some kind of prioritizing, and that is to say, if all work is
important, what are some things that are \-- because of mandate or law I
absolutely have to do and I have to do them right now? And what are some
things that I have to do but that maybe I could back off of a little
bit. Another question I don\'t think we ask frequently enough is what\'s
the work that we\'re doing that\'s frankly too expensive? Is there work
that\'s too costly to continue? Is there work that we\'re not doing now
but we anticipate doing, and you\'ve already identified some of those.
And what is the work that you\'re only able to do marginally because you
don\'t have the time or you don\'t have the resources? So, in thinking
about options and gap analysis, those are some of the questions that
you\'d want to ask yourself as you go forward. Gary, were you going to
comment on that at all?\
\
G. Dreier: Sure. This is where in workforce planning the rubber meets
the road. This is where you\'re trying to take all the information
you\'ve looked at, that would be the work as well as the current
workforce, the future skill requirements and the present skill
requirements, and trying to make some determinations on how these all
fit and how you are going to meet your future work requirements by a
blend of all these activities. Obviously there is no one solution to
this. And there is no probably one right solution. What\'s right today
is probably wrong tomorrow and vice versa. So what we want to do is be
sure we start from the foundation. The foundation is let\'s identify the
best we can the tasks and future work we have to do and the skills that
support that, and the amount of skills we need to get that work done,
and then that gives us the option of looking at all these various
options rather than starting from one premise we\'ve lost a position, we
need to fill that position. I think if we start looking at this in a
more global skills-based mentality, it will make it easier for us to
look at the options more objectively. I think what we tend to do is go
straight to the \-- go straight to the answer, and if we would have
taken some time to do some of the futuring wheels, look at these, take a
step back, do kind of what we just did, what\'s missing, what could
possibly be out there, then I think there\'s an option to be able \-- be
able to accommodate change.\
\
J. Romero: I think Gary \--\
\
Caller: Gary, I think in addition to what you just said, an example for
number 5, we have to know what success is so we know if we are doing
anything marginally or not.\
\
J. Romero: That\'s a good point. Who was that? Who were we talking to?\
\
Caller: This is Bob in Wyoming.\
\
J. Romero: Ok, thanks, Bob. Any other reaction in we are \--\
\
Caller: Jo Ann, this is Mel in Boise. Just to paraphrase to see if I got
this straight, when we talk about gap analysis and the gap, we\'re
talking about the gap between \-- we\'re talking about the work gap, the
gap between what we\'re not doing and what we should be doing or the gap
between what we\'re doing and what we see that we will be doing in the
future looking at this question on page 69. When we get through with
this questionnaire, then that will identify our gap for us, is that
correct?\
\
J. Romero: To some degree that would be \-- I would call appear
qualitative set of questions to help you get started in the conversation
with your team about what are the gaps. Now, for some of you, that may
be adequate. For others, it may not be. As Gary said earlier, you are
going to be getting some nice consolidated data, and we would hope that
you would use the questionnaire and you would also take the time to go
through the data to figure out what other kinds of information or gaps
might you identify. But you are absolutely right in the sense that what
you are looking at is program gaps and gaps in work, either current or
future. That\'s exactly right.\
\
Caller: The reason I\'m hitting on it is because it\'s very important,
the definition of gap is very important, because just about everything
else we do is going to hinge on this. So if what I said is a correct
interpretation, then going forward from here, then the question is what
skills do we need or what skills will we need to acquire if we don\'t
already have them to address the gaps, correct?\
\
G. Dreier: That\'s correct. And it\'s gaps for the future work as well
as what you may want to do in your current work. You may want to kind of
reshape your present workforce for efficiencies. You may want to improve
the process and through improving the process there\'s a skill shift
from your present work, even if there was no increase in work level.\
\
J. Romero: Bob, you gave us a nice transition into moving into the
second part of the exercise because what we are going to be looking at
is skill gaps. We are going to be looking at if you identify the work
gaps, then \-- how do you get to the skill gaps, and some that is a
judgment call. It\'s some of what you know. There\'s also going to be
some data to support that, so we are going to go through that. Before I
transition to that, are there any other questions and/or comments about
the last exercise or the issue of identifying work gaps?\
\
Caller: Joe in Roseburg, one comment is this could be a very subjective
and qualitative exercise as you say, and the importance of involving
management in the exercise because you may get very different answers,
if a program lead wants to build a Cadillac version, for example, for
monitoring within his program, say, in fisheries or hydrology, there may
also be a Volkswagen version at the other end of the spectrum that is
very much more cost efficient. Somewhere there may be a happy medium
that management will accept.\
\
J. Romero: What a great observation. And I have found there is another
benefit for getting as much involvement as you can. Again, we like to
talk about the best case, and the best of circumstances, I think what
you would do is you would look at the data first, you would start with
the data, look at the hard data, you\'d involve your people who are
concerned with addressing future skill needs, and you would do somewhat
of a qualitative review, in other words, you\'d ask those questions and
you\'d have some agreement about what level of work you\'re going to be
doing. I think that also comes out with your assumptions because if you
are assuming that you\'re going to have flat or declining budgets, then
you\'re not going to go with the Cadillac version. I think this also
begins to creep towards the issue of how some of the staff are managed,
if I can say that, because I think sometimes we have our ologists who
have their favorite kind of work and the manager has some data and
information from which to focus, I mean, we need to focus on the level
of work we have decided to do.\
\
G. Dreier: You bring up another point which is the management side, and
that\'s why we are pushing a dialogue, and just to kind of back up from
BLM perspective, both the E.L.T. and field committee have been pretty
strong about being on record that workforce planning is a management
process, and managers need to be involved in that process from the start
to the end and all the way through the process and, yes, I think that\'s
right, they are going to have to be involved in some of those decisions,
if not all those decisions, all the way through each step of this
process, and if that engagement is there, I think you\'re going to have
a strong and effective plan, and if it\'s very interspersed, I think
it\'s going to be difficult.\
\
J. Romero: I think what you\'re striving for is clarity. Any others as
we begin to look at the second part of the cumulative exercise and some
more data? Let\'s move. If you turn to exercise 2, and that\'s on page
70 of your workbook, what we\'re doing is we\'re building on the
exercise that we just went through. So this is cumulative exercise 2.\
\
G. Dreier: If I can jump in here, Jo Ann, for those having a problem
looking at it, an earlier one, still having problems on these data
sheets as well, you will have time at the end of this to go out and get
it done, but I think you\'ve got enough presentation material that they
can see it and follow along even if they can\'t read it very well.\
\
J. Romero: I hope so. And you will have to let us know how that\'s
working for you. The purpose of this particular round, round 2, is to
use some worker and work information that\'s going to be coming out on
the data sheets that Gary talked about earlier to use those sheets to
determine what are the skills that are needed. So you can see we\'ve
gone from gap now \-- work gap to skill gap. What are the skills that
are needed to meet both current and future work demands. So that\'s the
intention behind this exercise. What we want to do as an outcome is to
have you use the workforce planning information that you\'ve generated
to date to be able to assign your present workforce to address those
capability gaps. So, with a we\'re going to be asking you to do is to
determine the skills or the occupations that you need to meet your
future work requirements, and I want to back up to something Gary said
earlier. He talked about the best that we have today is occupations.\
\
G. Dreier: From a corporate viewpoint, we have accumulated occupations
and grades.\
\
J. Romero: So if I have a skill gap, I am going to look at what is the
occupation that currently most frequently occupies or does that kind of
work, and you\'re going to see there\'s a number of reports that are
going to help you do that and then if I want to know the proficiency
level of that particular skill, I\'m going to look at grade series. Now,
you can there\'s some underlying assumptions behind that, the assumption
being that a position level like a GS-7 would indicate that\'s the
proficiency level or the level that we\'re currently doing those skills
at. So let me get into this, because it will make more sense. I do want
to share with you also the assumptions behind this exercise, too, and if
you look, I want to get to the page, we\'re on page 70, if you look at
your page 70, what you can see is we are assuming here you have some
retirements coming at the end of the year. You\'ve assumed that Chris
Moss and Justin Case will both retire at the end of the current fiscal
year and as you saw earlier, one of the tables indicated to you it shows
retirement. This impact has already been calculated for you in the
reports \-- in what we\'re calling input form 2. That\'s one of the
assumptions. What I am going to do is walk you through one of the
examples with Justin Case so you can walk along with me so you can see
what information has been calculated for you. The other assumptions you
can work with is that June Bug is going to retire in FY plus 1, which
means next year. You\'re also going to assume that table 2.2 is \-- what
you can assume is that the projected workload measures have been
determined for this particular Field Office and that new work can be
supported with the appropriate additional workers. So, in other words,
you are going to be able to do something \-- it\'s not going to go away
when \-- for example, when Justin Case retires.\
\
G. Dreier: We use the term workers and not employees for very good
reason. The reason is, of course, we\'re looking at workers as being the
employee, whether permanent, temporary, and also all the supplemental
workers, the volunteers, the partners, the contractees, all that stuff.\
\
J. Romero: Now what I would like you to do is to turn to page 71, and
it\'s called input form 2, and I want us to translate what we\'ve just
said by looking at the data very carefully. So we\'ve said we know
Justin Case is going to retire. So I said \-- I said that incorrectly.
The page I want you to look at is \-- here it is. It\'s page 72. So if
you look at page 72, you\'ll notice that nowhere on this report does it
have the name Justin Case. What it does have, however, is the job series
and, of course, the name\'s is not there for a very good reason. So
let\'s look at 0401, that would be Justin Case and you can see in the
left-hand side on the second column to the right it says job series
0401. So that\'s how we\'ve located Justin.\
\
G. Dreier: This is table 2.1, an FTE expended by series and PE, and as
Jo Ann stated, this is trying to get at skills and not people. So
that\'s why the names have been removed, to try to get you to focus at
the skills. This is a summary table again of the earlier data sheet that
you saw at the start of the scenario.\
\
J. Romero: Thank you, Gary. So what I\'m going to do is walk you through
page 72, table 2.1, from left to right and what you can see is 0401
happens to be Justin. We know that. If you go one column to the right
you see that Justin is a GS-9. He\'s a level 9. As you continue to the
right, what you see is that .4 or 40% of his time is spent in BS, or
weeds inventory. So he\'s spending 40% of his time doing weeds inventory
work, and if you continue to the right, you see that the remainder of
Justin\'s time is spent in DK, which is T&E recovery. So that\'s a
pretty clean breakdown of eyes work. As you continue to the right, to
the end, you see again that he\'s going to be retiring this fiscal year.
So this table 2.1 in this exercise is saying, ok, I know who Justin is,
I know what his job series and grade level s I know where he spends his
time and I know that he\'s going to be retiring.\
\
G. Dreier: More importantly, you know that skim is going away. So if you
are going to have work, that somebody is going to have to do it.\
\
J. Romero: So the problem is let\'s figure out what skills Justin has
and how we would go about beginning to think about replacement, I would
turn your attention to page 74, which is a table 2.3. Again, this is a
new form, and I would think it would be extremely helpful to you as you
begin to use these.\
\
G. Dreier: Let me add on this one, the data in table 2.3 actually came
from the 2001 information from MIS that joined with FPPS, and so it\'s
giving us a look of how we can apply some of our past data to make some
futuring kind of decisions.\
\
J. Romero: Nice. Because even the title of this, it\'s the most often
used occupations Bureau-wide to perform PE. So if you take a look at
this, remember, Justin is working in weeds inventory, which is BS, and
you can see the most frequent occupation to perform weeds inventory, is
0455. Ok? So one could assume then that that\'s the kind of skill that I
would need to look at.\
\
G. Dreier: At least in that kind of category. You know it\'s kind of a
biological kind of group, if you go down the list and see what people
during. It becomes pretty apparent what kind of groupings of skills are
being used.\
\
J. Romero: which is another point I want to make, is it\'s from most to
least. Is that a fair \-- that\'s the way it\'s arrayed from the top to
bottom, from most to least. So we\'ve said we\'re going to lose
somebody, we know where he\'s spending his time and if we were going to
try to gather information about how to replace that skill, we know that
0455 is the most frequently used occupation. The second thing that we
would look at, then, is on page 75, that\'s table 2.4, and it\'s the
percentage of work done by grade level. So, again, if we go back to what
we said earlier, we\'ve said that if we look at the level \-- excuse me
\-- the proficiency of the work, we would look to the grade level to
help us identify that. So, again, if we take 0455 as a series and we
look at table 2.4, what we see, there is percentages under weeds
inventory, or BS, and you can see a whole list of percentages, and what
we see further is that the highest percentage, I thought it was grade
level 7 at 25% but there\'s also a 29.0%, which would really be the one
that was the most \-- the highest.\
\
G. Dreier: Again, it\'s telling you somewhere in that range, 7 to 9, 11
is where most people select the kind of proficiency to do that kind of
work. Again, this data is built from the 2001MIS with an FPPS join to
start making some associations with this. At least you know how your
counterparts are viewing the work should get done.\
\
J. Romero: I want to also say if you take a look at this table 2.4 and
you see that the range of proficiency in weeds inventory ranges from 25
to 29% of the folks that are doing that work are anywhere from a GS-11
to an 11, it also gives you a sense \-- GS-7 to an 11, it gives you data
on decisions to do your work and where you think that skill level
proficiency is going to need to be. I want to check in with the
audience. We have been walking through the data. I would like your
reaction. Do you think it\'s going to be helpful? Can you see where
we\'re headed with this?\
\
Caller: This is Max from D.C. again. You\'re looking at that table 2.4
and there\'s a lot of \-- there\'s a range, distribution range, in terms
of what types of grades are doing what types of jobs, and say if the
range is pretty equal from grade to grade, five different grades, and
the distribution is pretty equal in terms of who is doing the job, what
do you \-- where do you go from there? How do you make the next leap in
terms of determining how to, you know, advertise for the next weed
opening?\
\
G. Dreier: I guess the first thing we have to ask is what is your goal
as a manager? One goal you always have to have is, sit cost effective?
And the other is, by cost effective, what does it cost and how effective
are we at getting the job done. Both have to balance. You are going to
have to make that decision and it\'s not going to be straightforward. If
it\'s \-- if you\'re \-- if you are, for instance, like in California
where there\'s a big weeds program and T&E program and they have
specialized plants and species there that you don\'t find anywhere else,
I would have to say you are probably going to look at a higher grade. If
you are looking at a more simplistic, maybe some of the great basin
issues, where there is a less diversity of plants, maybe the lower grade
is reasonable. I can\'t answer there is any one right solution but what
I can tell you if I was beginning the process, I would look in that
range and say, why is that? With a do I need out of it? Look for the
most effective approach.\
\
J. Romero: Two things I want to add to that, Max. One is I think what
you\'re raising is that this kind of information can raise up what
decisions need to be made and the decisions Gary talked about are
absolutely relevant. In addition to that, if you know, for example, that
the proficiency level is somewhere around a level 5 to 7 and you know
what it costs you, you might also factor in, because we\'re talking
options here, what are my options for getting that proficiency level? It
might be that it\'s a replacement with another GS-5, but it might also
be that you want to do something else, that you may want to contract
out, you may want to consolidate, you may want to do a number of these
options. You may want to create a job family if you decide to hire. So
it does \-- again, the data is only there to catalyze these kinds of
discussions and questions. But it does, I think, begin to help you with
some real data to take a look at what are the management decisions that
I need to make? So it could be a replacement. It could be a variety of
things.\
\
Caller: And this is Bob from Wyoming again. My assumption would be grade
7 is a technical range and the 11 is the analysis and recommendation
range.\
\
J. Romero: Absolutely.\
\
G. Dreier: That\'s probably an assumption I would have made, too, in the
analysis, that this \-- this is a category of work, and that work
category describes anything from going out and identifying it to mapping
it to \-- I mean, there\'s a whole range of activities that go around
that. So I would have to agree with you that my first guess would be
it\'s probably partitioning the work based on its complexity.\
\
J. Romero: Then that begs the question, if I look now at my own work,
I\'ve got Bureau information, but if I look at my own work, say in
California where there\'s lots of botany and lots of complicated stuff,
then I might say, if I would \-- were to replace it, it would be an 11
because that\'s the level of work I have, and you could justify it
accordingly. So it just depends. Again, I think you\'re hitting on all
right things.\
\
Caller: This is Joe in Roseburg. I am looking at 2.3 table and we talked
a little earlier about moving toward generalist series and one
observation here is that for every one of these tasks identified by
program element, there\'s either a 401 or 301 in the top four series
with the exception of trail construction and maintenance, which I
certainly understand, being a more specific task and better series for
that. But certainly it\'s good to say that I think we\'re moving toward
generalists for practically everything we do, at least in this
scenario.\
\
G. Dreier: But also recognize you only want a generalist if it\'s
generalist work. If it\'s specific or highly technical, your generalist
may not do the work for you.\
\
J. Romero: Let me comment on that. In working with a number of folks,
this is not an uncommon direction that ended up happening as it related
to generalists. You\'re right, it depends on the work, but if you\'re
doing this in a collaborative way with your State Office and with even
the Washington Office, I think that you have a picture to look more
collectively at just my work at the Field Office, but let\'s back up and
look at what about at the state level? If we have \-- if it looks like
we could get more bang for the buck, do we want to begin to focus
towards more generalists? So, again, I think it sort of also adds to the
mix. Can we have the discussion here locally but can we also elevate
that discussion as well?\
\
Caller: It also emphasizes just the fact that our jobs are so fragmented
in so many field locations, and it really shows that we are putting a
lot of tasks on people that are varied.\
\
J. Romero: And that will show up when you do your workload analysis to
the extent you\'re involving people and they start trying to splinter
their time out, you\'re going to find a lot of frustration generally for
that very reason. So it does, I think, provide the platform for a good
discussion.\
\
\> So I want to move a little bit here and now we\'ve done \-- we\'ve
taken Justin Case, we know he\'s leaving, we know what he does, we know
the type of level of work and we know the proficiency.\
\
G. Dreier: We also \-- have we gone over how much work is going to
increase for him?\
\
J. Romero: Not yet. That\'s where I was going. Gary, why don\'t you
cover that. That\'s the future element you haven\'t had before.\
\
G. Dreier: In table 2.2 on page 73, we\'ve taken what the APP or the
annual performance plan approach on work, so we have current work, which
is the accomplished, we have the one year out on the amount and the two
year out on the amount.\
\
\> But we\'ve also included some information \-- excuse me some
information you don\'t normally see and that is we added the units per
FTE to come up with an FTE value of a projection for us. So if you are
going to be hiring a new person or going to be looking for additional
workers, wherever they come from to do this work, you get at least a
feel for what volume you should be asking for, how many of those
capacities or units or whatever term you want to use, you\'re going to
be needing. So we\'re starting to use this this as a capacity tool to
try and start judging the level. Now, I know a lot of people are going
to be a little skittish about using MIS data in this vein, but let me
tell you, you\'re doing it right now off a lot less accurate information
right now in your assumption approach. If that it\'s used for what it
can be used for, I think it has no problem. But I know there was going
to be some reticence about going too far with this. I would say for
where we are at in the process, I think this is excellent information to
start from.\
\
J. Romero: Couldn\'t agree more. So, again, you can see with a we\'ve
tried to do is outline the additional information and reporting that
you\'re going to have access to so that you can begin to factor it into
the workforce planning exercise. So where I had started out was to say
we\'re at cumulative exercise number 2, and I wanted to walk you through
an example and I want to continue that before I give you the
instructions of what we want you to do. So if you turn to input form 2
and that\'s page 71 in your workbook, I\'ve got it here on the Elmo, and
I\'ll zoom in in a minute so that you can follow with me, but what I
want to do is point out if you look at the PE name, at the top you have
weeds inventory. Let me zoom in on that here and put my \-- so this is
where we are. I can\'t see it, and I would be surprised if you could,
but if you are following along with me, what you see is that you\'ve got
weeds inventory, the BS that we\'ve been talking about, and the next
column is what\'s called FTE change, and what that translates to is that
denotes your work demand, right, Gary? That\'s your work demand. As you
move on that, what it says is that, again, it\'s a 401 series, it\'s a
grade level 9, and that we\'re going to be losing, that\'s why it\'s in
parentheses, we\'re going to be losing .4 when Justin retires and if we
go back to what the work that we already did, we looked at the skill
category or the series and that\'s the 0455 \-- was that 0455?\
\
G. Dreier: Yes.\
\
J. Romero: Then we also talked about the proficiency level being a 7. So
what you can see is that now we\'re going to calculate the percent FTE
and that\'s going to be your \-- again your gap. So what we would do
here is we would take the .75, which is the work demand, and we would
add to that the .4 that we\'re going to be losing, so our gap is
actually 1.15. So our \-- given our work demand and the retirement loss,
what we have see now is we have a gap of 1.15. So what that does is it
brings us to the issue of, what do I do with that? Or what are the
options for addressing it? So you can see as you begin to look at that
gap, you have to ask yourself, even if I replace judge continue, I would
be replacing a 1.0 and I would still have a gap. So with a we\'d like
you to do is to think about what are the other complications of this or
options that might exist for addressing the work gap.\
\
G. Dreier: I think the simple solution was you go to the two tables,
pick the highest frequency, and when that \-- that would be the 455 at
grade 7 or grade 11 and 1.15 FTE. That would be simple if there weren\'t
other players involved and that is you have a current workforce already
there, is the current workforce properly employed, underemployed. As I
look at the sheet, there are some people that aren\'t full time. Is that
an option? Are the people doing the right kind of jobs? I think all
those kind of factors need to be addressed before we start putting that
number in. It would be easy to say if we have a demand, we ought to fill
it by this every time. Well that would be great to say but I think the
reality is we have to look at the current situation as well and try to
balance our current workforce and the new work at the same time.\
\
Caller: Jo Ann, this is \-- can you hear me sell with us one more time.
Where does this FTE change column come from?\
\
G. Dreier: What I did, in an attempt to make this easy and I have been
chastised all last night about this, if you go to table 2.2, I took an
example of a future workforce demand, and based on the BLM\'s averages,
I came one a unit of FTE, per FTE for that kind of work in that
category, just to come one a generalized scheme of how many units are
produced against an FTE for the amount of work we are requiring them to
do. So it was translated from that form, the 2.2, onto the input form.
So if you look at 2.2, it said 75 was the FTE change for the next year.
So that was a new demand of new work that had to be met, and then it was
compounded by the fact there is a retirement already in your ranks, a
person who is already doing that work almost half their time.\
\
Caller: So if this were a real world situation, and if you were a Field
Office manager and you thought that next year you wanted to increase
your units by one unit, then you would \-- what you\'re saying is you
think it would take .75 FTE to do that, so that\'s your projected FTE
change for that particular PE; is that correct?\
\
G. Dreier: You\'re close. You got to look at the units in table 2.2,
units/per FTE, and that\'s the list we are doing. The one you are seeing
there, the .75, is the total amount of FTE that got translated from that
and that\'s how many FTE will be needed to do to meet the work demand.
Did I get that out right?\
\
J. Romero: Let me add to that, because I struggled with that as well and
I kept saying to Gary, you know, we\'ve got to be clear that what we\'re
talking about there is work demand, because I think that\'s where you
would either add or detract from, so that work demand, think of that
sort of consistent with FTE change. So does that help?\
\
Caller: You guys\' explanation is highly confusing \--\
\
Caller: The manager\'s judgment for the FTE that it\'s going to take to
satisfy the work demand?\
\
J. Romero: Yes. Absolutely. And just one quick comment on that. When the
manager is determining what is the work demand, one of the things that I
say, just because of funding constraints, is that you should always be
asking yourself, what\'s the minimum acceptable? Not what did it used to
be, what would really like it to be, what if it was the best place in
the world, what would it be, but what is the minimally acceptable to get
the work done, because I think that\'s more realistic.\
\
G. Dreier: And, really, this was an attempt to try and put a lot of
things together simultaneously and portray them in a way you wouldn\'t
normally \-- the FTE number I come up with, you are not going to find
anywhere in our reports. I went through an evaluation a calculation,
based on the new work, based on the current, kind of outputs we see in
the BLM and came up with this figure. That\'s the same kind of things
you\'re going to have to be doing if you want to come one how many more
of these do I need.\
\
Caller: This is Nick from Washington. You know, it might be very useful
if we can have a page or two, or even half a page, that is specifically
dedicated to definitions. We\'ve been using a lot of terms and
calculations, a lot of premises. We need a piece of paper where those
terms and assumptions are defined so that there will be some consistency
across the board. I\'m not talking about uniform, but I\'m talking about
some level of consistency in the minds of the users and the specialists
who will be doing this work.\
\
J. Romero: Let me say this, Nick. I agree with you, and on the web page,
I put my workforce planning book that I use in my three-day class, and
Gary will tell you in a minute how to get there, but in that there\'s a
lot of department-level terms, there\'s a gloss re of terms, and
there\'s also all of the specific DOI instructions, and if you go to the
website, you can pull that up, because I did put together a GLOSSARY of
terms. You\'re right, we\'re asking to do business in a different way
and referring to a lot of terms not in your normal business vocabulary.
So that does exist. It\'s on the website. I believe it\'s an appendix in
my workshop book. But what we do not have in there are the terms, a
GLOSSARY of terms, for the data we are now talking about, so perhaps a
BLM-centered glossary of terms that address some of these reports and
data would be helpful.\
\
G. Dreier: I think it\'s a suggestion we can implement quickly. We\'ll
make an attempt to do that as soon as we can. Thank you.\
\
Caller: I appreciate that. It will eliminate the potential for user
defined concepts in all of this.\
\
J. Romero: You\'re absolutely right. So I want to bring you back \--\
\
Caller: Jo Ann, before you do that, a simple question for Gary. On that
workload projections table, you would do one of those for each office?
And it would show every PE?\
\
G. Dreier: Your office has workload projections and work loads against
most business activities, not all business activities but many of the
business activities and so that\'s the ones I was keying on. The ones,
in fact, that have work that we\'re defining for \-- through that
process. Now, some of those you don\'t have, like support doesn\'t have
workload measures, so obviously you won\'t see changes in work in those
venues. So that comes from \-- that would come from an alternate data
source which is the performance plan process or performance measures.\
\
J. Romero: So what I want to do is bring us back around and go back to
cumulative exercise part 2. What we\'re asking you to do is get
comfortable, or at least sort of comfortable with the data you\'ve got
and in order to help you do that, if you look at, we\'re going to Elmo,
if you look at input form 2 and I realize that we\'re limited here in
terms \-- there\'s a lot of data on here, but if you look at what we\'ve
done here with good ol\' Justin Case, what we have done is we have begun
to identify what kind of work he does \-- I don\'t know that that\'s
showing up well \-- and now what we want to do is fill in the gaps on
the form. So what we are saying is if you take a look at \-- is that bet
center so what we want to do is we\'ve said we\'ve calculated that the
skill category is 0455, and we further calculated that the proficiency
level over grade is 7 and we\'ve also \-- proficiency level or grade is
7, and so for a homework assignment, we are going ask you to fax this
back us to, he would like for you to begin to look at how can you
balance the options that are available to you? So we would ask you to go
back through and review the tables we have just exercised and to \-- if
you\'re so inclined to pick a couple of them to work through \--\
\
G. Dreier: But we would like them to start with \-- go to the weeds
first and balance it out. The easy solution was, go put one person in
and have them use up all up the whole time. I think if you take a closer
look at the organization, there are some people that can already do that
work, and that\'s probably the ones you want to deal with before
starting to add new workers.\
\
J. Romero: Right. So the instructions for the exercise is to, first of
all, look at the data, and I know we had them up here, look at the data,
just kind of review it, look to see what is it telling you? What options
exist, then, and then to fill out your form for the weeds inventory as
Gary said. So the real thing that we\'re asking you to do is take a look
at the data. And identify the critical issues. Look at what\'s it
telling you, begin to do some critical thinking about what options
exist. It\'s not just go ahead and fill it, the position, but it might
be a variety of other options. So that\'s the homework and I want to
make sure that everyone is clear what we\'re asking you to do.\
\
G. Dreier: Let me point out to the group that the instructions we\'re
asking are the ones on your original sheet. We decided what we had was a
little too robust for the amount of time we have allocated. So follow
the ones Jo Ann has just given you and we will put those back up on the
screen in a minute, and that is what we want you to deal with on the
first go around for doing this exercise. Our hope would be, if you can
get through much or all of it, I think there\'s some value to going
through this thing and trying to ballot whole organization if you have
the time to do that, because it brings up the right kind of questions. I
mean, obviously this is a made up exercise. But the reality is the
processes are going to be the same.\
\
J. Romero: That\'s right. So, again, I want to summarize to make sure
you\'re with me and everybody is clear about what it is we\'re asking
you to do. What we\'re suggesting is you take the tables we have just
walked through, you look at the data, you identify and you can use
Justin Case, June Bug, Chris Mass or anybody you want to, what is the
data telling you, what does it imply, what options exist for filling the
gaps and focus on the weeds inventory. So that\'s the task.\
\
Caller: This is Bonnie from Safford.\
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J. Romero: Hi, Bonnie.\
\
Caller: If we decided to do an outsource or contract, how would we show
that? The table is really set up for employees.\
\
G. Dreier: Originally we set it up the current structure totally
employee based because we thought it would be an easier exercise for
people to begin with but you are exactly right, we are trying to
identify the skills and not the people. That\'s why we left the names
off the forms. To try to get you to stop about positions and work as
people but as skills and capabilities. So first thing you need to do is
identify the kind of skills you need, and if the occupation groupings
are too broad for you, you can break them down into tasks if you think
that\'s the appropriate way to deal witness. First identify them, then
you can start identifying, how can we go about getting that done.
That\'s part of our exercise three.\
\
J. Romero: I want to say it\'s the critical thinking around that that we
are interested in. If you decide your options are contract out, I think
that\'s the answer that you send in. So it might be contract. It might
be hire. It might be partner. It might be zone work. Who knows. There
could be a number of options. So go through that thinking, make sure
that you fax it in, we\'ll look at them tonight and have a little
dialogue in the morning about that. Any other questions or comments as
we get you started?\
\
Caller: This is Joe a question for Gary. I am looking at your input form
2 on page 71 and when you go down to the trail construction and
maintenance task under HC, for example, I\'m flipping back to page 67,
and it shows HC is basically currently handled by a GS-9 and a GS-6 for
about .8 and 75 apiece. How did you in this example show that there\'s a
GS-12 in the 301 series with a minus 1FTE?\
\
G. Dreier: I can\'t tell you \-- let me look.\
\
J. Romero: Give us a couple minutes.\
\
G. Dreier: Before I get to that, let me respond to something from the
previous question.\
\
\> I forget about it. The earlier question about options, what we are
trying to do at this point is deal with completing the gap on \-- based
on a skills mentality or a skills view. First thing we want to do before
we start assigning options and jumping to the end point is deciding what
kind of skills do we need and what kind of volume of those skills do we
need to get the work done. Then we will talk about how best to get the
work done. And we will talk about that more tomorrow. That\'s more of
how do you get the efficiencies and the costs and factor those into the
process. What we want to do at this juncture is make sure that we start
off on trying to get these things \-- what do we need to get work done?
Whether the worker is paid by us or somebody else, isn\'t the
consideration yet. But it will be, because you\'re not \-- you may hire
a halftime person or a contractor full time or whatever the case may be
but what we want to get at at the beginning is what is it we need to get
the work done. And whether we call this person a range CON in the BLM or
a range consultant I don\'t think is really the issue.\
\
J. Romero: You were going to respond to the issue \--\
\
G. Dreier: I will do that. We probably need to close it \-- let me get
his name and we\'ll start witness tomorrow, because I have to take a
look at all this stuff.\
\
Caller: This is Joe, and basically my perception is that jock key and
drum roll should have been shown in the form 2. And .75FTE in a 303GS-6
series. I am wondering why it is showing that you\'ve got a 301jGS-12
with a minus 1.\
\
G. Dreier: The only thing we are showing on the form is the two people
that were retiring.\
\
Caller: I\'m down in the input form under HC for trail construction and
maintenance. You had your point or it just a second ago, and I just
don\'t track how that came one a GS-12 minus 1.\
\
G. Dreier: There are two people retiring, Chris Mass and Justin Case.
Those were the ones we put on as examples.\
\
Caller: So we should ignore the one under HC \--\
\
G. Dreier: If it doesn\'t track on the other page, yes, but I thought
indict.\
\
J. Romero: Let me add something, though. I think eventually you want to
get comfortable with these forms and working them. So let\'s just use
that as an example, Joe. If you did have one where you thought, gee,
it\'s currently being done at a GS-12 level and frankly I know the work,
and Nye office, that\'s a 5 or a 6, then I think that\'s just surfacing
some adjustment that might be necessary for your particular area. So,
again, I\'m highlighting the management decisions or implications that
might come out of that. I don\'t know if that\'s helpful at all.\
\
Caller: I think I\'m beginning to follow. It\'s currently being done at
a GS-9 and 6 level but somewhere between that and the input form 2 a gap
analysis was done, and somebody decided it needs to be done at a GS12
level.\
\
Caller: This is Dennis in Oregon. I think that the issue \-- PE should
be HV, not HC. If you change to it HV, it looks like it calculates out
ok.\
\
J. Romero: HV as in Victor?\
\
Caller: That\'s correct.\
\
G. Dreier: Caught us.\
\
J. Romero: There\'s a lot of good wisdom to help us solve these issues.
Before we close down, is everyone clear about what we\'re asking you to
do and the fact that we want you to fax it in to 602-906-5701. Again, I
just want to underscore, we have kind of whizzed through a lot of data,
but our intention is simply to give you the tools that you might need to
have to be able to do some analysis, both qualitative and quantitative,
to get to the level of information that you need to identify both work
gaps. And skill gaps and have a starting point from which to make
management decisions around workforce planning. So any last comments or
questions. Around what we\'re doing, where we\'re going or where we\'ve
been?\
\
Caller: This is Ken in Idaho. A supplemental worker question. Maybe
applicable to something like trail construction and maintenance or road
maintenance. When we contract that kind of stuff, we contract a job. We
don\'t contract for individuals. So I guess I\'m curious as to how we
equate to that FTE.\
\
J. Romero: Hours.\
\
G. Dreier: Pass problem. We do pay by hours \-- there is a calculation
that the contractor is doing by amount of time, worker expenditure
they\'re going to have to deal with, but you\'re absolutely right.
Typically we do it by a project, by groupings of stuff. When you get
down to it, you industrial to find out whether or not there is a reality
to that as a comparison against other kind of work. So, yeah, you\'re
absolutely right, and those are the kind of things as we grow into
workforce planning and be a little more efficient, we will have to be a
little better at accounting for that. But in this first go around, you
will have to make some best guess comparisons.\
\
J. Romero: I\'m not \-- I guess I would add one thing. If, as a
contractor, if somebody comes to me and says, here\'s the work I want
you to do, I would like you to estimate the amount of time it takes, I
can do that. So I think that it\'s also useful to use your contractors
to help you figure that out. I mean, you\'ve got a starting point, but,
you know, I don\'t think you have to do that yourself. So to try to get
\-- to use whatever tools are available to you to be able to scope it, I
think, is useful and that if you have data about what it\'s taken to do
in the past by a Federal employee, then you have that as a starting
point as well. So I hope that\'s helpful. Ok. So we are nearing the
magic hour here, and as a way of summary, I think we\'ve done this a
couple ways, but just to summarize, what we\'re really suggesting here
is do your workload analysis, use existing data. If it\'s not adequate,
then go a level deeper, go to the task level, and the whole purpose of
this is to really get you to think about, with data, what are the
management decisions that I might need to move towards to get a
meaningful workforce plan. So, Gary, would you add anything?\
\
G. Dreier: I think you summarized quite well but what I will sad a
little reference for them. You gave your participant handbook and it\'s
on our website and that\'s\... So just hit that. Copyright material, but
you said.\
\
J. Romero: The glossary is in there, if that\'s helpful. It\'s been a
real pleasure from this end and we look forward to receiving your faxes
and meeting with you again bright and early tomorrow morning, at least
in Alaska. Thank you for tuning in and we will be here a couple of
minutes if there\'s any other questions or comments.\
\
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