# Presentation: 026003

## Right Person, Right Place, Right Time

- Greg WitheeNOAA Assistant Administrator for Satellite & Information Service
- December 1, 2005

- What’s the Opportunity?

- Charles ChallstromNOAA Assistant Administrator for Oceans & Coasts

## What’s the Challenge?

- Need to ensure NOAA has the appropriate suite of knowledge, skills, and abilities to continue to meet its mission.
- Recruiting – Eddie Ribas
- Retention – Louisa Koch
- Training and Education – Percy Thomas
- Workforce Planning – Dave Kennedy

**Notes:**
These issues are not new.  If you go to the Program Review Team report from 2001, you’ll find that recommendations 57-68 were dedicated to developing and sustaining the NOAA workforce.
Challenges present difficulties and opportunities and planning to meet staffing, is no different. The Agency may have difficulty recruiting the people we need but will also have the opportunity to think, work, and organize in new ways. The Agency can use this opportunity for creative problem solving and innovation. The main point is to get the right people in the right jobs at the right time. 

## What’s the Opportunity– Recruiting

- NOAA is “employer of choice”, attracting and efficiently hiring an inter-disciplinary workforce
- Strengths
- Reach broader audience, especially Universities
- Build off existing programs
- More streamlined, efficient process that has a Subject Matter Expert (SME) involved in every step
- Better quality candidates
- More inter-disciplinary expertise in NOAA workforce
- Concerns
- Individual NOAA entities are pursuing independently
- Resource constraints
- Will it work for disciplines other than science, e.g., PPBES, IT

## What’s the Opportunity – Retention

- One NOAA /Goal-oriented employees
- Possible opportunities:
- Cross pollination (e.g., NRAP, PCO)
- Structured career progression
- Incentives for enhancing needed skill sets (e.g., PPBES)

## What’s the Opportunity – Retention

- Effectively manage turnover
- Possible opportunities:
- Use turnover to YOUR advantage
- Make it easier to return to NOAA
- Improve workplace quality
- Expand use of traditional retention tools (e.g., pay, bonus)
- Introduce new tools (e.g., electronic processes)

## Future: Corporate Intellectual Recapitalization process in place
Outcome
Minimal intellectual gap
Strengths
Quantify performance improvements
Enhance succession planning
Coherent corporate action plan
Build finances into programs
training becomes part of CORE PROCESS
Concerns
“Whole place falls apart, planes fall from the sky, and ships sink”

- Future: Corporate Intellectual Recapitalization process in place
- Outcome
- Minimal intellectual gap
- Strengths
- Quantify performance improvements
- Enhance succession planning
- Coherent corporate action plan
- Build finances into programs
- training becomes part of CORE PROCESS
- Concerns
- “Whole place falls apart, planes fall from the sky, and ships sink”

- What’s the Opportunity Training & Education

## What’s the Opportunity– Workforce Planning

- NOAA “Workforce Planning” policy & process implemented
- Gain
- Workforce matches NOAA’s needs
- Strengths:
- Strategic vision of NOAA’s workforce needs
- oneNOAA “Workforce Planning” approach
- Proactive, iterative process to identify skills, resources, future needs
- Builds on demonstrated successes
- Concerns
- Continuing investment
- Urgency/timing
- Commitment
- Workforce education

**Notes:**
Existing and needed skills
Internal / external resourcing
Changes in technology and demographics
Future education needs
Links to strategic plan
Mission evolution

## What’s the Opportunity– Summary

- NOAA is “employer of choice”, attracting and efficiently hiring an inter-disciplinary workforce
- One NOAA/Goal-oriented employees
- Effectively manage turnover
- Corporate Intellectual Recapitalization process in place
- NOAA “Workforce Planning” policy & process implemented