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SECTION 1
Historical Perspective
Dan L. Ward
THIS FIRST SECTION OFFERS insight into earlier practices in Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP). In 1969, James W. Walker authored “Forecasting Manpower Needs” in the Harvard Business Review, which created quite a stir when senior executives were introduced to the concept. In the 1970s, he founded the Human Resource Planning Society, now known as HR People & Strategy (HRPS). We asked Jim to write the first chapter of this book because no one is more qualified to talk about how this field gained its prominence over the past forty years. His chapter, “The Origins of Workforce Planning,” allows the reader a chance to sit beside Jim as he describes the professionalization of our field.
Borrowing the title from an old George Gershwin song, “How Long Has This Been Going On?” is my own sometimes lighthearted but sincerely heartfelt look at the ascent of SWP. Our tools and techniques have evolved. We continually refine our terminology, but the fact remains that humans have always been concerned with the fundamental concepts of SWP, even if our tools and terminology have become sophisticated only in more recent years. We can claim this is a brand-new field and define it carefully to support that claim, or we can recognize clues that it may actually date back to recognized community construction projects that began 13,000 years in the past. One can accept or reject the historical time line offered in this chapter, but I am personally proud to be practicing in a career field that can simultaneously be portrayed as both one of the world’s oldest and youngest career specialties.
Alex G. Manganaris’s “The Evolution of Strategic Workforce Planning Within Government Agencies” offers another opportunity to sit alongside someone who was there during some of the most significant SWP efforts of past decades. SWP seems to flow in and out of favor in a cyclical fashion within private industry, but it has been steadily applied within many government agencies.
Dan L. Ward is the associate department head for the MITRE team providing support to the U.S. government on workforce strategy and human capital topics. In this role, he leads advisory support for workforce planning, organization design, people strategy, and change management activities. Dan has provided advice and counsel to a variety of U.S. government agencies.
Ward earned his bachelor’s degree in social science and his master’s in workforce economics from the University of North Texas. Prior to joining MITRE in 2006, he held senior level roles in HR, knowledge management, and strategic planning at GTE, Texaco, and EDS. One-third of the Fortune 100 companies have sought his counsel on advanced people strategies.
He started his career as a management scientist with Western Electric, developing workforce simulation studies. His cost-benefit studies on alternate staffing strategies have been cited in Fortune, BusinessWeek, the Wall Street Journal, and the Work in America Institute, among others. He is an award-winning photographer and has published three photography books, the latest being Tribute, a photo-haiku study of Civil War memorials.
Bill Maki was an equal partner with Dan and Rob at the beginning of this book project. He was one of the earliest members of the Human Resource Planning Society and a past president of the group. With a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Washington and a master’s in statistics and operations research from Oregon State University, Bill was one of the pacesetters for workforce forecasting and modeling. He retired after thirty-nine years with Weyerhaeuser and continues to write and speak on workforce planning related topics. Bill helped design the layout of this book and suggested some of the contributors. Due to a health problem, he relinquished his editing role on the book but continued to provide advice, counsel, and moral support to Dan and Rob.
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The Origins of
Workforce Planning
James W. Walker
AS EARLY AS 1890, in Principles of Economics, economist Alfred Marshall was calling for the analysis and planning for labor needs in organizations. As a founder of neoclassic economics, he brought supply and demand, marginal utility, and costs of production into a coherent whole.
However, while I was conducting research as a graduate student in the 1960s, I found few advances in research or practice in what was then called manpower planning over the decades that followed the publication of Marshall’s book. Military organizations, defense contractors, and oil companies managed their high talent staffing rigorously, but most business organizations focused on their talent requirements in a limited way (e.g., management replacement planning, short-term recruitment needs forecasting, productivity analysis driving staffing requirements). Few academicians were interested.
I was drawn to the subject through my consulting-research relationship with American Oil Company (Amoco) from 1966 to 1969. I worked with the company’s organization and manpower development division on a series of projects. What fascinated me most was the company’s desire to implement more effective, more creative manpower planning and development processes.
EARLY STATE OF THE ART
While an assistant professor at Indiana University, I focused on manpower planning. I wrote a series of articles and papers, which in turn opened new doors to corporations for research. In 1969, I authored an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled “Forecasting Manpower Needs,” in which I described steps that researchers had taken toward improved models for manpower forecasting and planning, and made a call for advances. I wrote, “Although many managers are trying to do something about manpower planning, few of them are talking about it.”
The article aimed to increase awareness of research and practices at the time, when—of course—forecasts had to be created on mainframe computers. Models typically relied upon historical data, but some experimented with simulations where more realistic parameters could be used. Also, models focused on particular organizational units or functions where greater specificity was possible. Examples were described that:
Created projections of manpower needs for a company for each of ten years in the future (a manufacturing company)
Focused on particular questions such as recruiting needs (State Farm Insurance, Schaefer Brewing)
Projected talent requirements taking into account productivity patterns (Professor Eric Vetter)
At American Oil and many other companies at the time, manpower plans were limited to staffing levels and costs, projected in three-year rolling plans, with adjustments each year. Longer-term business plans focused on financials and capital requirements.
On the supply side, I wrote that “computers have come of age.” The Air Force, Army, and Navy all were using “automated personnel data systems” for planning, assignments, and development. These were large systems tracking demographics, assignments, training, and other variables, as well as analysis of retention, progression, and cost-effectiveness of alternative staffing patterns. Because of the large scale and unique characteristics, these models did not transfer easily to the private sector. Aerospace companies were among those that designed systems along the same principles. AT&T developed its famed Interactive Flow Simulator (IFS), which permitted analysis of movement and an ability to guide future planning for its million-plus employee base. In many companies, modeling was spurred by affirmative action planning needs.
In the article, I also discussed replacement and succession plans—essentially plans for the top talent segment of an organization. I called for more emphasis on succession planning in order to facilitate development planning for individuals rather than merely naming replacements for specific managerial positions. An example given was a leadership program at Xerox covering 1,200 employees with a focus on a top talent subset of fifty with executive potential.
EARLY RESEARCH AND PRACTICES
In 1967, Eric Vetter, professor at Tulane University, published Manpower Planning for High Talent Personnel, the first book-length discussion of manpower planning techniques for business organizations. He reported the results of his doctoral dissertation research, surveying practices in a variety of companies, many of them aerospace and engineering-focused organizations. Vetter identified four steps in a process of manpower planning: (1) data collection and analysis resulting in manpower inventories and forecasts, (2) determination of goals and problem solutions, (3) implementation of plans and programs, and (4) program control and evaluation.
Once I moved to San Diego in 1969, I learned more about industry practices as a guest at meetings of the Southern California Aerospace Manpower Council, an informal consortium of the major organizations including McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed, North American Rockwell, TRW Systems Group, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Some of those in the council represented the personnel function; others were from program planning functions with workforce planning responsibilities. For example, Rockwell’s B-1 bomber program required complex manpower plans with different skills moving onto and off the program
In 1972, Elmer H. Burack and I edited a book, Manpower Planning and Programming, that contained thirty-two reprinted articles and original papers on manpower forecasting and models, information systems, and programming, with authors from GE, Standard Oil Indiana, North American Rockwell, TRW, Inland Steel, McKinsey, and such universities as Harvard, MIT, the University of Minnesota, and schools in the United Kingdom.
A year before the book appeared, I had joined Towers Perrin as practice leader of the firm’s manpower planning and development practice. We conducted surveys on manpower planning practices and worked to advance the state of the art and practice. Some of the more interesting projects included development of:
Early processes for defining and addressing the human resources implications of business unit plans, including staffing gaps and changes required for business success.
A quantitative process for optimizing officer staffing in a major bank, within retail, corporate, international, and other divisions. It featured a sophisticated process of matching time devoted to particular activities and related results achieved, yielding guidelines for deploying officer talent to achieve business outcomes.
An occupational taxonomy in a forest products company to provide a relevant framework for manpower forecasting and planning and for facilitating deployment of talent among jobs within families with similar characteristics. This is a precursor to today’s workforce segmentation initiatives.
A process in a pharmaceutical company requiring unit-by-unit planning of staffing levels based on managers’ estimates of time devoted by staff and its relation to business outcomes (past and desired future).
Rationalization of staffing in each and every division of a major international development bank, entailing detailed self-reporting of time allocation to
functional tasks and unit-level analysis justification of proposed future staffing based on the findings related to unit mission/objectives.
Not all of these approaches evolved into practices common in business organizations, but they addressed the organizations’ needs and often introduced new approaches to the challenges posed.
ORIGINS OF THE HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING SOCIETY
By 1976, a few colleagues and I thought it would be fruitful to formalize a network of professionals in academia, business, and government to share experiences and insights on the subject and, more specifically, to host an annual conference, conduct workshops, and publish a journal. These colleagues were from such companies as Weyerhaeuser, Bankers Trust, International Paper, J.C. Penney, Mobil Oil, General Motors, Lockheed, Gulf Oil, and AT&T; academicians who had contributed to the subject area; and leaders of the Manpower Analysis and Planning Society (MAPS) in Washington, D.C., a group of federal agency representatives doing manpower planning. Following a charter conference in 1978 in Atlanta (attracting 225 attendees), the Human Resource Planning Society (HRPS) became a prominent “niche” organization appealing to the more “str...
