Strategic human capital planning information systems and performance: The efficacy of manpower position requirements forecasting in the public sector

The federal government has emphasized performance indicators and standards of success since 1993. Several of these standards relate to workforce goals: minimizing the gap between workforce plan and execution, redirecting human resources to front-line operations, minimizing turnover, minimizing attrition, maximizing retention of mission-critical occupations, meeting recruitment targets, and flattening hierarchy. This study assessed whether the U.S. Air Force (USAF)'s automated, integrated, centralized manpower position planning system more effectively met these legislative mandates for workforce planning than the non-automated, decentralized approach used by the U.S. Department of Treasury. The hypothesis, that strategic workforce objectives defined by 5-year human capital plans and outcomes were more likely to be realized with the automated system, was tested by examining data that indicated the differences between workforce plans and outcomes, as well as statistics including turnover, attrition, retention, ratios of mission-critical occupations to total workforce (Treasury) and forces to infrastructure (USAF), supervisory hierarchy, and recruitment for fiscal years 2001 through 2005. Secondary source data in workforce plans from USAF and Treasury were also qualitatively analyzed. Results showed that the performance outcomes from USAF and Treasury were not significantly different (defined as p < .05 in unmatched pairs t tests). However, that does not necessarily mean that there is no benefit to having a centralized position forecasting information system. Specifically, both organizations were achieving the strategic workforce planning objectives of the first seven of the eight goals. Thus, with or without the information system, it appears that a federal organization can achieve these goals. A substantive finding occurred during the examination of the eighth goal, to conduct workforce planning and analysis, which showed that Treasury self-reported the need for an improved human capital management system and noted its limited ability to conduct workforce planning. Essentially, this is identification of the need for the moderating variable of this study, the position requirements forecasting information system as used by the USAF. Future research of value to this area could compare a broader set of indicators and their interactions since the measurements of this study were isolated to human capital planning and may not reflect what was occurring enterprise-wide