A well-prepared public health workforce is the foundation of a healthy community. The Public Health Foundation (PHF) is committed to providing the public health field with resources, tools, and services to train the workforce so that it is well-positioned to deliver the Essential Public Health Services and meet accreditation requirements. Well-designed workforce development activities function as a channel, navigating employees to opportunities through which they obtain essential knowledge and skills, and creating structures that support ongoing learning. Together these activities support the organization’s strategic objectives by ensuring that the workforce is capable, engaged, and sustained in its work.
Struggling with workforce development? Your organization is not alone. Effective workforce development requires thoughtfully progressing through several phases of assessment, alignment and execution.
Who Makes Up the Workforce?
- Gather and analyze data to understand the demographics and diversity of current health department employees, their years of experience, time to retirement, and the shape of your succession pipeline.
What Do Our Jobs Ask of Us?
- Define the organization’s strategic imperatives and goals
- Identify the core competencies that are important to an organization’s success, including competencies aligned with strategic objectives, those aligned with specific roles, and those that are universal or cross-cutting (i.e., apply to all employees).
What Are Our Capabilities?
- Assess the workforce's current capabilities and opportunities for growth in these areas using qualitative and quantitative data.
- Assess gaps between current capabilities and future needs.
How Will We Address Priorities?
- Analyze how to address skill, knowledge, and capacity gaps, and build competencies through diverse workforce development approaches.
- Outline and then write a workforce development plan to support ongoing staff development, recruitment, and retention.
- Understand driving and restraining forces
- Align the plan with accreditation requirements
- Identify where assistance will be needed
- List professional development activities to support implementation
How Will We Implement the Plan and Monitor Progress?
- Develop an action plan for implementing the workforce development plan.
- Implement the action plan and monitor progress over time through a performance management system or other measures.
- Periodically adjust the plan as needs evolve.
PHF has years of experience helping with each of the above phases and delivering the following on-site services:
To get started with a customized workforce development solution for your organization, contact Ron Bialek at (202)218-4420 or rbialek@phf.org, or submit your information online.