Strategic Workforce Planning at Boeing

Dianna Peterson and Tina Krieger

based on interview by Richard L. Smith and Amy Sund, Ford Motor Company

THE BOEING COMPANY has long been seen as a leader in workforce planning. In fact, the organization’s approach to Strategic Workforce Planning has led Boeing to be named an American Productivity and Quality Center’s (APQC) “Best Practice” company. Subsequently, Boeing Strategic Workforce Planning leaders receive many external requests for consulting in this field. The following interview, conducted with Boeing’s Dianna Peterson (senior director, Strategic Workforce Planning) and Tina Krieger (senior workforce planning strategist) gives the reader some insight into Boeing’s journey. We discuss their successes, their challenges, and some lessons learned along the way. First, we’ll review their approach to workforce planning.

First things first: One classic definition of workforce planning is that it is a process for making sure the organization has the right number of people, in the right jobs, with the right skills at the right time to accomplish current and future business plans. How does Boeing define workforce planning?

A classic definition has been created by Boeing, which is to ensure we have the right mix of skills and talent to successfully execute our current and future business strategies. We’ve developed a workforce planning approach designed to maximize Boeing’s ability to effectively meet current and future business objectives. This approach is an intentional framework to aid in business decisions by generating insights and deeper understandings of workforce implications to business plans. The outcome of utilizing this workforce planning approach is a long-range people plan (LRPP).

Our definition is based upon the systematic approach that is available for use across the company, which leads to the identification of gaps as well as recommended solutions to mitigate these gaps. These recommended solutions become your people strategies. Our approach, and associated tools, creates an environment that encourages the right dialogue as well as provides robust, in-depth analysis.

Traditionally, the workforce planning process works like a gap analysis: Estimates of the organization’s future demand for talent are compared to the projected internal supply of talent to identify surpluses and shortages. Is this a key element of your process? If so, can you give us an idea of how Boeing’s workforce planning process does gap analysis?

While gap analysis is a big part of our process, our approach focuses on having the right conversation with business leaders. In fact, we have developed questions designed to help leaders critically think about their workforce; questions such as which skills make or break your business strategy? What is the culture of your workforce? Where does your skill pipeline reside?

As many are aware, we have internally developed a number of tools to support our analysis efforts. For instance, our HR dashboard provides an excellent view of the internal complexion of Boeing’s skills, which is a key to understanding our internal skill availability. Additionally, we have developed a skills planning system that allows managers the ability to plan their skill requirements five years into the future. In addition to understanding our internal supply/demand, we also broaden our view to include the external supply/demand for these same skills.

We have also developed a future workforce modeling tool; we use this tool to supplement our business-based workforce projections by modeling potential effects on our workforce. In this tool, we consider factors such as internal skills management policies and practices, external economic conditions, along with hiring and attrition rates. This enables us to develop a more robust view of potential workforce trends and be better prepared to mitigate potential workforce-related risks.

Boeing’s workforce planning process has a focus on the organization’s “talent philosophy.” What is the company’s talent philosophy and what is its role in the workforce planning process?

The talent philosophy element of our framework is designed to help leaders recognize and understand their organization’s culture. For this element, it is necessary to identify critical/strategic skills that are imperative to ensuring the success of your business strategy. There should also be dialogue relative to the leader’s philosophy around talent. For instance, at Boeing, the company embraces lifelong learning, which is part of our company’s management model and one of our talent philosophies. As you have discussions with leaders, you might discover that the culture within the organization needs to be addressed as part of the people plan.

Workforce planning can be done with greater or lesser degrees of central control. For example, it is possible to centrally define and control the workforce planning process. Alternatively, a central team can create tools, processes, and techniques and assist the units as they do their own workforce planning. In the latter case, the central role is training and facilitation rather than managing and control. How would you describe Boeing’s approach?

We try to take an enterprise approach to SWP, in which our staffing needs are informed by our business and finance plans. We have created several tools, including but not limited to a web-based guidebook, training modules, and virtual communities of practice, specifically developed to serve Boeing organizations in their workforce planning efforts. These tools have been designed to be utilized by leaders company-wide; however, many leaders and HR generalists continue to feel more comfortable involving us to facilitate their Strategic Workforce Planning discussions.

Our approach is very scalable and easily adapted for any organizational size. As such, SWP occurs at various levels of the organization. For instance, part of our infrastructure includes functional skill teams that focus their workforce planning efforts on specific skills, which leads to identifying gaps in specific talent domains. Skill leaders develop networks that provide them the ability to leverage skills across units.

Workforce planning is integral to the business planning process. To make that integration work, partnerships are critical. Can you tell us about the importance of establishing partnerships with key stakeholders (like business development, finance, etc.), and how you have done that?

In developing our process we quickly recognized the value of engaging internal business partners. Consequently, we have formed many unique and diverse partnerships. We work closely with finance and strategy to better understand our five-year business plan and its implications on our future workforce requirements. We also collaborate with our international organization to identify global talent needs. We are currently working with our modeling and simulation group. This group is typically involved in product development; however, they approached us about the potential use of a workforce modeling tool designed uniquely for our SWP use. We have also recognized a great opportunity to integrate workforce planning and risk management. The risk management organization provides us with visibility of all identified human capital risks as a result of their internal auditing processes. These internal company partnerships (see Figure 1) have contributed to the maturity of our workforce planning approach, resulting in a very holistic SWP effort.

Most companies have a long-range finance plan, and a long-range business plan, but often there is no direct link to a long-range plan for people. Can you explain how Boeing links its long-range people plan directly to its finance and business plans, and why that is important?

It was recognized within Boeing that both a long-range business plan/long-range financial plan and the need to enhance our long-range people plan exists. We seek to encourage that workforce planning discussions occur concurrent with business and finance planning conversations. Clearly, the outcome of strategic workforce planning is a solid workforce plan (or long-range people plan) based on the organization’s strategic business plan, budgetary resources, and skill requirements. We recommend that our approach be used and leveraged to maximize the organization’s ability to meet current and future business objectives. Dynamic analysis of the internal and external workforce provides the opportunity to identify potential challenges/opportunities, make decisions based on information, and drive action that will enhance organizational performance.

FIGURE 1. STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS.

Boeing is a large global company. Tell us a bit about Boeing’s perspective on workforce planning as a global enterprise. Is workforce planning at Boeing global? If so, how do you balance the challenge of aligning the planning process globally with allowing regions and units autonomy to customize their approach?

The foundation for our approach has been to develop and deliver tools, training, and consultation across the enterprise. Our SWP approach provides a framework designed to promote the right conversation and support business decisions by generating a deeper understanding of workforce implications to business plans. The framework serves as a systematic approach that will drive people strategies. The aim of this proactive approach is to encourage effective dialogue with leaders, develop a model to provide visibility of future workforce data, perform data analysis, and make recommendations for improvement designed to bring value directly back to the enterprise. However, this approach is not mandatory for use across the company. Consequently, we have deployed more of a grassroots effort that continues to grow and is employed by an increasing number of organizations.

Enough about how you do it, let’s talk about how well you do it. Boeing has received a fair amount of internal and external recognition for its approach to workforce planning. Can you tell us how you’re being recognized for your work?

Actually, recognition initially came from outside the company. Although our approach to workforce planning has been designed with a “keep it simple” focus, it does include a certain amount of cultural change. Consequently, some within the company have struggled to embrace our approach and have some level of difficulty realizing the value these products and services bring to the company. Thankfully, more and more organizations are committed to using our approach and recognize its value.

Our first recognition of any significance occurred in 2009. The American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) solicited our participation in one of their benchmarking studies. As part of APQC’s benchmarking, we were one of fourteen companies asked to go through their rigorous interview process. Ultimately, we were identified as one of six companies named as a “Best Practice” company in the emerging field of Strategic Workforce Planning. It’s worthy to note that some of our most meaningful recognition came from conversations with the external companies who were involved in this study. Several of the participating company members commented, “You’ve kept it so simple; I can get my head and hands around it.” Two or three companies asked if we planned to patent our materials because they wanted to buy them. We took their advice and have since licensed our web-based guidebook and curriculum to two medical companies.

From an external perspective, we are sought to deliver our course material, provide presentations at various conferences and were recently asked to colead The Conference Board’s newly formed Strategic Workforce Planning Council. Our model has been recognized by PLS, a consulting firm that offers courses in various topics. PLS requested we teach our course to an external group of people, including some Boeing personnel. The course we delivered through PLS was also accredited by SHRM. We continue to have opportunities to deliver our course to executives and leaders within, and outside, of Boeing. Overall it has been accepted as a tool to help build HR capabilities in the discipline of Strategic Workforce Planning.

Although external recognition has been more common, there has been increased appreciation for our approach throughout the company. For example, we once presented data related to Quality of Hire of new employees coming from specific universities. After the presentation, one executive said, “I can’t believe an HR organization did this work.” This leader’s comment was an encouraging signal to us that we were simultaneously maturing and delivering meaningful insights to our company leaders.

As a company with six years doing workforce planning and a recognized leader in this area, is there anything you have learned over the years that you would have paid dearly to know when you were just getting started?

One of our greatest learnings was we should not have expected the HR community to immediately understand the value and utility of our SWP approach. Recently, a consultant shared that 50 percent of the organization will never get it, 25 percent might get it, and 25 percent may not. Our reality is that there is great truth to this statement, and, as part of our experience, we have learned that the use of common language across the organization is imperative. It is crucial that we define and use the same terms if the whole organization is going to understand what we are doing in this area of expertise.

Having a sponsor or champion at the right level was another key learning. For us, support for SWP was on and off at times, but once we gained the support of one or two key leaders in the HR leadership team, things progressed in a positive fashion.

One of the challenges of workforce planning is managing the complexity of the organization’s need for talent. Some companies have created a workforce planning process that collapses of its own weight—too many talent groups, too much detail. To what extent do you focus or limit your approach? For example, do you concentrate on a limited number of critical talent groups? Are there any activities that are aligned with or support workforce planning?

Based upon extensive internal and external research, we recognized this issue early in the process. In fact, we actually began our initiative on the heels of a failed attempt at workforce planning within one of our internal organizations. The previous approach was laden with various templates that created a very cumbersome and time-intensive process; it became too burdensome to sustain itself.

As we began developing our approach, we were very intent to focus the conversation on critical/strategic skills as part of the talent philosophy element of our framework. Once the business strategy and talent philosophy are understood, it is necessary to understand the internal/external supply and demand. This leads to obtaining the appropriate demographic data to gain a clear vision of the complexion and composition of your workforce. An analysis should be conducted of the current workforce through applicable demographics to portray current skill mix by various elements. While conducting this analysis, it is recommended that attention is focused on those critical/strategic skill areas in an attempt to uncover any gaps. Once you have analyzed the data, you can begin to justify recommended solutions and build a case for change. These solutions become key elements of your long-range people plan.

How did you design this approach to address the flaws of the first failed attempt? Many companies struggle to get started with workforce planning or are unable to sustain their initial attempts once they do. I am sure there are many ways to begin, but how did Boeing do it, and what can companies that are struggling learn from your first steps?

The most important first step is to create a burning platform with data. Obviously, a fact-based workforce strategy must be based upon data. Consequently, we began to look at our entire pipeline, from those who were first entering the workforce through the value stream to our most experienced employees. One approach was to align our work with the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) pipeline. Based upon our research, we knew that students were not only enrolling in STEM majors in fewer numbers, but many of them were switching to other fields of study before graduating college.

One of our Associate Technical Fellows of Learning Sciences, Dr. Mike Richey, created a STEM pipeline chart (see Figure 2), which was foundational as we sought to provide leaders with valuable insights. Dr. Richey indicated we posit that identifying and understanding the challenges of preparing the STEM workforce and the potential impacts of initiatives aimed at increasing the number and quality of STEM graduates can be improved upon by considering education as a complex, adaptive system (Lemke & Sabelli, 2008; Stephens & Richey, 2011). In particular, by applying concepts used to examine and model complex systems dynamics to questions of education practice and policy (e.g., emergent phenomena, feedback loops within the system and with its environment, etc.), researchers can gain critical insights on fundamental relationships within the system and, most importantly, observe the ways that the system and its components can adapt over time.

FIGURE 2. WORKFORCE PIPELINE AND STEM SYSTEM SUPPLY-DEMAND CYCLE.

Consequently, this chart provided further evidence of the state of workforce throughout the entire educational pipeline and beyond. Clearly, this chart conveyed facts that became our burning platform. Boeing leaders began using it in our executive center, including our executive courses and in speeches advocating for educational reforms to bolster innovation and competitiveness.

Certainly, our journey has been a grassroots effort from its inception; we began bottom-up rather than top-down. We keep incrementally moving forward with people who want to collaborate with us. We take every opportunity to teach, which leads to greater understanding of our approach. Several people commented, “This makes so much sense; I don’t know why we haven’t been doing this all along.” People relate to the approach because it’s simple and is not cumbersome. It’s about a dialogue, rather than completing a lot of forms and calculating algorithms. One of our services is to provide consultation for any group that desires to utilize our approach; this has served to be a very valuable aid for many organizations.

Boeing recently delivered the first plane of its new Dreamliner (787) series. It’s considered a game changer, a revolutionary carbon-fiber design that will reduce fuel consumption by 20 percent while delivering superior levels of passenger comfort. On the downside, it experienced significant delays and cost overruns. The delivery of such a complex and innovative product must have posed considerable workforce planning challenges. Without being too revealing, what important workforce planning lessons did you learn from the launch of the 787?

Our HR leader in the commercial airplane business shared with us the following insights relative to the 787 program. This leader shared that it is critical to remember that everything on the program was game changing from the business model to the engineering to the production system. The key takeaway is to ensure that purposeful workforce planning is done early in the program development and strategic planning cycle. Workforce planning should be included as part of the initial program planning gates.

So, let’s talk future. What is next for workforce planning at Boeing and as a field?

There is a lot of room to demonstrate, with evidence, how Strategic Workforce Planning can bring value to any organization. There is also room to use our capabilities to help build a better supply chain. Consequently, our latest strategic focus area is to collaborate with our internal supplier management colleagues to explore these possibilities. It was very rewarding when one of these leaders referred to us as “a gift” after learning more about our approach. Our involvement in the supply chain helps ensure that we will have the people and products we will need in the future, at all stages of our production.

Through our SWP efforts, the use of data within HR is maturing quickly. As a result, we have recognized a real opportunity to transform from “data informed” talent decisions to “data driven” talent decisions. Consequently, work is under way across the company to begin influencing the culture relative to the importance of this type of transformation. Use of data to drive talent decisions provides further evidence of how SWP brings strategic value back to the enterprise.

Dianna L. Peterson is senior director of Strategic Workforce Planning for The Boeing Company. As strategy leader, she is responsible for determining and understanding how near- and long-term workforce requirements, skills, and knowledge align with Boeing’s business objectives. Peterson also provides leadership and operational focus for Boeing’s University Relations portfolio, consisting of more than 150 U.S. and international institutions of higher learning.

A 34-year Boeing Human Resources veteran, Peterson has served in a variety of leadership positions supporting many business units, including Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Boeing Capital Corporation, Shared Services Group, and Boeing’s Chicago Corporate Office.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in human resource management and has participated in the Leadership Program at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Peterson is a member of The Attrition and Retention Consortium and serves on its executive committee and currently is co-chair of The Conference Board’s Strategic Workforce Planning Council.

Tina Krieger has been with The Boeing Company for more than 30 years. She began her career with the Space Systems Division as a member of the Logistics staff and has served in the logistics, human resources and engineering organizations.

Currently, Tina is a member of Boeing’s Strategic Workforce Planning organization, which helps the company ensure it has access to a skilled, diverse, and sustainable workforce. In this capacity, she is responsible and accountable for the development, deployment, and project management of Boeing’s Strategic Workforce Planning framework and approach. Tina also serves as a workforce planning consultant to functions and business units within Boeing.

Krieger holds a bachelor’s degree in Organizational Leadership from Biola University. She volunteers in several areas, and currently serves as Vice President of the Board of Directors for the Breast Cancer Care & Research Fund, based in Los Angeles. Tina resides in Orange County, CA, and has two daughters and two grandsons.