The authors develop a definition of and method for measuring civilian workforce readiness to inform Army policies and practices. They review existing literature and policy documents, conduct interviews with Army and U.S. Department of Defense stakeholders, develop a logic model for civilian workforce readiness, and identify potential data sources across U.S. government databases for the proposed readiness metrics.

Creating Readiness Metrics for the Army Civilian Workforce

A Way Ahead for Integrating Readiness into Civilian Workforce Planning

Irina A. Chindea, Susan M. Gates, Katherine C. Hastings, Jennifer Lamping Lewis, Emmi Yonekura, Samantha Cherney, Christine DeMartini, Molly Dunigan, Jonah Kushner, Barbara Bicksler

ResearchPublished Aug 21, 2023

The Army's civilian workforce plays a critical role in supporting the Army's mission. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and Army policies have focused on workforce planning, management issues, and, more specifically, the contributions of the civilian workforce to strategic readiness. This has increased interest in the concept of civilian workforce readiness and how it might be measured. In this context, the Army asked RAND Arroyo Center to develop a method for measuring the readiness of its civilian workforce. This method is grounded in the definition of Army civilian readiness that RAND researchers developed in this report. The proposed metrics for assessing readiness are meant to inform policies and practices related to sizing and management of the Army civilian workforce.

In conducting this research, the RAND team reviewed relevant literature and policy documents related to workforce readiness, conducted interviews with stakeholders across the Army and DoD, developed a logic model that both reflected the definition of civilian workforce readiness proposed by RAND researchers and supported the identification of promising readiness metrics, and reviewed U.S. government databases to identify potential sources of data that could be used in measuring civilian readiness.

Key Findings

  • Civilian readiness can be defined as the state of having the right number of people with the right set of skills, competencies, resources, and experiences in the right jobs at the right time to support an Army capability. This definition can be applied at the individual, functional organizational, and enterprise levels from both short-term and future-oriented perspectives.
  • A logic model can inform thinking about readiness definitions and the processes and structures that support readiness tracking. The logic model captures the relationship between policy, inputs and resources, activities, outputs, and outcomes that are related to the readiness of the Army civilian workforce.
  • A logic model also can be used to consider how the Army should measure civilian workforce readiness. A list of potential metrics was assessed using three criteria: (1) validity, or the extent to which the metric captures readiness itself, (2) reliability, or the extent to which the metric is computed with data that are objective and collected using an established process, and (3) feasibility, or the ease with which the requisite data can be collected.
  • The collection of metrics considers four aspects of readiness: (1) fill, or whether a position is filled, (2) fit, e.g., employee knowledge, skills, and abilities, (3) equipment, and (4) continuity, or institutional memory and experience at both the individual and the organizational or functional levels.

Recommendations

  • The Army should work to build a shared definition of civilian readiness through formal processes that could create buy-in across the Army.
  • The Army should update or create a new Army regulation in which key terminology is defined along with its context within the bigger strategic readiness picture, an authoritative system of record is designated, roles and responsibilities with respect to reporting and monitoring reports are established, and other business rules are defined.
  • The Army should refine its processes for specifying current and future civilian workforce needs. Organizational representatives and career field managers should ensure that the specification of current workforce needs is accurate and up-to-date and makes sense from individual, organizational, and functional perspectives.
  • The Army should establish a single source of information about Army civilian workforce requirements that can be linked to personnel data.
  • Readiness metrics must be grounded in position requirements and capture the gap between those position requirements and workforce supply.
  • The Army should identify a short list of data to be reported regularly to reflect workforce requirements. The Army should start small, with essential requirements that would be easy to report and useful for both organizational and functional managers. This review should be guided by a recognition that the quality of data reported is tied to accessibility and opportunities to use that data.

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Chindea, Irina A., Susan M. Gates, Katherine C. Hastings, Jennifer Lamping Lewis, Emmi Yonekura, Samantha Cherney, Christine DeMartini, Molly Dunigan, Jonah Kushner, and Barbara Bicksler, Creating Readiness Metrics for the Army Civilian Workforce: A Way Ahead for Integrating Readiness into Civilian Workforce Planning. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2023. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2225-1.html.
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The research described in this report was sponsored by by the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs and conducted by the Personnel, Training, and Health Program within the RAND Arroyo Center.

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