The Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Office of Water (OW) has undertaken several steps to enhance its workforce development processes. One recent effort has been the development of a program called Water Careers, which has provided a range of developmental opportunities (e.g., training, mentoring, rotations) to about 100 OW personnel. OW recognizes that the current Water Careers program only begins to address the development needs of their workforce. Given the limited funds available for workforce development, however, any expansion must be undertaken very judiciously. HumRRO helped OW create a strategic training framework that includes alignment of development activities with strategic goals, creation of individual development plans, organizational needs assessment, and training evaluation.

HumRRO developed a comprehensive Strategic Training Planning Process that addressed OW workforce development objectives, as follows:

• Provide OW with a standardized process for identifying, prioritizing, and addressing workforce development needs.
• Provide a mechanism for increasing input on development needs from all parts of the organization.
• Enable OW to better anticipate workforce development needs and have those needs drive future budget requests.
• Ensure that workforce development activities are enhancing OW's capacity to meet mission objectives.
• Identify common development needs across the organization in order to achieve more cost effective solutions.
• Engage all of OW in a constructive exchange of ideas regarding effective workforce development solutions.

HumRRO also worked with OW to develop a training evaluation scorecard strategy that included four phases. The first phase was to develop the scorecard. This phase included carefully selecting the measures to be included, developing the reporting format, and setting the targets of success. The second phase of the strategy was to develop the data collection instruments. These included an instrument for Level 1 and 2 data collection and instruments for Levels 3 and 4 data collection. Phase 3 included steps to implement the scorecard. Phase 4 addressed the need to manage the scorecard process.

After developing the planning process, HumRRO created a tool to help make a prototype of that process. The purpose of this tool is to assist in the development of a competency model for a target role and identify developmental opportunities that will help individuals develop those competencies. The end product can be used by both employees and supervisors to identify developmental needs and sources to address those needs.

The tools and training evaluation data collection strategy can be used by OW to identify the level of evaluation needed for different programs (keyed to the five levels of the Phillips ROI™ model) and guide the collection, analysis and interpretation of training evaluation data.

Finally, HumRRO conducted a workshop with OW training staff to ensure they understand of the processes and procedures required to implement the training planning and evaluation strategy, and provided a communications strategy and plan for the rollout and implementation of OW's Training Strategy process.