Title 2 Agency on Capitol Hill
HR Operations and Organizational Solutions
The Client’s Need
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Our human capital management support to this Capital Hill client’s needs started in FY 2016 providing advisory support to the Human Resources office. The Human Resources office needed to improve client service delivery and wanted AG’s support to supplement their existing Federal team providing staffing, workforce relations, policy and payroll support.
After learning their unique culture and becoming a consistent and trusted advisor throughout many years AvantGarde was contracted to support an agency-wide Strategic Planning and Human Capital Management planning effort across the organization.
The agency’s top executives identified a workforce management challenge to align human capital strategies to align functional units, workforce, and key performance measures to better achieve the agency’s strategic vision. Specific, measurable, actionable and time-bound goals and objectives were needed to support the talent management modernization efforts that the agency had initiated.
Our Approach
Human Capital Operations Support
AG provided a broad range of staff augmentation support for the Human Resources Office to help build an infrastructure, provide senior technical expertise to support critical processes, and handle talent management needs.
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Process Development: To establish a sound HR infrastructure, AG experts created many process materials including business process maps, communication materials, and employee and supervisor toolkits and training. Our successful approach included understanding what procedures were currently in place and the impetus for making changes, drafting the documents and identifying the appropriate related materials that would be most useful, and delivering complete packages for approval.
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Deliver Senior Technical Expertise: To supplement the current Federal team, AG engaged highly experienced technical experts who could both provide advisory support to guide HR’s customers and senior HR leaders and act as teachers to junior Federal staff members. Their collective experience in staffing and assessment, performance management, classification and position management and complex payroll transactions were invaluable to shore up competency gaps and deliver high quality service.
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Talent Management Support: To meet mission-critical high-volume hiring demands, AG customized our support to meet the Agency’s needs holistically. We redesigned hiring processes to remove bottlenecks and barriers that impeded efficiency and created marketing strategies and outreach partnerships to increase applicant pools. We also deployed experienced dedicated HR Staffing Specialists to manage the customized vacancy announcement process and meet workload demands.
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Strategic Planning and Human Capital Management Planning
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AG’s understanding of the client through many years of providing Human Capital support facilitated meeting the client’s need to revamp their strategic human capital plan. AG’s expert in Organizational Development, I/O Psychology, and Human Capital Management supported the Federal team to identify new approaches, refine existing practices, and develop a customized Strategic Human Capital Plan that integrated goals for multiple organizational units.
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Benchmarking Research: Research activities were incorporated into the development of the human capital plan to guide leadership’s identification of the agency’s top priorities. Environmental scans provided insight into external factors that could have a direct impact on the agency such as economic, social, and technological forces.
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Focus Group Facilitation: To address the need for a tailored approach, AG facilitated focus groups with employees to drive the development of goals and objectives that were important to the core of the agency. Through breakout sessions, data was collected to further craft goals and actionable objectives that would create buy-in throughout the agency. All individual suggestions were considered in the development of the final agency strategic goals.
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Inter-office Collaboration: AG Consultants worked closely with all offices affected by the Strategic Human Capital Plan in the development of key performance indicators, metrics and milestones included in the implementation of the Strategic Human Capital Plan. This roadmap further assists with cross-organizational performance and serve as an accountability measure throughout the implementation phase.
The Result
Based on AG’s on-the-ground talent, HR operations service delivery greatly improved. Streamlined and repeatable HR processes were developed across the organization, vacancy backlogs were reduced, and transactions were processed timely and accurately. The HR Office is earning respect for its technical acumen and responsiveness. The AG team has become such a valued partner that a new 5-year contract was issued to continue and expand our relationship!
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As this agency’s implementation of their strategic human capital goals remain ongoing, AG is working closely with the client to move into the implementation phase of the process by continuing to provide advisory consultation; assessing ongoing progress towards achieving strategic plan goals and recommending strategies for continued success. With a five-year lifecycle to allow for the full range of activities and metrics to be completed and assessed, a strong foundation has been set for future collaboration within the agency as a result of the facilitated strategic planning focus groups and companion efforts of the Strategic Human Capital Plan.