Workforce development plans are essential tools for building sustainable public health capacity, yet many fall short of their potential impact. While health departments dutifully create these plans to meet accreditation requirements, too often they gather dust on shelves, disconnected from the daily realities of frontline staff.
But there is a better way: By giving every staff member a voice in shaping their department's future, workforce development becomes a shared journey rather than a top-down mandate.
The Traditional Approach: Why It Falls Short
Most workforce development plans follow a predictable pattern:
- Leadership teams meet behind closed doors to discuss staffing needs
- Consultants conduct assessments and staff surveys, then analyze the data
- Management reviews findings, develops workforce goals, and approves strategies
- Plans are finalized and distributed to staff for implementation
This approach, while efficient, often misses critical insights from those doing the daily work of public health – frontline staff who interact with communities, administrative personnel who keep operations running, and mid-level managers who bridge strategic vision with practical reality.
The result? Plans may recommend 'improving communication' without understanding why staff feel disconnected, or 'increasing training opportunities' without knowing what skills staff actually want to develop. These generic solutions often miss the mark because they're based on assumptions rather than real employee experiences.
A Better Way: The Employee Panel Approach
When staff voices are excluded from the process, the resulting plans may be technically sound but practically limited. Ascendient has long used techniques such as focus groups and targeted listening sessions to elicit widespread staff input, but we recently worked with a pioneering health department that wanted even more broad-based participation.
What we co-created with this client was an employee panel representing all organizational levels and departments. Far more than a token effort, this panel met monthly during the 4-month workforce development planning process to engage in substantive discussions on topics that emerged from staff surveys and focus groups, including:
- Current workforce challenges and opportunities
- Skills gaps and training needs
- Career advancement barriers
- Organizational culture and communication
- Innovative approaches to resource constraints
By reviewing data and the resulting analysis, panel members actively shaped the plan's strategic priorities and implementation strategies. This inclusive process yielded insights that traditional approaches could have missed, from the need for cross-departmental knowledge sharing to specific competency gaps in community engagement.
Beyond Inclusion: Building Organizational Capacity
The employee panel model delivers benefits that extend far beyond the planning document itself:
- Enhanced Buy-In: When staff help create strategies, they're invested in making them succeed. Implementation becomes a shared responsibility rather than just another mandate from above.
- Skill Development: Panel participation allows emerging professionals to hone leadership skills such as facilitation, strategic thinking, and collaborative problem-solving.
- Improved Communication: Regular panel meetings create new channels for vertical and horizontal communication. Ideas flow more freely across departments and hierarchical levels.
- Cultural Transformation: The process itself models the collaborative, transparent culture that effective workforce development requires. Organizations may find that panel discussions spark broader conversations about growth mindset and continuous improvement.
Addressing Common Concerns
Some leaders may worry that a more inclusive planning process will take too long or produce unwieldy documents. But experience shows the opposite: engaged staff provide practical insights that streamline implementation. While initial planning may require more calendar time, the investment pays dividends through smoother execution and better outcomes.
Another possible fear is that opening discussions to all staff levels will surface complaints without solutions. In practice, however, employees closest to the work often have the most innovative ideas for improvement. The key is structuring discussions to channel feedback constructively.
Real-World Results
In our recent engagement with a rural health department, the employee panel approach transformed what could have been a routine planning exercise into a catalyst for organizational change. Staff reported feeling more valued and heard, while leadership gained insights that would have otherwise remained hidden. The resulting plan became a roadmap that staff at all levels were eager to implement.
Conclusion: The Future of Workforce Planning
With public health facing unprecedented challenges, workforce development becomes increasingly critical. Plans created in isolation from the lived reality of frontline staff will fail to meet these challenges.
The employee panel model isn’t just about better workforce plans – it’s about building the collaborative culture that makes any plan successful. Start with your next workforce development cycle to create strategies that are both aspirational and achievable. The investment in inclusive planning will pay dividends in implementation success and staff satisfaction.
