Determining Staffing Needs for Administrative, Professional, and Technical Workers in the U.S. Secret Service: Methods and Lessons Learned

Abstract

The report discusses the organizational context of the service, summarizes possible approaches with a rationale for the primary and secondary approaches that the researchers adopted, and discusses implementation considerations and lessons learned for future work. The findings in this report should be of interest to decisionmakers and workforce planners in federal agencies seeking to develop and implement staffing models for their professional workforces.

A workload measurement framework for determining staffing needs

“…The latest published study on determining staffing needs using a bottom-up approach is Schulker et al (2020). In the study to determine staffing needs for administrative, professional, and technical workers in the U.S. Secret Service, the authors have described the most important aspects of applying the bottom-up approach.…”

“…A detailed description of work processes is the basis of the bottom-up approach in developing a staffing model. Schulker et al (2020) refer to the well-documented processes as process maps. Process maps are formed by studying work processes and interacting with the process owners.…”

“…When analyzing a work process, the duration of some of its tasks can be challenging to predict because of the large spread in the values. Schulker et al (2020) suggest the following solutions in such situations: (i) despite the large spread in the values, use the mean value based on the expert opinions; (ii) introduce complexity categories into the staffing model; (iii) refine the staffing model with objective, measurable, realistic, and articulated performance standards (quality, timeliness, or costeffectiveness).…”

“…In practice, approaches to determining staffing needs are frequently combined. Their choice depends on the available historical and statistical data and the time that subject-matter experts (SME) can devote to researchers (Nataraj et al, 2014;Schulker et al, 2020).…”

“…A detailed study of work processes can reveal their imperfections and initiate a search for more efficient work methods. This approach can help detect unproductive use of work time and the underperformance in crucial areas of work caused by understaffing or misallocation of duties, negatively affecting overall productivity (Birkinshaw and Cohen, 2013;Schulker et al, 2020).…”