Strengthening U S Air Force Human Capital Management

The USAir Force human capital management (HCM) system is not easily defined or mapped. It affects virtually every part of the Air Force because workforce policies, procedures, and processes impact all offices and organizations that include Airmen and responsibilities and relationships change regularly. To ensure the readiness of Airmen to fulfill the mission of the Air Force, strategic approaches are developed and issued through guidance and actions of the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Manpower, Personnel and Services and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. Strengthening US Air Force Human Capital Management assesses and strengthens the various U.S. Air Force initiatives and programs working to improve person-job match and human capital management in coordinated support of optimal mission capability. This report considers the opportunities and challenges associated with related interests and needs across the USAF HCM system as a whole, and makes recommendations to inform improvements to USAF personnel selection and classification and other critical system components across career trajectories. Strengthening US Air Force Human Capital Management offers the Air Force a strategic approach, across a connected HCM system, to develop 21st century human capital capabilities essential for the success of 21st century Airmen.

Air Force units have found differences between authorized and actual numbers of personnel, partly because of deployments. Using historical and other data and interviews, the authors assessed the wing-level effects of these disparities including skill levels and personnel tempo. The recommendations include improvements in manpower bookkeeping and requirement determination, use of dynamic simulation models, and implementation of suitable metrics.

The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel & Readiness), referred to throughout this report as P&R, is responsible for the total force management of all Department of Defense (DoD) components including the recruitment, readiness, and retention of personnel. Its work and policies are supported by a number of organizations both within DoD, including the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC), and externally, including the federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) that work for DoD. P&R must be able to answer questions for the Secretary of Defense such as how to recruit people with an aptitude for and interest in various specialties and along particular career tracks and how to assess on an ongoing basis service members' career satisfaction and their ability to meet new challenges. P&R must also address larger-scale questions, such as how the current realignment of forces to the Asia-Pacific area and other regions will affect recruitment, readiness, and retention. While DoD makes use of large-scale data and mathematical analysis in intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and elsewhereâ€"exploiting techniques such as complex network analysis, machine learning, streaming social media analysis, and anomaly detectionâ€"these skills and capabilities have not been applied as well to the personnel and readiness enterprise. Strengthening Data Science Methods for Department of Defense Personnel and Readiness Missions offers and roadmap and implementation plan for the integration of data analysis in support of decisions within the purview of P&R.

This report identifies opportunities for optimizing processes and policies in the U.S. Air Force nonrated technical training pipeline and recommends process and policy changes that could improve efficiency at all levels.

The U.S. Air Force (USAF) helps defend the United States and its interests by organizing, training, and equipping forces for operations in and through three distinct domains-air, space, and cyberspace. The Air Force concisely expresses its vision as "Global Vigilance, Global Reach, and Global Power for America." Operations within each of these domains are dynamic, take place over large distances, occur over different operational timelines, and cannot be routinely seen or recorded, making it difficult for Airmen, national decision makers, and the American People to visualize and comprehend the full scope of Air Force operations. As a result, the Air Force faces increasing difficulty in succinctly and effectively communicating the complexity, dynamic range, and strategic importance of its mission to Airmen and to the American people. To address this concern, the Chief of Staff of the USAF requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convene a workshop to explore options on how the Air Force can effectively communicate the strategic importance of the Service, its mission, and the role it plays in the defense of the United States. Participants worked to address the issues that a diverse workforce encompassing a myriad of backgrounds, education, and increasingly diverse current mission sets drives the requirement for a new communication strategy. The demographics of today's Air Force creates both a unique opportunity and a distinct challenge to Air Force leadership as it struggles to communicate its vision and strategy effectively across several micro-cultures within the organization and to the general public. This report summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

Take a sneak peak inside!Click on the link below to preview chapter one. Order your exam copy today by clicking on the "Request an Exam Copy" link above. Chapter 1 With the shift from “human resources” to “human capital management” (HCM), public agencies are striving to strategically manage their workforces. Sally Selden’s groundbreaking book moves far beyond describing best practices and offers the context in which innovative practices have been implemented. She details how agencies are creating performance-aligned workforces by adopting systems and policies that are driven by their strategic missions. This book covers core topics of personnel courses—including hiring, training, retention, performance, and recognition—but also includes integrated coverage on measuring success through assessment. Further helping readers grasp how HCM works, the book uses original data from the Government Performance Project and incorporates many comparative examples across a wide range of states, plus federal and municipal agencies. Unlike anything else available, Human Capital fills a critical gap for both students and public personnel professionals.

Armstrong's Essential Human Resource Management Practice provides a complete overview of the practices and processes fundamental to managing people. The text provides a thorough introduction to the core areas of HR including: people resourcing, performance management, learning and development and rewarding people. It also examines the contribution of HR to organizational aims and objectives and how it is integrated within the business. The book is accompanied by online resources for both lecturers and students and adopts an increased focus on employee engagement, a concept which is becoming increasingly prominent in people management, but which is often presented as a mantra without being properly understood; this is examined in detail with reference to recent research. Michael Armstrong's original Handbook of Human Resource Management is the classic text for all those studying HR or who are entering the profession for the first time. In this new title Michael Armstrong provides a condensed text which has been rewritten with the non-HR student or professional in mind, describing and evaluating key HRM concepts such as: HRM itself; strategic HRM; the resource-based view; the choice between best practice and best fit; human capital measurement; motivation theory; emotional intelligence; the flexible firm; the learning organization; and financial rewards. Online supporting resources for this book include lecture slides, an instructor's manual, case examples and a literature review.