A federal facilities organization was losing people from the same handful of job series year after year, and the hiring standard meant to fill those roles described a job that no longer existed.

The Situation

A federal facilities organization that supports nationwide weather and climate infrastructure manages the buildings, systems, and physical assets that forecasting and warning operations depend on every day. Sustaining that mission requires a workforce that is appropriately sized, appropriately skilled, and stable enough to carry out technical projects over multi-year horizons.



Three pressures had converged. Turnover was concentrated rather than distributed; specific job series and grade levels were losing people at rates that made vacancies hard to backfill and institutional knowledge hard to retain. The federal qualification standards governing those series had not kept pace with the technical skills the work actually demanded, creating friction at the point of recruitment: the standard described one job, while the position required another. The organization also needed a defensible roadmap linking current staffing capacity to future mission requirements, developed within real cost constraints and able to withstand leadership review.

The standard described one job. The position required another.

The Solve

BeckThom provided senior human capital and workforce planning consulting support across four connected workstreams.

• Staffing analysis and cost benchmarking. We assessed current workforce capacity against operational requirements and benchmarked comparable practices to build a cost analysis framework the organization could defend to resource decision-makers and scale as mission needs evolved.

• Competency architecture. We analyzed position descriptions across the affected series to map the knowledge, skills, and abilities the work genuinely required, then documented where existing federal qualification language diverged from those requirements. That gap analysis became the evidentiary basis for updated core competency profiles by series and grade.
  
  
• Stakeholder engagement and survey analysis. We worked directly with senior leaders, managers, subject matter experts, and designated employees, and analyzed employee survey responses to move past assumptions about why people were leaving and identify the drivers the data actually supported.
  
  
• Change management and learning design. We developed a Change Management Learning, Training, and Development Plan so competency findings translated into upskilling the workforce could be acted on, rather than a report that documented gaps without closing them.
  

The Impact

• A staffing analysis and roadmap. An actionable blueprint for workforce sizing, recruitment sequencing, and resource allocation aligned to current and projected mission needs.
  
  
• Modernized core competency profiles. Updated qualification frameworks by series and grade, documenting the divergence between federal standards and operational requirements.
  
  
• A holistic process map. An integrated approach linking staffing, retention, and training gap analysis into a single continuous cycle informed by structured stakeholder feedback.
  
  
• A change management learning and development plan. A structured pathway for workforce transition and capability building.
  
  
• Targeted retention recommendations. Evidence-based guidance addressing the specific turnover drivers identified within high-vulnerability series and grade levels.