PUBLIC HEALTH WORKFORCE ACTIVATION
Workforce Activation Planning

STRUCTURING THE PLANNING TEAM

THE VALUE OF A DEPARTMENT-WIDE PLANNING STRUCTURE A Public Health jurisdiction is segmented into core operating divisions, ensuring that the core services of Public Health are met. It was important in our planning process for the core preparedness team to form a Steering Committee with representation from each Public Health division to oversee planning activities. In addition, the assistance of a skilled process facilitator was enlisted to ensure an efficient and focused planning course of action. The role of the Steering Committee is to ensure the integrity of the process and serve as key decision makers.

The Steering Committee identified the need to develop topical Work Groups that would be tasked with conducting research and making recommendations on specific elements of formulating the Public Health Workforce Activation Response Plan. The following organizational chart illustrates the structure and job title representation of the Public Health Workforce Activation team.

Mouse over the titles to see their description:

topTHE RACI APPROACH To facilitate the organization of tasks to be accomplished, a proven organizational management model referred to as RACI - an acronym for Responsible-Accountable-Consulted-Informed - guided the planning structure. This model is an effective tool for clarifying roles and responsibilities, and for ensuring a broad base of involvement, yet a limited commitment of core team resources.

Download Workforce Activation RACI Matrix PDF top


PLANNING GROUP CHARTERS Core Team Charter
The Core Team consisted of the APC Program Manager, the Business Continuity Program Manger, the Response Program Manager, the Administrative Staff Assistant and external facilitators. The core team was responsible for:

• Managing and coordinating the overall process and work products.
• Making day to day operating decisions about the process and the work.

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Steering Committee Charter
The Steering Committee consisted of the members of the Core Team and other division leaders within Public Health-Seattle & King County with authority to make key decisions about workforce activation that would arise during the process. The Steering Committee was responsible for:

• Providing overall direction.
• Helping to define Work Groups.
• Supporting/serving as Work Group participant(s).
• Reviewing work group recommendations.

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The Topical Work Groups
The Topical Work Groups consisted of department-wide experts on specific activation topics, some also being Steering Committee members. The Topical Work Groups were responsible for

• Performing research.
• Making recommendations.
• Developing specific content for Public Health Workforce Activation tools.

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Workforce Assessment Charter
This Work Group served as a liaison to the consultant lead project team. The Workforce Assessment Work Group was responsible for:

• Defining the emergency response teams staffing needs.
• Assessing individual staff skills, credentials and aptitude for emergency response team assignment.
• Matching individual staff persons to specific team and job within the team.
• Identifying topics that arise in the team definition, staff assessment and matching processes that need to be addressed by the Steering Committee.
• Summarizing and reporting on key team definition, staff assessment and matching process findings.
• Providing a summary of lessons learned in the planning process.

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Public Health Workforce Activation and Call Out Charter
This work group served as the principal architects of the Public Health Workforce Activation and Call Out system that will be used under a range of event conditions. The Public Health Workforce Activation and Call Out Work Group was responsible for:

• Developing recommended protocols for Public Health Workforce Activation and Call-Out under a range of event conditions, following current incident command structure.
• Identifying the issues to be resolved to make the recommended protocols effective and useable and review these issues with the Steering Committee.
• Identifying the specific training, information system, communications, H.R. and other requirements necessary to implement the recommended protocols.
• Documenting the recommended training objectives, outlines of curricula and resource requirements.
• Providing a summary of lessons learned in the planning process.

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Training Work Group Charter
This work group served as the principal architects of the training curriculum, training resources and training processes needed to prepare managers, staff and likely emergency response team leaders to perform well in the event of an activation event. The Workforce Training Work Group was responsible for:

• Identifying the training objectives for each of the three target audiences: all public health staff, emergency response team members, and emergency response team leads.
• Developing a curriculum outline for each of these audiences that fulfill the learning objectives.
• Developing a recommended approach for training that may include just-in-time training, Web learning and/or training through typical Public Health staff development and training channels.
• Developing the process for identifying the requirements/resources needed for implementing this training model.
• Documenting the recommended training objectives, outlines of curricula and resource requirements.
• Providing a summary of lessons learned in the planning process.

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Communications Group Charter
This work group served as the principal architects of the internal and external communications protocols and resources to have in place for use before, during and after a workforce activation event, indexed to the severity of event conditions. The Workforce Communications Work Group was responsible for:

• Identifying the internal and external target audiences and audience-specific communications objectives for communication before, during and after a workforce activation event, indexed to some scale of event severity.
• Identifying the communications media employed to fulfill these objectives (i.e. internal memoranda, Web postings, media releases, media conferences, internal posters, etc.).
• Preparing content outlines for each of the major communications media identified.
• Developing protocols for communications before/during and after an activation event (note these are likely parallel to most existing communications protocols).
• Documenting the process used to arrive at the recommended communications approach.
• Providing a summary of lessons learned in the planning process.
  
  

Download Workforce Activation Organizational Chart top