State fish and wildlife agencies are in the middle of an historic personnel turnover. Baby-boomers are retiring and the agencies are working hard to ensure that their workforces will be prepared to take on tomorrow’s challenges. To help with this effort, this summer at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV, MAT is offering a workforce planning workshop open to any state fish and wildlife agency in the US.

Date: July 23 & 24, 2008

Where: Sponsored by the Management Assistance Team and taking place at the National Conservation Training Center, Shepherdstown, WV

Cost: Travel and lodging (meals are included at NCTC). No registration fee.

Requirements: Each state agency sends a team of 2-5 individuals; suggested areas for team composition include staff from: Director’s office, HR, Training, and financial admin.

What is Workforce Planning?
Workforce Planning is about how to deal with that ugly 500 lb. gorilla that sits slumped over in a corner of your agency’s front hall! That gorilla embodies all the feelings and concerns that typically emerge when an agency is trying to face the daunting challenge of losing 50-80% of their senior management, significant institutional memory loss, recruitment challenges, and how to develop and prepare the staff you already have. It’s about coming up with solutions and actions that make sense in your particular agency at this particular time. It’s about helping each other.

The Workforce Planning workshop will feature instruction from outside experts as well as experienced state folks for what are the steps and how to do them well. Learning workforce planning principles will be combined with break-out groups for each state team to work on their custom plan. Rather than just a training opportunity, this is a learning workshop to help you produce an output for your agency.

Spaces are limited and will be filled on a first come, first serve basis. This workshop is being kept small to allow for the individual work each team will accomplish in the sessions.

To Register: Call Sally Ann Hardy (304.876.7797) at MAT today to register and reserve your team’s spaces. Registration Deadline April 30, 2008.

For More Information: Call MAT at 304.876.7988.