ABSTRACT
For years, considerable literature has warned of an impending crisis based on projections that high proportions of retirement-eligible baby boomers would walk out the door, leaving agencies with a brain drain. Workforce planning involves a set of procedures designed to ensure that the organization has, and will continue to have, the people in place it needs to accomplish its organizational mission and goals. In addition, the growing complexity of social problems confronting the public sector along with new technology and methods of accomplishing the work means that planning must be much more dynamic. In the dynamic and highly complex labor markets of the twenty-first century, in which public sector jurisdictions will be increasingly hard-pressed to compete, public sector organizations will have to take human resources (HR) planning very seriously indeed. Succession planning differs from the more general concept of workforce planning in that it is usually focused on the replacement of organizational leaders and managers.
