3 - Organization: Workforce Management Flashcards
Workforce Management
- HR manages human resources to maximize the organization’s opportunities for success and minimize its exposure to threats.
- Current and future organizational and individual needs.
- Knowledge
- Skills
- Abilities
- Other Characteristics
Workforce Planning
A process that involves all the activities needed to ensure that workforce size and competencies meet current and future organizational and individual needs.
- Alignment of human capital with business direction
Workforce Analysis Process
*Strategic Focus: What can and can’t we do? What do we need to consider?
*Supply Analysis: current people supply. Turnover analysis/rate.
*Demand Analysis: # of people needed, competencies to match external demands, staff’s levels and costs. Judgmental forecasts, regression analysis, simulations.
*The supply analysis identifies the staffing levels and competencies that are currently available, and the demand analysis determines the staffing levels and competencies that will be needed in the future.
- Gap Analysis: staffing differences and competencies needed for the future.
- What KSAs exist?
- What is lacking and what will be needed?
- Solution Analysis
- What can we afford?
- How will we get what we need?
- Evaluating Workforce Planning Impact: How did we do? What needs to be done next?
Supply Analysis:
Forecasting Tools
Accurate forecasts account for movement into and inside the organization (new hires, promotions, internal transfers) and out of the organization (resignations, retirements, involuntary terminations, discharges).
- Turnover Analysis
Turnover Analysis
Divide separations per year (or shorter time periods) by average monthly workforce.
Demand Analysis:
Judgmental Forecasts
- Assess the past and present to predict future needs
- Based on a variety of estimates
Demand Analysis:
Statistiscal Forecasts
- Regression analysis (simple or multiple)
- Simulations (what if?)
Gap Analysis
Compares supply and demand analyses to identify the staffing differences and competencies needed for the future.
- Skills
- Abilities
- Distribution
- Diversity
- Deployment
- Time
- Cost
- Knowledge sharing
- Succession
- Retention
Prioritizing Gaps
- Permanence
- Impact
- Control
- Evidence
- Root Cause
Tactical Objectives
Focus on closing high-priority gaps in the near term (as opposed to the long-term HR strategic objectives); specify in concrete and measurable terms which gaps must be closed and when.
Tactical objectives support staffing needs because they:
- Specify which gaps will receive focused attention.
- Describe the degree to which the gap will be closed.
- Specify the time frame for achievement.
- Describe the localities or functional groups involved.
- Identify any special considerations.
Solution Analysis
- Build
- Redeploy
- Train and develop
- Buy
- Recruit and hire
- Borrow
- Outsource
- Lease
- Contract
- Bridge: providing training in areas adjacent to employees’ current roles; re-skilling employees to help them learn the skills needed to move into different jobs.
Staffing Plan
Flexible Staffing
- Uses alternative recruiting sources and workers who are not regular employees.
- Examples of where it might be used include:
- Shortages of available workers for open positions.
- Seasonal peak demands for operations.
- Operational upturns and downturns that make permanent head count impractical.
- Special projects that demand specific skills.
Administration by Organization
Flexible Staffing
- Temporary assignments
- Temporary employees
- On-call workers
- Part-time employees
- Job sharing
- Seasonal workers
- Phased retirement
Administration Outsourced
Flexible Staffing
- Finite temporary help
- Temp-to-hire programs
- Contract workers
Flexible Staffing Arrangements
- Payrolling: Outsourcing payroll for employees. An org identifies specific people and refers them to a staffing firm, which employs them and assigns them to work at the organization.
- Employee Leasing or Professional Employee Organization (PEO): Outsourcing payroll and HR functions. Joint venture, an organization transfers all employees at a discrete site to the payroll of an employee leasing firm; the PEO leases employees back to the organization while handling most of the HR administrative functions (for example, payroll, benefits).
- Outsourcing or managed services: independent organization with expertise in operating a specific function contracts with an organization to assume full responsibility for the function (as opposed to just supplying personnel).
- Temp-to-Lease: organization contracts with two staffing firms—generally a temporary service and a PEO; the temporary firm assigns long-term temporaries to a client organization and, after a period of time, the employees are promoted to lease status and become eligible for benefits from the PEO.
Co-employment (joint employment) agreements summarize legal relationship, rights, and obligations for some flexible staffing arrangements.
Flexible Staffing Guidelines
- Be cautious of preprinted or standard forms. You must understand and agree with everything in the agreement
- Ensure clarity. An agreement should be simple and straightforward.
- Negotiate competitive pricing. Ask for volume discounts, rebates based on use, and free value-added services.
- Consider including an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) provision.
- Include a simple opt-out procedure. The organization should be able to opt out of an agreement if dissatisfied for any reason.
- Negotiate clear and precise provisions for what happens when the agreement expires or the relationship ends. Spelling out terms of the closing can help to prevent unnecessary litigation.
Drivers of Restructuring
- Strategy - new strategies
- Structure - new business models
- Downsizing
- Expansion
Forms of Restructuring
- Redistribution of decision-making authority
- Extended organization
- Merger and acquisition (M&A) and divestiture
- Reduction in force (RIF or downsizing)
Talent Management
Attract, develop, engage, and retain employees with the KSAs needed now and in the future
Talent management decisions:
- Expectations regarding talent differentiation
- Philosophy of integration versus local differentiation
- Role of line leaders in developing talent
- Philosophy of talent mobility
- Diversity goals
- Beliefs about hiring for potential or position
Talent Pools
Employees who meet a formal set of identification criteria (e.g., high-potential employees or potential global assignees)
- Represent an essential component of strategic business planning.
- Help target employee and career development efforts.
- Can be useful in international assignment planning and deployment.
- Represent a valuable resource during crisis management.
- Can help identify and recognize solid performers.
- May help in compensation decisions.
- Contribute to effective knowledge management.
Succession Planning
- Identify and develop high-potential employees for positions critical to future needs.
- Applies throughout the organization, not just to senior management.
- Must be aligned with career management, training and learning, and performance management.
- Focuses on long-range needs and cultivation of talent (unlike replacement planning, which focuses on immediate needs).
Effective Succession Planning
- Visible support
- Leadership criteria
- Defined plan
- Simple, measurable process
- Alignment to organizational culture
- Leadership development plus more
- Organizational priority
Evaluating Succession Planning
Approaches to measuring the effectiveness of the succession planning system.
- Evaluate satisfaction with personal development initiatives.
- Assess management satisfaction with employee performance and job readiness.
- Measure time to full-function attainment.
Knowledge Management (KM)
- Process of creating, acquiring, sharing, and managing knowledge to augment individual and organizational performance
- Formal or informal
Institutional Knowledge
- Expertise sharing and organizational learning
Establishing a Formal Knowledge Management System
- Inventory knowledge assets
- Create knowledge repository and directory
- Encourage system use
- Update system
Knowledge Management Success Factors
- Create and support an appropriate environment and structure.
- Assess where knowledge exists and may be lost or underutilized.
- Help people develop requisite skills.
- Address “What is in it for me?”
- Develop project criteria.
- Identify and address multicultural challenges.
Challenge is to transform ad hoc nature of social learning and knowledge transfer into more structured learning and knowledge management opportunities.
