Midterm Flashcards
What is HR planning
HR planning involves forecasting the number and types of workers the organization will need in the future, analyzing (forecasting in a future sense) the future workforce supply, developing (and implementing) policies and programs that will help the organization achieve its goals, and evaluating their effectiveness.
What are the 7 steps to the HR planning process
- Understand the organization’s strategies, from a business perspective
- Analyze the environment – external and internal, not the environment of today, but of the future environment, look for the environment you’re planning for what’s going to be happening in the environment
- Know the HR department’s “position”, like how some HR departments are more tactical than others (e.g they do the recruiting) vs more consulting, strategic high level hands off vs tactical, how does the organization see the HR department
- Forecast future HR demand and analyze future HR supply
- Develop HR policies and programs (HR practices) that will increase the likelihood of achieving organizational goals, policies to make sure our workforce for tomorrow can do what the org. wants them to acheive
- Implement these – put into practice
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the HR policies and programs implemented
What is the 4 criteria to strategic HR management
- Vertical integration – understanding the organization and its context, what they’re doing in HR is working to achieve the organizations bigger goals, the context is important (patient care vs making money)
- Horizontal integration – creating coherent HRM systems. HR departments have diff functions within them, strategic HR has cohesiveness with these functions so they are working together
- Partnership – HR Professionals work cooperatively with line managers and non-management employees. Rather than HR professionals being order takers, they’re partners with operations
- use of metrics for regular evaluation
What does vertical integration mean for strategic HRM
When HR policies and practices are aligned with an organization’s strategic objectives
What does horizontal integration mean for strategic HRM
occurs when there is a cohesive system among HR policies and practices.
To achieve both vertical and horizontal integration HR professional need to…
work in partnership with line managers, employees, and their representatives.
What are either ends of the continuum of HRM staffing choices?
internal sources (narrow career paths, explicit selection criteria, closed hiring procedures) and external sources (broad career paths, implicit selection criteria, open hiring procedures)
What are either ends of the continuum of compensation choices?
low base salaries (internal equity, few perks, fixed pay, no incentives, hierarchical, no employment security)
and high base salaries (external equity, many perks, few levels or grades, high employment security)
What are either ends of the continuum of HRM training and development?
short term goals (productivity emphasis, unplanned, individual focus) and long term goals (quality of work emphasis, planned, group focused)
What are either ends of the continuum of HRM performance evaluation?
Behavioural criteria (remedial purpose, low employee participation) and results criteria (development purpose, high employee participation)
What are the 5 principles of strategic HR planning
- HR mgt is aware of & interacts with political, social, economic and technical environment of the organization. They understand more than just the HR environment and what the organization is about. Example, people who come to HR from the operations side of the business
- HR strategy is congruent with business strategy
- HR strategy is explicit, its written down, published out there, not hidden
- HR initiatives are consistent, not just pivoting all the time
5 Process and indicators to measure the effectiveness of HRM are provided
What is the difference between corporate strategy and business strategy
corporate: The formulation of organizational mission, goals, objectives and action plans for an entire organization. Focus is on long term survival and growth
business: like the corporate strategy but for one division or unit of an organization. focus is on how to build a strong competitive position.
What are the 3 overarching common strategies
stability maintenance, restructuring, and growth
what does the stability maintenance strategy mean
we want our organization to be the same, maintain presence, clients etc. for next 5 years
What are the 4 ways a company can restructure
- Turnaround - increase the viability of an organization
- Divestiture - sale or removal of a business
- Liquidation - termination of a business and the sale of its assets
- Bankruptcy
What are the 3 different ways an organization can grow
- Incremental:
- Increase products and/or services
- Seek additional customers; change the distribution networks; use technology
- Expand internationally:
- Seek new markets or customers in another area
- Increase size:
- Acquire another organization
- Merge - Combine resources with another organization and become one
What are the 4 main miles and snow strategy typologies?
- Defender
- Mature company in mature industry
- Protects market position through efficient production, strong control mechanisms, continuity & reliability
- Prospector
- Seeks opportunities to exploit, create new markets, develop new products and services
- Core skills in R&D, marketing
- Broad range of technologies & product types
- Analyzer
- Excels in delivery of new products and services but avoids excessive risks
- Seeks to outperform other companies on basis of quality improvement
- Concentrates on limited range of products and technologies
- Reactor
- Company has little control over external environment
- Lacks ability to adapt to competition
Poor internal control mechanisms, no systematic design or plans
What are 2 variables in the porter model and what the 5 competitive strategies in the porter model?
1) type of competitive advantage being pursued and 2) market target
overall low cost provider: broad spectrum of buyer, lower cost
broad differentiator: differentiation and broad spectrum of buyer
focused low cost: lower cost, narrow segment of buyers
focused differentiator: differentiation and narrow segment of the market
best-cost provider: emphasizing a low cost product and an upscale differentiation
What are the 2 variables in the BCG matrix analysis, and what are the 4 categories
market growth % and market share
star: high market growth% and high market share
cash cow: low market growth% and high market share
?/wildcat: high market growth% and low market share
dog: low market growth % and low market share
What are the 5 steps the HR forecasting process
- Analyze HR impact of strategic plans, external environment
a. Know what org plans to do what are the timeline for it
b. Looking at trends in the future that will impact the organization - Forecast Future HR needs (demand)
a. Calculate future HR needs, how many positions you’ll need - Analyze future internal and external workers
- Develop options to balance supply and demand
a. There is often always an in balance between how many you need and how many there are available, this is how to deal with this
Implement and evaluate results - Implement and evaluate results
What is forecasting?
- Process for determining the requirements (demand) for and the supply of the workers (doesn’t matter if paid, full time, temp, etc.)
- Proactive and future orientated process
- Requires both quantitative (the #s) and qualitative (the type of the work being done for example) data
What is HR demand
HR demand: the number of positions required for (to design, produce, deliver manage, etc.) an organization products or services
What is HR supply
HR supply: the number of people available inside the org. or outside the org, who could fill org. positions. Always separate internal and outside supply.
What is net HR demand
Net Hr demand: the difference between the number of positions required and the number of people available to fill them internally.
Why is important for an organization to identify their future requirements for staff and the future supply?
- Its practical and strategic to do so
- they end up being reactive rather than proactive if they don’t plan for how many positions they will need
What happens If forecasting does not happen?
- If the org. doesn’t plan how many emplyoees they need in the future, and don’t plan ahead, they might lose business and revenue from unfulfillment.
They might ask the current employees to work overtime, it will cost them and can lead to worker fatigue, burnout, decrease productivity, turnover.
Could also have a downcycle come along, you might have to quickly lay off people or pay people who don’t have work to do
What are the 2 main things forecasting is used to do?
developing option for HR policies and programs
and support efficient and effective service delivery such as knowing how many positions to recruit for and choosing training and development programs and which employees to train
what is a scenario
a proposed sequence of events with its own set of assumptions and program details. If this happens, then this will happen, then this will happed.
what is a contingency plan
a plan to deal with severe changes in the organization or environment that completely wipe out forecasting of labour needs. Essentially something you don’t think would ever happen but just in case it does you have a plan for it.
What is a prediction
an estimate of labour needs w specific time horizon and assumptions (2% increase in enrollment is assumption, 109 positions is labour needs, and next fall is time)
what is a Projection
several estimate of labour needs based on different assumptions (several predictions put together). Example, a 2% increase in enrollment will need 109, a 4% next fall will need 112 full time positions.
- OR
what is forecast envelope?
an estimate with upper and lower limits of the projection extending into the future
What are the 4 types of key workforce categories?
1.specialist technical and professional employees: positions that are key to carrying out your business
- managers and executives: take longer to fill, drives the organization have hire salary cost
- Employment equity: forecasting for designated groups
- new employees
what are 4 different times for planning horizons
Current: 6 months - year from now.
Short run: 1-2 year
Medium 2-5 years
Long run: 5+, usually large org.
What are the 3 types of forecasting?
transaction based forecasting
event based forecasting
process based forecasting
what is transaction based forecasting?
looks at the effects of changes made by managers on the number and type of staff.
what is event based forecasting
looks at the effect of changes in the environment on type and number of staff. E.g demographic, legislation, economy.
what is process based forecasting
looks at the flow of work activities and changes in the activities to estimate number and types of staff. e.g if they change the process of a job by automating it does it lower the number of positions we need
what is environmental scanning?
Systematically monitoring the major factors influencing the organization from HR planning perspective.
What are 3 reasons for monitoring the environment?
- Organizational success or failure is strongly related to the context it exists within
- The outside world is constantly changing
- The HR practitioner who understand the implications of the environmental changes for their organization can proactively develop policies and programs to help their organization achieve its goals.
What are 4 techniques to monitor the environment
- Scan: identify early signs of changes in environment
- Monitor: systematically follow several key factors
- Forecast: project the potential impact of change for the organization
- Assess: make a judgement about the probability of each possible outcome
What is primary demand
The future demand for organizations products or services
What are the 5 quantitative hr demand forecasting techniques
Staffing table
Hr budget
Ratio/index
Index trend
Regression
What are the 3 qualitative techniques for forecasting
Delphi technique
Nominal group technique
Scenario modelling
what are the 2 types of barriers to workforce planning and name some examples of each
practical (multiple planning horizons, no budget, lack of time, no data) and perceptional barrier (seen as important but not urgent, resistance to change, to hard to measure success)
acquisition
The purchase of one company by another.
bankruptcy
A formal procedure in which an appointed trustee in bankruptcy takes possession of a business’s assets and disposes of them in an orderly fashion.
capabilities
A complex combination of people and processes that represent the firm’s capacity to exploit resources that have been specially integrated to achieve a desired result.
