Strategic Staffing Decisions Flashcards
1
Q
Human resource planning involves five sequential steps. What are those steps?
A
- Determine future human resource requirements.
- Determine future human resource availabilities.
- Conduct external and internal environmental scanning.
- Reconcile requirements and availabilities—that is, determine gaps (shortages and surpluses) between the two.
- Develop action plans to close the projected gaps.
2
Q
What are full-time equivalents (FTEs)?
A
- Full-time equivalents (FTEs) requires defining what constitutes full-time work in terms of hours per week (or other time unit), and then counting each employee in terms of scheduled hours worked relative to a full workweek.
3
Q
What are the primary ways to forecast HR requirements?
A
- Statistical (regression analysis and ratio analysis)
- Judgmental techniques (either top-down or bottom-up)
4
Q
What are the primary ways to forecast HR availabilities?
A
- manager judgment
- Markov analysis
- replacement and succession planning
5
Q
What are transition probabilities in a Markov analysis?
A
- the stability and movement rates of employees across jobs expressed as proportions
6
Q
What are the primary limitations of Markov analysis for forecasting human resource availabilities?
A
- Transition probabilities based on small samples yield unstable estimates of future availabilities.
- It does not detect multiple moves by employees between T and T+1.
- Job category/label combinations must be meaningful to the organization for the HRP purposes of both forecasting and action planning.
- The transition probabilities reflect only gross, average employee movement, and not the underlying causes of the movement.
7
Q
How does replacement and succession planning work and for which levels of jobs is it most frequently used?
A
- Replacement and succession planning focuses on the identification of individual employees who will be considered promotion candidates, along with thorough assessment of their current capabilities and deficiencies, coupled with training and development plans to erase any deficiencies.
- It is most widely used at the management level in organizations.
8
Q
What are the primary short-term options to consider when staffing shortages are identified?
A
- better utilization of current employees (through more overtime, productivity increases, buybacks of vacation and holidays),
- outsourcing work to other organizations (subcontracts, transfer work out), and
- acquiring additional employees on a short-term basis (temporary hires and assignments).
9
Q
What are the primary long-term options to consider when staffing shortages are identified?
A
- staffing up with additional employees (new hires, recall former employees, transferring in employees from other work units, new permanent hires),
- skill enhancement (retraining)
- pushing work on to other organizations (transfer work out).
10
Q
What are the primary short-term options to consider when staffing surpluses are identified?
A
- freezing hires and using attrition
- reducing overtime or part time work
- transferring work in
- reducing the workweek
- temporary shutdown or layoff
- excused absences
- temporary assignments
- retraining or training
- accumulating a surplus
11
Q
What are the primary long-term options to consider when staffing surpluses are identified?
A
- freezing hires and using attrition
- permanent out-transfers
- layoffs
- retirement incentives
- retraining
- transferring work in
12
Q
What is the definition of a core workforce?
A
- A core workforce is defined as regular, full-time and part-time employees of the organization that forms the bulk of most organizations’ workforces.
13
Q
What are the advantages of using a core workforce?
A
- The key advantages are stability, continuity, and predictability.
- The regularity of the employment relationship fosters a sense of commitment and shared purpose toward the organization’s mission.
- The organization maintains the legal right to control employees working on its behalf, both in terms of work process and expected results, rather than having to divide or share that right with organizations providing a flexible workforce, such as temporary employment agencies.
- The organization can directly control how it acquires its workforce and the qualifications of those it employs through the management of its own staffing systems.
14
Q
What are the disadvantages of using a core workforce?
A
- The implied permanence of the employment relationship “locks in” the organization’s workforce, with a potential loss of staffing flexibility to rapidly increase, reduce, or redeploy its workforce in response to changing market conditions and project life cycles.
- Reductions of the core workforce, in particular, can be very costly in terms of severance pay packages, low morale, and damage to the organization’s reputation as a good employer.
- The labor costs of the core workforce may be greater than that of the flexible workforce due to 1) higher wages, salaries, and benefits for the core workforce, and (2) the fixed nature of these labor costs, relative to the more variable costs associated with a flexible workforce.
- By using a core workforce, the organization incurs numerous legal obligations—particularly taxation and employment law compliance—that could be fully or partially avoided through use of flexible workforce providers, who would be the actual employer.
- The use of a core workforce may deprive the organization of new technical and administrative knowledge that could be infused into it by use of flexible workers, such as programmers and consultants.
15
Q
What are the advantages of an internal staffing philosophy?
A
- positive employee reactions to promotion from within
- a quick method to identify job applicants
- less expensive
- less time required to reach full productivity.
