Workforce Planning & Talent Management Flashcards
1
Q
What is Workforce Planning & Talent Management
A
- “A cluster of competencies related to the recruitment and deployment of HR within an organization”
- Workforce planning involves a lot of analytics.
2
Q
What is a Prediction?
A
A single numerical estimate of HR requirements associated with a specific time horizon and a set of assumptions. There can be different internal and external assumptions (Ex: based in what is happening in the economy)
3
Q
What is a Projection?
A
Incorporates several HR estimates based on a variety of assumptions. We are projecting into the future diff HR requirements based in different assumptions (low, medium and high projection, plan programs for different cases)
4
Q
What is an Envelope?
A
An analogy in which one can easily visualize the corners of an envelope containing the upper and lower limits, or “bounds” of the various HR projections extending into the future. Allows us to visualize the boundaries of projections or predictions are.
5
Q
What is a Scenario?
A
A proposed sequence of events with its own set of assumptions and associated program details. (or also called: Scenario of forecasting)
6
Q
What is Contingency Planning?
A
- Plans or plans to be implemented when unanticipated changes to organizational or environmental factors which may negate the usefulness of the existing HR forecasting predictions or projections. Good to understand something unanticipated may happen (likely to happen). This allows us to change direction, have a backup plan. (ex. originally thought they would lay off 40 people, didn’t come up because we didn’t predict a competitor going bankrupt. Contingency plan was that we aquired the bankrupt company)
7
Q
What does Staffing contribute to?
A
- Organizational goal attainment (ex. Survival, profitability and growth).
- Acquisition of leadership talent
- Competitive advantage for the organization
- Ensuring sufficient number and type of employees
8
Q
What is the Goal of Workforce Analytics?
A
To provide an organization with insights for effectively managing employees so that business goals can be reached.
9
Q
What is the Challenge of Workforce Analytics?
A
Identifying what data/information should be captured. How to use the data to predict capabilities so the organization gets an optimal return on investment
10
Q
What is the aim of Workforce Analytics?
A
- Applying analytic processes to the HR department with the view of improving employee performance and return on investment. (Ex: whether recruitment methods or hiring decisions need to be improved. Identify needs for new departments or positions, what can be assigned or eliminated. Identify and quantify employee job satisfaction)
- Examines both the efficiency and more importantly, the effectiveness of the programs. Guide continuous improvement initiatives.
- Aims to provide insight into each process by gathering data and the using it to make relevant decisions about how to improve these processes
- Correlate business data and people data, which can help establish important connections
- Key aspect of it is to conclusively show the impact the HR department has on the organization.
- Establishing a cause-and-effect relationship between what HR does and business outcomes, and then creating strategies based on that information
- Workforce analytics enables the HR professional to identify the unique performance drivers within their own organizations.
11
Q
What is an impact statement?
A
-Impact statements can be used to develop momentum in the business. People pay attention when it shows an impact on the business
Examples: - What impact does a sales training have on revenue development?
- What impact does low/high engagement have on turnover?
- What is the impact of a good on-boarding program on productivity?
12
Q
What is Workforce Planning?
A
- Determines the Human Capital need
- Analyzes what is available
- Identifies the actions required to ensure the right people are at the right place at the right time, doing the right things, to fulfil the organization’s strategic and operational plan
- generation of business intelligence
- Enables the company to be resilient to changes
13
Q
What is Strategic Workforce Planning?
A
- may cover 3-5 years (can include scenario planning where a number of scenarios are considered)
14
Q
What is Operational Workforce Planning?
A
-Planning may cover 12-18 months (aligns with timeframe of business cycle)
15
Q
What is Human Capital and Talent Management Plan?
A
- Where are your future employees coming from? where are they coming from? Internal or external? How will you engage them and move them through the organization?
- The stock and flow of people
16
Q
What are examples of questions to ask in a Strategic Plan?
A
- Will planned growth or shrinkage require new recruitment strategies, selection techniques, or training programs?
- Will new business goals require new work procedures, employee performance standards and training?
- WFP helps us link HR strategies to desired business outcomes. (Ex: if planning expansion and promote from within, need to assess their talent. Requires a creditable management system, may need an audit)
- Will other major changes require additional “change management” or employee/labour relations support? (Answer is likely yes)
- Changes in the market, labour pool, or legislative action. What’s happening in the labour market? labour pool or new legislation? stakeholder demands? what do our customers want? what does the organization want?
- Will new customer/stakeholder demands require new performance management standards, work methods or reorganization?
- Is our workforce profile (ex: age, gender, ethnicity) changing how employees relate to each other and to our customers? How many males do we have? How many females?
17
Q
What are some Workforce Maintenance Issues?
A
- staffing levels and sustaining employee knowledge and skills. (A business strategy objective can be to aim to just stay the same).
18
Q
What are some Workforce Risk Management Issues?
A
- Workplace safety, employment liability and business continuity following a critical accident
19
Q
What are some Workforce Enhancement Issues?
A
- Improve operational efficiency or improve organizational culture and performance.
20
Q
What are examples of some Strategic Questions?
A
- Is our current training plan keeping staff knowledge and skills current with industry standards?
- Is the company up to date with certain skills?
- How prepared are we to manage/redeploy staff in the event of a critical incident that disrupts business operations?
- We identified contingency planning at the beginning of the unit. Do we have the necessary people and skills if needed to do this.
- Are staff performing at the desired level?
- Do staff demonstrate the values and behaviours necessary for the organization to be successful?
21
Q
What are some Internal Capacity Factors?
A
- Workforce demographics (ex: major job categories, union membership, age/race/gender percentages) Do you have job profiles?
- Internal candidate pools, candidate recruiting programs, and screening and selection strategies. Where are your pools of employees? how are they moving through positions?
- Current and projected internal workforce competency requirements (knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviours)
- Organizational design (ex: supervisor span of control, centralization vs. decentralization, and distribution of specialists and generalists)
- What does our org structure look like? Centralized or decentralized? Span of control large or small?
- Workforce Distribution (ex: work locations and travel requirements)
- Work flows, methods and processes. How do channels of communication work?
- Human resource systems (ex: compensation classification, work rules and policies, collective bargaining agreements, and performance management strategies)
- Need work rules, collective bargaining agreements in some instances
- Interdependencies between departments caused conflict or confusion because management style was very controlling. Would have had more effective workflow if more empowering perhaps.
- Recognition and assessment of current situation and projection of the current state.
22
Q
What is HR Forecasting?
A
- Ascertaining the net requirement for personnel by determining the demand for, and the supply of HR, now and in the future.
- Forecasting our demand and supply, who we have, where they are coming from, will they stay or leave = heart of HR planning process.
- May be easy for a small organization but challenging for larger ones (ex: a municipality, the government of Canada) Requires forecasting with often statistical modeling.
- HR Forecasting constitutes the heart of the HR-Planning Process
23
Q
What is Transaction-based Forecasting?
A
- Focuses on tracking internal changes instituted by the organization’s managers.
- (Ex: Manager decides product area needs to increase sales. Suggest alternative strategies like increase sales training or adding more employees. Together you decide to add 2 more employees from internal workforce. HR job to provide info on who is available, when, comp, training, best hiring process to use, etc. May need to now find people for vacant positions)
24
Q
What is Event-based Forecasting?
A
- Forecasting that is concerned with changes in the external environment
- (Ex: can stem from changes in the dollar or price of oil, demographic shift, moving to different provinces, changes in demand for labour in certain industries) (Ex: technological, political and societal changes)
25
Q
What is Process-based Forecasting?
A
- Focuses on the processes used that impact the flow of work
- Focuses on the how, not the what. How work flows today and how they may change in the future. How the sequencing of work may shift the resources we need
- Ex: processes in a coffee shop. In Starbucks, place order and go to next station, at Tims, the cashier is also the person who fills their order. These 2 process have a difference in skill set of the individuals, etc. Need individuals who specialize in creating the beverages so they are different than those who are cashiers.
26
Q
What are the 4 HR Forecasting Time Horizons?
A
- Current forecast:Immediate operational needs of the organization - up until the end of the current operating cycle - or a maximum of one year into the future
- Short-run forecast: HR requirements for the next 1-2 years
- Medium-run forecast: HR requirements for the next 2-5 years
- Long-run forecasts: more than 5 years into the future
27
Q
What is Human Resources Demand?
A
- A Requirement
- The organization’s projected requirement for HR (definition) (both now and in the future)
28
Q
What is Human Resources Supply?
A
- The Availability
- The source of workers to meet demand requirements, obtained either internally (current members of the organization’s workforce) or from external sources. (definition). Both internal and external sources
29
Q
What are the 2 Demand Forecasting Techniques?
A
- Objective Approaches: Index/Trend Analysis & Regression Analysis
- Subjective Approaches: Delphi Technique & Nominal Group Technique
30
Q
What is Index/Trend Analysis?
A
- Useful when the demand for labour is connected closely to something like production, ex: useful in manufacturing
- the process of identifying and interpreting patterns and changes in data over time
31
Q
What is Regression Analysis?
A
- statistical regression to understand change in one variable (dependent) when there’s a change in one or more predictor (independent variables) while holding all other variables fixed.
- Number of human resources needed is always the dependable - always trying to predict. Independent variable would be for instance the change in the economy or Canadian dollar in this example
32
Q
What is Nominal Group Technique?
A
- subjective method, assumptions of the experts. HR planner needs to select a set of appropriate experts in the field to arrive at a forecast. A benefit is because it is done through questions it reduces issues like shy people not speaking up or someone scared to share their opinion if they are of lower status
- a structured variation of a small-group discussion to reach consensus
33
Q
What is the Delphi Technique?
A
-After preparing forecast, experts are brought together to bring their rationale in a face to face environment and then the experts cast a secret vote. Issue is time and cost to bring experts together to go through the process
- a process used to arrive at a group opinion or decision by surveying a panel of experts
34
Q
What are some of the Supply Forecasting Techniques?
A
- Markov Analysis
- Linear Programming
- Skills and Management Inventories
- Succession/Replacement Analysis
- Movement Analysis
- Vacancy Models
35
Q
Explain Markov Analysis:
A
- The Markov Model produces a series of matrices that detail the patterns of movement to and from the various jobs in the organization
- This quantitative model requires the use of transitional probabilities or likelihood that an individual will exhibit movement behaviours
- The idea is that we can capture effects of internal transfers and changes in employment levels
36
Q
What is Linear Programming?
A
- A complex mathematical procedure, commonly used for project analysis, engineering, etc
- It can determine the best supply mix solution to minimize costs or other constraints, such as desired staffing ratios. Ex: conditions such as desired staffing rations (internal/external) can be programmed in the equation.
- The internal/external mix of candidates can be programmed into the equation for determining HR supply
- It enables HR planners to calculate “what if” scenarios by changing or relaxing various model assumptions.
- As in regression analysis, must be linear relationships among the elements.
37
Q
Explain Skills and Management Inventories:
A
- An individualized record for managerial, professional or technical personnel that includes all elements in the skills inventory with the addition of information on specialized duties, responsibilities and accountabilities
- History of management and professional jobs held
- A record of management or professional training courses
- Key accountabilities for the current job
- Assessment centre and appraisal data
- Professional and industry association memberships
- It is the starting point for taking an inventory of who you have internally
- In a state of constant change you need to be prepared with an internal account of who you have available in what positions and any other information the organization requires if the company is contemplating mergers, downsizing, etc.
38
Q
Explain Replacement & Succession Management:
A
- Replacement management is the process of finding employees for key managerial positions
- Replacement planning is focused narrowly on identifying specific back-up candidates for given senior management positions
- Succession management is the process of ensuring that pools of skilled employees are trained and available to meet the organization’s strategic objectives. Increases level of experience as those roles become available
- Building a series of feeder groups up and down the entire leadership pipeline
- Replacement planning for key roles is the heart of succession planning. Effective succession or talent pool management is building a series of feeder groups.
- Philosophy: Top talent in the corporation must be managed for the greater good of the enterprise
39
Q
Explain Movement Analysis:
A
- Analyzes personnel supply, specifically the chain or ripple effect that promotions or job losses have on the movements of other personnel in the organization.
- Identifies the total number of vacant or open positions in the organization or department as well as the total number of personnel movements that are caused by replacing and filling these positions.
- Ex: in a unionized environment, workers may have bumping privileges, if they get laid off they can bump a person with lower seniority from other job classifications if the employee has the ability to perform the job.
- Planning time is typically one year where we identify the number of people within a department or authority level.
- Look at changes in staffing in the year
40
Q
Explain the Vacancy Model (Also known as renewal or sequencing model):
A
- Analyzes flows of personnel throughout the organization by examining inputs and outputs at each hierarchical or compensation level. More predictive capacity over short and long term periods compared to Markov.
- Time frame is one year into the future
- Identifies the specific number of external and internal personnel required at each level and for the organization as a whole.
- Calculates personnel supply requirements from the top down, beginning at the highest authority level, because the normal direction of movement in an organization is from the bottom to top.
- Need for personnel must be by external recruiting, promotion of internal employees or the combination of the 2 approaches.
- This model is sensitive to changes in the economy. Need a relatively stable environment for it to work
41
Q
What are some examples of possible movements or changes that employees can make?
A
- demotion
- remaining in the current role
-promotion to a higher classified role - exit from the job (termination, layoff, etc)
42
Q
What are the 4 Stages of the Forecasting Process?
A
- Determining the Demand
- Ascertain Supply
- Calculate Net Requirements
- Institute a Deficit (not having enough employees) or Surplus (having too many employees) Program
43
Q
What does Determining the Demand entail?
A
- Determine overall demand requirements for personnel (i.e. what staff are needed, when and where). Need to know the numbers, competencies and numbers of each unit, retirement numbers, attrition, potential sick leaves.
- Open headcount for vacancies due to movement or promotion
- Consider the changes that will take place over the period under consideration
- Break it down further by skills and other supply characteristics
- Assess cost to determine feasibility
