Unit 2.2 - Human Resource Planning

Question 1

Explain the staffing model for HR planning

Answer 1

Before recruitment and selection, there is HR planning

Long-range planning - environmental scanning (2-10 year plan, ex. economy, competition)

Middle-range planning - forecasting (ex. what do we need for the next 1-2 years)

Short-range planning - projected staffing requirements (ex. less than 12 months, succession planning - analysis of promotions and transfers)

Coincides with “business planning”:
Long - Strategic planning
Middle - Operational planning
Short - Annual goals and objectives

Question 2

What is Stage 1, Stage 2, and Stage 3 of the strategic planning model?

Answer 2

Stage 1 -
* Informal/ subjective forecasts
* Reactive decisions and initiatives

Stage 2 -
* Short-term forecasts
* Experientially based decisions
* Career pathing is a tool for planning

Stage 3 -
* Sophisticated technology for short term and long term planning
* Company is able to plan turnover
* Training & development is more advanced and proactive

Question 3

What is forecasting employment needs?

Answer 3

Forecasting is the art of analyzing the demand for labor.

Key Questions:

1. What employees will be needed in the future?
2. What kinds of skills and talents will the employees need?
3. When will the new employees be needed?

There is long-term forecasting and short-term forecasting

Question 4

What are the 6 long-term forecasting methods?

Answer 4

All long-term forecasts should be based on strategic business plans. Long-term forecasting covers 2-10 years.

Unit Demand - requires managers to know what business activity will be performed by their units in future years and how many people will be needed

Expert opinion - least sophisticated approach; 3 methods for combining expert opinions:
1. Pooling - average estimates of experts
2. Consensus - ask experts to achieve an agreement in a group discussion
3. The Delphi technique - experts provide estimates based on questionnaires/interviews, an intermediary summarizes it and submits a report back to the experts, any view inconsistent is asked to be justified, info is collected by intermediary and again circulated in written reports, experts are expected to eventually reach a consensus

Trend projections - Based on the statistical relationship between a factor related to employment and the employment level itself (ex. # of sales, # of units to determine how many employees will be needed)

You can use regression analysis, which is a statistical technique for showing the quantitative relationships between variables

Probabilistic model - Long-term forecast of employment needs that uses probabilities of future events to estimate future employment levels. The pro of this is that the simulation/model could account for more variables (ex. economic conditions, unemployment, sales), but the con is that it’s more expensive/time-consuming and may not be worth it if a simpler forecasting method is sufficient

Markov Analysis - movement of employees among different job classifications is forecasted based on past movement; simple calculation

Not as useful if you have less than 50 employees for a job category or if transition probabilities are not stable

Question 5

What are the 2 short-term forecasting methods?

Answer 5

The responsibility for short-term forecasting usually belongs to the immediate supervisors and unit managers

Typically predicts employment demands for a one-year period

• Budgeting
• Work-load Analysis - use info about the actual work content with job analysis; identifies # of employees and kinds of employees required to achieve goals

Question 6

Turnover analysis

Answer 6

The accuracy of employment forecasts depends heavily on the
accuracy of turnover forecasts

Processes:
1. Collect historical information
2. Analyze economic trends

Question 7

What is succession planning?

Answer 7

Deciding how management positions will be filled

Activities:
1. Review information about managerial candidates
2. Assess performance of prospective managers and determine what developmental experiences they need
3. Determine requirements for each position
4. Managers at each level in the organization should conduct a thorough review and discuss the foregoing information
5. Initiate developmental activities to accomplish the identified needs

Managers are most suitable to develop succession plans

Question 8

Define dual career ladders, transfers, attrition, shared work, rolling layoffs,

Answer 8

Dual career ladders - in career pathing, there’s both the managerial ladder (greater power, decision making) and the technical ladder (greater autonomy in the profession)

Transfer - can avoid layoffs, when there’s a surplus in one division and a deficit elsewhere; “bumping” refers to allowing senior employees to take a job of a less senior employee if their job is eliminated

Attrition - AKA “restrictive hiring”; failing to replace individuals who leave; can avoid layoffs

Shared work - wages and hours are reduced and employee can receive partial unemployment benefits

Rolling layoffs - having workers rotate in and out of unemployment

Early Retirement - ADEA allows orgs to offer early retirement benefits, but employees should be fully informed and there should be no coercion to accept it

Outplacement - services provided to employees who are terminated because of corporate restructuring; some companies provide using an outside consulting firm (ex. interview coaching, job retraining)

Question 9

Mergers and acquisitions

Answer 9

• Should involves HR from the very beginning
• Primary cause for failure of mergers and acquisitions is issues involving people & culture

Recommended steps when combining two companies:

• Develop a workforce integration project plan (all of below)
• Conduct an HR due diligence review (ex. EEOC audits, policies, contracts)
• Compare the benefits programs (ex. life insurance, PTO)
• Compare the compensation structures (ex. base pay, bonuses)
• Develop a compensation & benefits strategy for integrating workforces - package must be created after the analysis of com & benefits
• Determine leadership assignments
• Eliminate duplicate functions
• Prepare employee communications
• Merge the personnel data for both workforces
• Develop a retention strategy for those who remain

Question 10

What act recognized the practice of employee leasing?

Answer 10

The 1982 Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TERFA)