Resource and talent planning is a critical function that comprises of the various aspects of a business like the recruiting team in the analysis on a forecast of resources selection of the right hiring process, networking, and even maintaining the talent pool. This vital function is essential in making sure that the company can recognise and attract key talent from the competitive market; thus they will be able to achieve both short-term and long-term goals. The study of resource and talent planning is essential for the organisation as it helps in the Understanding of the critical contemporary labour market trends and their significance for workforce planning. It also is helpful in the undertaking of talent planning and recruitment activities. The study is essential in comprehending how to maximise employee retention. Lastly, it is useful in knowing how to manage dismissal, redundancy and retirement effectively and lawfully.
This assignment is all about the resourcing and planning aspect related to talent within business organisations. There are six parts of this assignment. First part is a short account of the organisation operating in two different countries, for instance, the UK and other states by briefly evaluating their labour market trends. The second part provides a brief account of the role played by the government, proprietors and trade unions in making sure future expertise needs are met. Third part fleetingly describes the key values of effective workforce planning, along with examples of any tools used for this. The fourth one gives a brief description of the role played by HR in the development of fundamental progression and career improvement plans; in contributing to downsizing plans; in helping to the development of job descriptions, person specifications and competency frameworks. The fifth part explains the major legal requirements regarding employee recruitment and selection. The last part provides a concise summary of the advice for the organisation on good, ethical and legal practice for managing discharge, retirement and dismissals. Thus, the assignment deals with the given case study of an organisation belonging to the fictional online gambling industry.
Labour Market
The labour market is the demand and supply of labour in that the employers supply with the demand while the workforce provides the supply.
Major Trends in Contemporary Labour Markets of Different Countries
Within the UK, the labour market and its overall performance have been increased from its fallen scenario due to the recession of 2008 (Millard, 2015). The UK’s labour market has gone through a significant fall in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rate during the recession in 2008 and 2009 (Millard, 2015). However, this labour market is more flexible compared to other European economies such as France (Oguz and Knight 2009). Nevertheless, UK‘s labour market is less flexible compared to the labour market of the United States (Oguz and Knight, 2009).
Recently UK has experienced considerable growth in its real GDP level (Mumtaz and Theophilopoulou 2017). Throughout the economic downturn, the country’s overall financial health has revealed that the UK’s average growth has been remained lower to some extent compared to the total of OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (Millard, 2015). Now, one of the most remarkable facets of the economic recovery of the UK is the growth of employment (Kim et al., 2015). While some worry about low productivity levels, the overall economy has become a handy creator. After five years of reconstruction, more than 2 million new employment positions were created, regardless of the decline in the public sector. The number of new jobs is approaching 750,000 people, which are 250,000 people two years ago (Sikka, 2015). The unemployment rate in the country decreased from 8 to 5.5 percent (Inman, 2016). The unemployment rate before the financial crisis was almost the same. GDP growth of UK has not been principally strong, and since 2009 it has averaged about 1.8pc annually. On the other hand, within the G7, UK is one of four countries, alongside the America, Canada and Germany, which has experienced 6pc-7pc employment growth during the five years of revival up to now. However, France has experienced employment increase by less than 1pc (Inman, 2016).
According to Costes et al. (2015), the online gambling industry has a potential market in countries such as China. India, United Kingdom, America, South Korea. However, there are provisions to provide the opportunity for online gambling for the industry. There are also different trends in the market industry of online gaming. Important trends are included in the aspect of industry consolidation, business-to-business expansion and entry of different land-based casino operators and emerging platforms. The online gambling industry is one of the wealthiest companies in various industries. The growth of the online gambling industry is the critical sources of business within this industry (Costes et al. 2015).
However, the economy of UK has returned, and a sustained trend of recovery has been seeing (Laffey, Della Sala and Laffey, 2015). The country’s economic structure has more speedily increased. Thus, the unemployment rate has also been escalated as per the economy’s increased nature (Collins, 2009). Nevertheless, the country’s labour market has confronted some problematic issues associated with productivity level among people working in various organisations of the competitive industries (Kim et al., 2015). There is a low rate of the skilled workforce within the market’s competitive sector. Regarding online gambling, the highest competition rate has been faced by every labour market (Collins, 2009).
The role played by European online gambling industry is pivotal in the worldwide production, as it contributes a significant share towards this industry regarding revenue (Laffey, Della Sala and Laffey, 2015). Along with others, France is the primary market. The French economy is anticipated to continue its growth fashion moderately, and this growth would be experienced due to the enhancement in the labour market and rising private consumption (Costes et al., 2015). However, the upcoming elections in France could bring new development or changes in the country’s economic health.
The Significance of Loosening and Tightening the Condition of Labour Market
Tight labour markets mean the specific period referred to the shortage in the skilled and talented workforce (Ndou " Gumata, 2017). However, loose labour markets are due to the surplus of talented and skilled workforce undertaking various available roles. Regarding the loose labour market, the roles and responsibilities are integrated into the HR initiatives related to employee recruitment and selection, retention and effective organisation’s design (Clogg, Eliason " Leicht, 2001).
Thus, both types of labour markets strongly influence the labour market’s condition. The loose market is based on active employee recruitment and retention within the competitive industry, whereas a tight market has implied a high competition level for the talent pool (Clogg, Eliason " Leicht 2001). However, it is indicated by the loose market that the potential workforce has ample supplies within the competitive industry. Loosening and tightening of the labour market are cyclical as there is a conflict between scholars to implement them in the market.
How Organisations Position Themselves Strategically
As organisations, for instance, the companies operating in the online gambling industry, are engaging in their business operations in this competitive industry, this sort of business is illegal in the majority of the countries. Thus, carefulness in their business process is essential to them. However, there are states where this business is under the law, and thus the company has established its business in the UK. In the UK, the battle has been lost by the prohibitionists and religious observance since gambling in the country is now a norm, worth over £30 billion per annum to the British economy.
The living cost is very high in the UK and France. The given online gambling organisation operates many websites, which are run by skilled and talented employees. However, due to some problems associated with the employee management faced by the company, they have employed an HR director. In the company, the recruitment criteria include the fluency in two languages compulsory (English " French). The enterprise was experiencing the problem of high rate of employee turnover due to the strict requirement of top skills and competencies as their role is to talk with diverse clients (Abendroth " den Dulk, 2011). Thus, skilled workers are the major issue of the gambling industry but the jobs are not very stimulating, and the living cost is also very high in the UK and France. Therefore, the company has to formulate an effective HR strategy to retain the talent pool and to position themselves strategically in two competitive labour markets. Following are the strategies (Burke " Cooper, 2008; Abendroth " den Dulk, 2011):
Demand Forecasting
Demand forecasting refers to the process through the HR management will assess the present employee position and the company’s future requirement of human resources. This task can be done by evaluating the employee turnover rate. If this rate is less, then the employees’ demand in the future will be less, and this will be in the best interest of the business regarding profitability. In case of high rate, the demand will be high, as the company will plan as a result (Burke and Cooper 2008; Abendroth " den Dulk, 2011).
Supply Forecasting
Typically, supply forecast can be done on the availability of employees in a specific domain. The primary source of supply forecasting is local demography, as the company will always favour locals. This strategic approach has the potential to assist in retaining the skilled workforce for a long time (Burke " Cooper, 2008).
Forecasting Requirement
Forecasting requirement copes with the employee type required by the company. Forecasting requirements are fundamental as devoid of skilled workforce business operations become very difficult. Only availability of proper workforce is not enough to solve the issue; the workforce should be experienced and talented so that they fulfil the organisation’s requirement. Mostly, the organisations do not find skilled local people, and thus they recruit people from other different places (Burke and Cooper 2008; Abendroth " den Dulk, 2011).
Action Planning
When the company comes to this stage, it has to plan its recruitment by assessing every single approach of forecasting. Thus, the company understands their requirements and is aware of the supply of employees for the industry. If the local area does not support the demand of the employee, then the company has to recruit candidates from other regions (Burke " Cooper, 2008; Abendroth " den Dulk, 2011). For this, the compensation scheme needs to be strong so that the company retains the employees easily as the living cost in the UK and France is very high for foreigners. This stage also makes sure for employee retention. For this, training is the best approach. Employee training has some key advantages, including the employees’ skills, and are increased for better productivity and employees are capable of performing well (Burke " Cooper, 2008; Abendroth " den Dulk, 2011).
Recruitment and Selection
Legal Requirements about Recruitment and Selection
Typically, the online gambling company needs to avoid partaking in any legal and ethical issue when it comes to employee recruitment and selection process. Human rights are the fundamental rights for all, and thus organisations are responsible for respecting these rights to be competitive (Nikolaou " Oostrom, 2015). Therefore, the online gambling company needs to stay away from the discriminatory acts that are legally protected.
People are protected by “the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964” against discrimination in the employment area regarding all types of discrimination, including colour, race, religious belief, nationality sexual orientations, and others (Nikolaou " Oostrom, 2015). Financial damages are provided by the Civil Rights Act of 1991 in situations of intentional employment discrimination (Nikolaou " Oostrom, 2015). Moreover, political association discrimination is another discrimination form during the employment process, the laws including the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the Employment Act 2002 protect workforce for political, racial, age, and other types of discriminations (Nikolaou " Oostrom, 2015). Further, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 protects people with disabilities, and this Act has been amended and now it the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 (Nikolaou " Oostrom, 2015).
The Strengths and Weaknesses of Different Recruitment and Selection Methods
The online gambling company can approach employee recruiting and selection methods with having a reactive or proactive aspect. Internal recruitment, external recruitment, and the third party sourcing are three most commonly used methods for the company (Brown, 2011). The table below is about the strengths and weaknesses of these specific methods.
Recruitment and Selection Methods
Strengths
Weaknesses
Internal tracing
Collection of talented candidates (precognition of candidates’ strong and weak points/areas)
Employee morale id enhanced
Adaptation of people due to less requirement of training and orientation)
Productive relative to the cost
Options or choices are limited
Discontinuation for students who fail
Time wastage on interviewing inside applicants who will not be considered
Favouritism/Bias
External sourcing
Excessive choice for employee selection
Well-proportioned HR mix
Equality
Ecological adaptability
No cost-effective
Challenging issues with adaptableness
Selection could be incorrect by choosing irrelevant candidate
Third-party sourcing
Takes candidates from every branch required
Less partiality
Talented candidates can be placed for roles
Easy access to masses
Minimum recruitment cost
Time consuming approach due to a huge number of applicants
Wrong recruitment
Time loss
Source: (Brown, 2011)
When the company comes to the recruitment and selection method, it will need the external sourcing method by which its HRM will advertise the vacant position online. This approach would be sufficient for the company to get some candidates, but it cannot ensure that all the people are viewing such advertisements. Thus, the company may miss the talented one. The recommendation for the gambling firm is that its HR management will have to adopt the third party recruitment method and then further carry out its interviews with the candidate to proceed. This approach could be supportive of getting better results.
The Strengths and Weaknesses of Different Approaches to the Retention of Talent
Strength
The online gambling company has developed different HR policies, such as smart payroll, friendly administration, job flexibility regarding timing, and quarterly bonuses. All these might be considered as the company’s strength for their employees’ retention.
Weaknesses
In the online gambling industry, the failings are more than the strength when a company comes to retain its employees. The job is call centre type involving high stress and less job satisfaction. The living cost is very high that may lead to a high turnover rate. Further, the job type and the whole industry are not very reputable (Nikolaou " Oostrom, 2015).
How Organisations Seek to Become an Employer of Choice
The company should have highly qualified staff members as they are operating in the industry of online gambling where customer satisfaction is of the highest priority. The organisation needs to employ the use of the human resource department who would be responsible for the payroll section and they will also be able to introduce some of the HR policies making the organisation run smoothly.
The company has to make sure that they are responsible for improving their image. Human resource policies make sure that the company takes responsibility for the employees and vice versa. The procedures are responsible for a better working environment and skill development of the workforce when they are performing their duties to the employees who make sure that there is work satisfaction.
Ethical is another important aspect of an organisation. The company is operating in their own countries or in different states; they have to make sure that the business that they are working is ethical and legal. This aspect can be done by following all the government regulations that exist.
Respect is another quality that the company strives to possess. It is a significant feature in every job, as respect can be of job profile, in the workplace, between employees or employers and staff members, and the society.
Work-life balance is a critical feature that a company can have. An industry with work balance makes sure that the employees have a balance between their work and family time. There is a need for breaks as some of the organisation runs for 24 hours, which can be very strenuous. The shifting of responsibility between work and home breaks the monotony of doing a single thing. This balance can be seen through the breakdown of shifts, which in turn causes the growth of both personal and professional life. The company should provide such a chance so that a worker never grows tired of performing his or her duties.
Talent and Planning
The Role of Government, Employers and Trade Unions in Ensuring Future Skills Needs Are Met
The policy made by the employers, trade unions and most importantly the government has been transformed with the passage of time. Due to the phenomenon of globalisation, internationalisation, liberalisation and privatisation, the overall picture has been changed within competitive sectors of the global market, and then the online gambling industry is one of them. Within UK and France, the employers’ and employees’ needs have also been changed. The competition level has been escalated due to the changed picture of the gambling market. Thus, the employers focus strongly on the process of fulfilling the employees’ needs within the organisation. Thus, the policies formulated by the government and trade union should be changed, so that the future skills needs are met.
According to Brewster and Hegewisch (2017), the role played by a trade union is pivotal in influencing the employees’ work conditions within various business organisations of this industry. Nevertheless, the online gambling company can adopt different internal strategies shortly.
Flexible Labour Market
Both the British and French governments can minimise the impact of rules, regulations and laws on the labour market’s situation. The flexible labour market means there are lower intervention and management of government compared to another competitive labour market. For both employers and employees, there is a variety of benefits of a flexible labour market (Davies and Freedland 2007). Thus, this type of labour market has terrific attributes for the labour market sector. Employers or organisations, in a flexible labour market, have the right to hire and fire employees by adopting some easy steps. An organisation can become very competitive and effective towards its employees. Due to the phenomenon of globalisation, every organisation needs to be a competitive gain advantage to be a competitive firm within its market’s competitive sector. The workforce performance and productivity need to be increased within the competitive market (Davies and Freedland 2007). A majority of the companies prefers the flexible work environment because it can be suited to their employees’ lifestyle and working condition (Millard 2015).
The trade union, on the other hand, can play a pivotal role in gaining success towards the workforce with the changing nature of the employment relation. For both the employers and employees, foreign direct investment (FDI), property and share need to be appealing within the competitive sector of the market. The trade union has the potential to take various steps for the employees’ development (Brewster " Hegewisch, 2017).
The Key Principles of Effective Workforce Planning with Tool That May Be Used For planning. Five fundamental principles that effective workforce planning needs to address regardless of the context wherein the preparation is done (Schweyer, 2013):
• Involvement of senior stakeholders including management and employees in devising, communicating, and enacting the plan.
• Determination of the critical knowledge and skills that will be inevitable to meet present and prospective programmatic results.
• Development of strategies that are customised to recognise gaps in number, deployment, and placement of human capital strategies to enable and sustain the contributing role of all critical knowledge and skills.
• Building the capability needed to recognise requirements related to administration and education pivotal to support strategies for workforce planning.
• Monitoring and evaluation of the company’s progress toward its goals of human capital and the contributing role that have been made by human capital results toward meeting programmatic outcomes.
Tools for Effective Workforce Planning
Specify the Direction of the Firm’s Strategy
If the organisation has not been set the direction and defined its strategic plan across the workplace, effective workforce planning is not achievable. It may also include checking the performance requirements, identify / essential skills / vital ability to be successful. An organisation with a solid strategic plan, including the expected change in the geographical distribution of work, changes in workload, access times, the model of service provision and the type of customer service. With this in mind, it is imperative, since any change in these programme elements will have a significant impact on the demand for the specific knowledge or skills of the company. (Schweyer 2013)
Model the Workforce Currently in Existence
Modern organisations recognise that the opportunities for the workforce and the distribution characteristics for the development of workforce planning are essential. It also provides a basic understanding of employees and helps develop effective closure strategies. Also, the organisation must consider existing, contractual and additional personnel to model existing staff. These employees complete database at any time and skills available to employees provides a good starting point for the planning staff. (Schweyer, 2013)
Evaluate Micro and Macro-Environmental Factors
Organisations are not able to survive in alone, or in a “vacuum”, they are affected by both the internal and the external factors of the business environment. The social analysis, economic, demographic, and the technological together with political factors play a vital role for effective planning of the employees as it helps in determining the direction of the staff members. Putting into consideration some of this external and internal factors will help the organisation in strategically defining its workforce plan as it determines which service is needed more than the other, and which customer to serve first or even which employee needs a job (Schweyer, 2013).
Formulate a Strategy to Fill Gaps
It is the most successful tool used by many modern-day organisations. The gap analysis determines the excess or deficiency between labour demand and labour supply. It is a strategy to decide how to fill the gap and overcome the weaknesses. When planning the workforce, what will help companies fill these gaps, when a large number of employees needed, require different skills or redefine the processes and positions and must complete the work. A variety of effective strategies to narrow the gap in these strategies may have to hire qualified professionals, development plans, layoffs, skills development and preservation of the knowledge of the organisation and so on. (Schweyer, 2013)
Downsizing
The Role of HR: The progress of Basic Succession and Career Development Plans
The critical function is to embrace the best practices in essential succession and career development plans, HR department always needs support from the board and CEO and without this support the HR manager it cannot reach its goals and objectives. It begins from the top and has to be incorporated or split to other functional departments, and involvement of the potential leaders as process co-owners is necessary. HR has the role, and this should always be a transparent programme. For this, HR starts the initial process by developing tools for assessment and then defines proper selection criteria. After that, talented employees of prospective leaders can be recognised. It is essential they should be set on the voyage of continuous and steady development with clear objectives set to them. Periodic monitoring and measuring are imperative. (Rothwell, 2005)
Contributing to Plans for Downsizing an Organisation
According to HR experts, HR managers have a few necessary steps through which they can make a downsizing work.
Communication during downsizing is essential and much communication is necessary. The workforce almost has an insatiable craving for news and information. Organisations that fail to keep critical elements informed of their plans risk causing hostility or loss of friendship among essential groups in the future of the firm. Besides this, learning is necessary for a workforce that restructuring an organisation is not an only event. Regardless of how a firm goes about downsizing, HR has the role in mitigating issues and helping the senior management by gathering data to demonstrate that there may or may not be an agreement. Not a sole is more suited to drive a downsizing endeavour and convey the message than the seniors. The senior HR managers need to make themselves available to respond to questions. (Sitlington, 2012).
Contribute to the Development of Job Descriptions, Person Specifications and Competency Frameworks
Job descriptions are a crucial tool when the HR is trying to arrange work according to positions in an organization. It explains the duties the scope and the responsibility of a particular job. The HR uses the job description of a staff member mostly during recruitment, orientation, selection, assessment of performance, planning of job successions and even compensations. Person specification works for hands in hand with the job description. The HR exploits the person specification during the recruitment and selection process of new staff members. It mostly deals with the qualifications, experience, attributes, physical qualities, knowledge and the skills of a person. The HR department can use such skills to create job advertisement and even criteria that is useful during the interview. A sample of the job description and personal description is evident in appendices 1 and 2 respectively below.
According to the example, the person holds a job description of a customer advisor. Some of his job descriptions are to work as part of the team provide accurate information and many others. All the details of the job are given in the job description part. However, person specification is slightly different it covers the knowledge and skills that the person has.
The HR is helpful as it contributes to the development of job descriptions, person specifications, and competency frameworks. The job description is essential during the interview in any company. Most of the employees feel that their primary responsibility concerning job description is to keep most of them up to date thus informing the managers in the case that there are any changes. Conversely, the interviews make sure that the Human Resource department store the job description of each of the employees in the company, thus it can be easily used in the future and creates a sense of uniformity.
The interviews of the company product development ideologies for the use of job descriptions, for instance, for instance, using a specific project job description together with the person description and the official job description. All this will be useful in evaluating the performance of a job using the competencies that are grouped in categories and skills. This grouping will allow the company to plan employee education and research effectively. Competencies is a highly used human development resource. It dealt with specific labour and market demands that exist and described in the skills.
Turnover
Why People Choose to Leave or Remain Employed by Organisations and the Costs Associated with Dysfunctional Employee Turnover
In high turnover industries such as the gambling industry, a high level of employee turnover consists of employees leaving by resigning or being dismissed in their employment’ initial few months. Even when the employee remains to stay for at least a year, it is frequently the case that the soon leaving decision instead of later is successfully taken in the employment’s first weeks. Thus, the main reason why people choose to leave or remain employed by organisations is the effectiveness of decisions related to recruitment and selection, both on the part of the employee and employer. Besides this, then the quality of induction programmes is also a key factor. (Bambach, 2010)
Moreover, the possibility is to work out a ‘not less than’ figure very easily by calculating its costs on average to supersede a leaver with a novice. After that, this figure can be greatly increased by the crude turnover rate for that group of employees to compute the total turnover cost of the year. The significant areas of costs are (Bambach, 2010):
• The resignation’s administration
• Costs of recruitment
• Costs of selection
• Cost of coverage throughout the period when there is a vacancy
• New employees’ induction training.
Online gambling organisation needs to adopt the following good and lawful practice for managing dismissal, retirement and redundancies:
As a form of termination, layoffs can happen when the job of an employee no longer exists. The reason behind this may be an employer needing to downsizing, shut down the business, or specific work is no longer required. In case of a redundant employee, they may be entitled to specific rights, such as leisure time to look for work, pay for redundancy, a specified notice period and consultation with the management.
In the event of any collective dismissal, the employer, together with the union or representatives of the workplace, is a good practice to agree on the beginning and end of the consultation process. The employer must consult any employee (directly or indirectly) that is affected by layoffs or dismissals.
Counselling should be conducted by employers to reach an agreement with relevant representatives on issues such as avoiding dismissals or reducing the number of layoffs. Even if redundancies are voluntary, this obligation also applies. Failure to comply with the request for consultation may lead to a claim, the so-called grant for protection.
Moreover, the age of retirement is not necessarily the same as the age of pension. The period is not affected by the Equality law at which somebody gets the state retirement pension. Thus, the company needs to operate its retirement policy devoid of unlawful discrimination. This indicates the company needs to not target employees for retirement due to a protected characteristic (except age in the type of retirement position) or, if an employee has a disability, for a reason along with their disabled state unless the management can objectively vindicate doing this.
References
Abendroth, A. and den Dulk, L. 2011. Support for the work-life balance in Europe: the impact of state, workplace and family support on work-life balance satisfaction. Work, Employment and Society, 25(2), pp.234-256.
Acas 2014. A guide for managers and employers Bullying and harassment at work. [online] Available at: http://www.acas.org.uk/media/pdf/2/j/Bullying-and-harassment-in-the-workplace-a-guide-for-managers-and-employers.pdf [Accessed 26 Jan. 2018].
Bambach, M. 2010. Recruitment and retention. Sydney, N.S.W.: CCH Australia Ltd.
Brewster, C. and Hegewisch, A. 2017. Policy and Practice in Europea
