(Solution) CIPD Oakwood 5HR02 Talent management and workforce planning Assessment ID / CIPD_5HR02_22_01

Word count: Approximately 300 words

The relevance of focusing on competitive labour market is to ensure that organisations position themselves appropriately for recruiting highly qualified staff with promise of competitive pay provided (Lauder & Mayhew, 2020).

For organisations to position themselves in a competitive labour market, the best practice include;

Competitor Analysis– This process is identified in CIPD (2022) as a process used to identify the competitors for the organisation and pursue a research on their resourcing strategies. For their positioning in competitive labour market, competitor analysis data is sourced for guiding in noting strengths and weaknesses of organisations in competition. Therefore for achieving an increased competition, they establish appropriate approaches compared to competing organisation position. This is also essential for improving the organisation operations.

Employer of Choice– In line with the Higgs Model of Employer of Choice, this concept identify the scope in which employees are granted with appropriate opportunity and good work environment. Hence, by being an employer of choice, Andrew Wales (2022) note that organisations preference is working in such an organisation and as such regarded as employer of choice. For example, in my current organisation, to be identified as an employer of choice, they promote holistic leadership styles, competitive pay/total rewards, meaningful workplace functions and appropriate culture.

Employer branding– In line with Reis et al. (2021), an employer brand include all perceptions possessed by employees in regard to value in their workplace and environment. To be appropriately positioned in competitive labour market, unique employees value proposition is developed for employers and employees. Therefore, such an organisation is characterised by different characteristics and features making them unique. Such an employer appropriately positions themselves.

Word count: Approximately 200 words

Increased demand for flexible working–  From the findings in Chung et al. (2020), after COVID-19 pandemic arose, a substantial surge for flexible working arrangement has taken a substantial increase. For example, considering the UK case, Chung et al. (2021) noted that 65% of the employees prefer to work through remote working arrangement with a recorded 80% increased flexible working plan.

The significance of this trend include preference of organisations in using recruitment agency to meet the need. Further, by offering capacity development opportunities, employees end up acquiring skills essential to take part in flexible working.

Ageing workforce– For UK case, Dulmage and Han (2021) note that upto 52% represent aged employees of 51-65 years. For this trend, its implication include using social media in recruiting the potential employees for the sake of engaging Millennials and Generation Z in the process. Further, as part of recruitment, Wilson et al. (2020) note that the case study organisation could have their priority on offering total rewards.

Unemployment rates– In the international market, post COVID-19 pandemic and economic downturn has directly contributed to economic issues leading to unemployment level increase (Khraief et al., 2020). By having immense recruits number, preference of the case study organisation can prioritise on using social media platforms, referrals and organisation website to meet this demand.

Policies development– In various jurisdictions, governments are major policy makers in collaboration with organisations for successful organisations operations.  The different policies made offer employees with a chance of being supported by their organisations to pursue future skills development. For the case organisation, they can leverage on the Saudi Arabia Labour Policy (Aref, 2021) which has been passed to increase future development of the employees.

Apprenticeships– For UK case, the country government offer employees with a 97% support for participating in apprenticeships with balance settled by the employers. For the case organisation, they can leverage on this opportunity to increase level of their future skills (Handley, 2022).

Employers Roles

Succession Planning– Employers core functions are identifying and recommending most appropriate capacity development opportunities for their employees. As evidenced in Jindal and Shaikh (2020), succession planning improve capacity of ascending to best positions hence need for future skills achievement.

A culture of continuous-based learning– It is the responsibility of the employers to initiate an appropriate culture that attract employees to progressively pursue them (Lemus-Romani et al., 2021). For the case organisation, this would be essential to encourage employees to acquire future-based skills.

Trade Unions

Training Schemes–  The trade unions offer appropriate training schemes for their members to guide them in acquiring new insights and experience and support for their future skills growth.

Learning Representatives– In most of the cases, the trade unions are engaged in guiding their members to participate in learning-based opportunities and support continuous skills growth. The future skills are therefore achieved improving the case organisation credibility to achieve future skills. According to Bolt et al. (2022), the future skills are normally facilitated by learning reps for improving employee voice and guarantee a secure future skills development.

By using the 5 Rights model developed in Taylors Model, the best practice entail;

Improved retention– By successfully executing workforce planning, Jaillet et al. (2022) identify the likelihood of increasing the employees retention. This is while engaging best staff. For the case organisation, this can include ensuring that learning opportunities are provided and trends recommending most appropriate jobs to be occupied.

Improving professional based growth– Through a successful workforce planning, there is a possibility of ensuring resourced employees have entire essential skills. Any existing limitation of skills is evidenced with L&D process being recommended.

Impact when forecasting is not done

As evidenced in Krishna and Garg (2022), failing in executing forecasting of both internal and external labour supply, this contribute to resourcing challenges. This is while encountering labour market issues evidence in an entity. The importance of the process is informed by internal development aspects not prioritised and also failing in embracing appropriate technology.

Impact of gap of workforce supply and demand

The importance of implementing workforce planning is to manage workforce demands and supply strategy for facilitating successful and efficiency in their practice. Organisation management for the case study organisation are guided to guarantee success in replacement of vacant job positions (Gronberg et al., 2022).

Word count: Approximately 275 words

As part of workforce loaning, this strategy divide and plot staff into 9 distinct and unique data points. This is noted by Benson and Shue (2024) to be successful in identifying the employees performance scope and growth opportunities to fit in the 9 different grids.  For the case study, this approach can be used to facilitate people practice professionals to consider entire workforce as core for their employees in different departments to successfully work in collaboration.

The advantages of using the technique entail easier to applied owing to the simplified structuring into 9 grid. Also, strengths and weaknesses are similarly prioritised in ensuring that right boxes are prioritised. This is with easier clarification given for ensuring employees are supported and guided appropriately (Liu et al., 2022).  The drawbacks include employees feeling discriminated when ranked below their appropriate performance scope. This is retention in the organisation reduced.

Ratio Analysis

This is a strategy/tool which is used to identify skills and knowledge-based opportunities essential for promoting organisations efficiency in their practice. According to Kutaula et al. (2020), for the case study organisation, for success they would note on future needs for their HR by calculating ratio of different business factors and employees to be resourced.

The strengths of adopting this approach include being holistic in nature on the information provided and financial  success, profitability, liquidity and efficiency. This similarly engage different stakeholders for ensuring best decision making  and areas to improve evident.

Succession planning is a process for identifying and developing future leader and managers to assume vacant job positions (Ritchie, 2020). To succeed in succession planning, people practice professionals, they note on all the areas of consideration in the succession planning. The advantages of succession planning entail ability to fill their job functions successfully after leaving. The disadvantages of this entail likelihood of ending up with unqualified successor with trust issues prevailing.

Contingency planning on the other hand is a process followed to ensure that an organisation is ready to respond to occurring emergencies. According to Chen et al. (2021), the advantages of this is prompt management of challenges as they occur. The disadvantages include being cost-intensive to implement and taking a lot of time.

To implement succession planning, the strategy followed entail;

Address of skills gap– After emergence of COVID-19 pandemic, there were financial downturn internationally which represent ed a significant issue impacting organisations including mismatching skills (Dillon, 2021). Considering my organisation, challenges with skills mismatch were evident. The advantage of this entail prioritising on risks and activities for consideration and avoidance of crisis management. The challenges of this include immense costs and time applied to implement this specifically during constantly changing external business environment.

For the contingency planning, the strategy used entail;

Risk identification– Considering contingency planning, risks are evident in resourcing implemented for management of risks. An appropriately structured strategy offer guidance in deciding on actions to be pursued which is its advantage (Shah et al., 2020).

To manage workforce risks, by implementing succession planning, organisations priority and focus going through a transition, different job roles end up being essential for expected results (Zhong et al., 2021). The rationale of this is to create job functions, collaboration and sufficient support offered to the leaders to hone skills. Contingency planning is appropriate for risks management to ensure readiness of entities in managing unexpected occurrences. This is while making high-level quality decisions.