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

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Employer of Choice– As evidenced in CIPD (2022), employer of choice identify the scope of organisations set strategies, policy development, benefits and conditions at workplace promote the organisations operations. In UK for example, organisations which are an employer of choice are categorised in the Sunday Times 100 organisations of working (AwardList, 2022). As evidenced in CIPD (2022), employer of choice is important for ensuring an organisation successfully achieve organisation benefits. This entail increasing employees loyalty, attraction of new opportunities, engaging highly and happier employees with maximum business outcomes attained which is in form of profitability. By becoming an employer of choice, Mouton and Bussin (2019) highlight that an organisation is appropriately positioned in attracting the best employees. This is while employment relationships being promoted. An appropriate reputation, advancing in their career and work-life balance.

Competitive Analysis– As evidenced in CIPD (2022a), this is achieved through providing the employees with total rewards system, flexible working opportunity and work shadowing. The importance of this is owing to the view that an entity need to come up with progressive initiatives aligned with the aims and objectives of an organisation. According to Bryson and George (2020), for these approaches identified, in the large organisation, this ensure appropriate management of strategic plans on their existing competitiveness. Therefore, the organisation options would include leveraging on competitive advantage, putting optimum input to improve their operations and withdrawal from their sector of practice. Competitive analysis involves carefully comparing an organisation’s own reward offerings, policies and practices to those of its direct competitors .This helps identify what similar organisations in the same industry are offering employees and where an organisation’s own offer is stronger or weaker. Data that would be compared include salary/pay scales, bonus/commission structures, benefits packages covering healthcare, retirement plans, discounts etc. (McKee, 2023). Comparisons help an organisation assess whether their overall reward package will enable them to successfully attract candidates or if adjustments need to be made.

Employer branding– This identify the image of the large organisation in the minds of their different job seekers. An appropriate employer brand assist the case organisation under restructure of its people function in achieving diversity and inclusion. Also, positive work relations, employee value proposition and communication of mission and vision achieved. Additionally, Employer branding includes developing a strong identity and positive reputation as an employer. This is done through carefully crafting a compelling narrative about employee experience and value proposition. Key activities include strengthening brand awareness through effective advertising of vacancies, maintaining an attractive employer website and profile on job sites/social media (CIPD, 2022). The brand can also be enhanced by highlighting employee testimonials, career progression opportunities, learning/development support available, and work culture/environment through such channels. Regular communication keeps the brand top-of-mind among active and passive candidates. A strong employer brand increases application rates from qualified talent and employee advocacy.

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Employment Market

According to ONS (2021) study, the UK employment sector has increased with approximately 0.5% to reach 80%. As evidenced in Bell and Blanchflower (2020), in UK case, approximately 35 million individuals are currently involved in labour market operations more than previous year in 2021.

In an event there are different individuals occupying various job positions, resourcing strategies end up being strict for ensuring they are recruiting the best employees. This is different from a situation where limited number of employees are existing in a job market influencing ability of prioritising on qualification issues with experience being less.

Labour Supply

 As evidenced in Cai (2020), for UK, since 2019, upto 90% of the entire labour market employees are aged between 35 to 49 years. In the last ten years, the employees aged below 24 years has significantly reduced with those of above 50 years increasing (ONS,2021).

The labour supply has an impact on the demand for resourcing highly skilled staff. This is while skills-job mismatch being appropriately managed. This is by ensuring that available employees are provided with appropriate opportunity to pursue career growth

A PESTLE analysis considers the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental factors impacting an industry or organisation as stated in CIPD, (2023). The three labour market; the rise in flexible working, aging populations, and legislation governing local hiring – are examples of trends with origins in the Social, Economic and Legal domains of the PESTLE framework influencing resourcing decisions.

Flexible working sees use of virtual hiring platforms to attract nonlocal talent to role regardless of location. Remote interviews improve candidate experience. Flexible benefits and hybrid working boost retention through better work-life balance (Mishra and Bharti, 2023). Virtual learning, mentoring and coaching aid developing remote employees. Long term planning considers changing needs for office space.

Population aging leads to targeted reskilling and retraining to continually upgrade aging skills (Düll, 2018). Succession planning facilitates knowledge transfer between outgoing and incoming employees. Roles may be redesigned to retain talent in roles with fewer experienced staff. Forecasting anticipates talent pipeline issues from skill shortages.

Local hiring legislation utilizes local university partnerships and job fairs. Showcasing opportunities aids compliance. Retention leverages career growth and local compensation. Resourcing models for central and local teams are adjusted to maximize external local hires. Compliant mentoring and internships develop local talent from communities.

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Incentives to invest on  L&D strategies- This make sure that future skills are achieved by the government through provision of appropriate opportunities to enrol in various government initiatives to pursue the L&D opportunities (Haer et al., 2019).

Apprenticeships– To meet the demand for future skills, experience is instrumental. By government investing in appropriate apprenticeships, there is a possibility of noting the ability of people to work (Bravenboer, 2019)..

Role of Employers

Succession Planning- To achieve future skills, succession planning make sure future-based process is pursued to maintain talents pipeline. According to CIPD (2020), this is to identify their knowledge scope, skills and behaviours.

Organisation culture- Employers can ensure that they have an appropriate culture which take risks and attempt to new and creative strategies and to work on approaches which ensure that they are prepared for future.

Role of Trade Union

High-Quality Learning- As evidenced in Itzchakov et al. (2022), this is achieved through providing good system for improving skills acquisition. For future skills achievement, through a leverage on quality learning process, there is a possibility of creating increased job opportunities (CIPD, 2022b).

Learning Representatives- For achieving future skills, learning representatives support employees in acquisition of relevant skills. This is at the same time collaboratively engaging employers to guarantee employees with an opportunity for further learning Finlay et al., 2021).

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Figure 1: Taylor’s 5 Rights Model

The workforce planning is elaborately identified as defined based on employees functions. Prior assigned roles implementation, employees are offered with sufficient information on their roles hence increasing their performance and dominating their markets and profitability (Willis et al., 2018). Also, morale of the staff is increased and unplanned absenteeism decreased.

Additionally, success in workforce planning offer support to line managers hence increasing returns and retention by management. For the large organisation in the case study, it is possible to promote the planned strategy and to work on the agreed findings from the analysis collected and interpreted. As evidenced in Ben-Gal (2019), success in implementing workforce planning also promote work-life balance. This achieves in improved retention rates. Hence, this process is important to the current situation for the large organisation for increasing their performance, market dominance and profits acquired.

The impact of the gap of demand and supply can entail labour shortage, skills lacking and increase in labour costs. The gaps address upskilling evident workforce formally, coaching and mentoring and support of lateral moves and secondments. The big organisation prioritise o succession planning and retention approaches. Succession planning harness a culture of L&D. In case organisation under restructuring, retention approaches are improved pay, job security and work-life balance.

The large organisation need to use workforce planning in mapping prevalent and future workforce needs. This is to improve productivity, lower labour costs and strategies for staff development.

Positive Impacts of Effective Workforce Planning

Effective workforce planning allows an organisation to map current and future workforce needs to improve productivity and reduce labour costs (CIPD, 2022). It supports line managers through providing staff with clear roles and performance expectations, boosting returns through increased performance and reduced. Workforce planning also aids in promoting work-life balance, enhancing retention rates (Sheppard, 2016).

Impacts of Ineffective Forecasting

If workforce forecasting is not conducted properly, it can result in labour shortages or surplus, as well as skills gaps (Consearm, 2021). This impacts productivity and increases costs from overtime, training, or use of contingent staff. Unplanned loss of talent and institutional knowledge also occurs.

Impact of Workforce Supply and Demand Gaps

Gaps between workforce supply and demand lead to challenges recruiting candidates with needed skills profiles This requires upskilling existing staff through coaching, mentoring and internal mobility programs to develop versatile talent pools and future-proof roles. Succession planning and competitive retention initiatives are also crucial to address talent shortfalls long-term.

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Gap Analysis- According to Beech et al. (2019), this method is used in comparing workforce capabilities holistically to achieve set objectives. Through the application of this approach, it is possible to establish whether different departments have achieved expectations of the management or their job description. Considering the large organisation in case study, this include pursuing a holistic needs evaluation and address of different future demands. Through an appropriate gap analysis, it is possible to evaluate the appropriateness of how relations with each employees affect their productivity, morale and trust-oriented relation s.

Organisation Benchmarking- In line with van der Voordt and Jensen (2018), this process guide an entity to establish sections of referencing and comparing, creating standards and using approaches adopted. By use of benchmark, an organisation is able to identify how other organisations pursue their job roles and initiatives pursued for efficient and cost effective practice compared to other competing organisation. The outcome of this process is establishing a background of improving performance, defining the best practice and identifying areas of competition. Besides, the drawbacks of this method is its failure to encourage inclusion of different stakeholders hence reducing customers satisfaction.

Effective workforce planning requires utilizing suitable techniques and tools to determine current and future staffing needs as stated in CIPD ( 2023)  .Below are the evaluated two such techniques – the managerial judgement technique and Delphi method – used to support workforce planning.
Managerial Judgement Technique

The managerial judgement technique involves soliciting opinions from managers on future workforce needs based on their expertise, experience and intuition (CIPD, 2022). For a large organisation, this technique allows harnessing institutional knowledge to predict internal and external factors like attrition, recruitment needs and skills demand. However, relying solely on individual views presents a risk of bias.

Delphi Method

The Delphi method structures group communication processes to obtain consensus on complex problems using questionnaires, controlled opinion feedback and statistical analysis of responses (Yousuf, 2019). For workforce planning, this involves confidential surveys of an expert panel, usually managers in key functions, regarding likely scenarios and their probability impact on resourcing over 2-3 planning cycles. While time-intensive, it reduces bias risk compared to single opinions (DWP, 2022).

Evaluation of the tools

The managerial judgement technique provides a low-cost starting point but its reliability depends on the accuracy of individual managers’ forecasts. The Delphi method mitigates this limitation through anonymized group consensus, helping validate subjective views with empirical data. However, its administration takes more effort. Both tools suit a large organisation to leverage collective insights, with Delphi offering robustness through structured engagement of a cross-functional expert panel. Regular recalibration is important with either technique, to update for changing business realities.

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According to CIPD (2020), this is a process applied in identifying and training likely future-based senior management, leadership and employees for occupying specific senior and major job roles. Taking into account of post COVID-19 pandemic challenges, this approach is critical to manage risks of skills shortage. The rationale of this is ensuring engagement of employees with immense knowledge, competent enough and personalised characteristic of labour force for filling existing employment chances. A key approach to succession planning is identifying and developing internal talent. Regular talent reviews and skills assessments identify high performers with potential for future roles. Individual development plans help address any skills gaps through training, mentoring and coaching (CIPD, 2021). This supports harnessing existing talent pools to fill positions.

Approaches

 Demographic Changes- As evidenced in Čiutienė and Railaitė (2014), approximately 70 million employees who are ripe for working represent the Generation Z and the Millennials. Further, a substantial number of the generations is holistically involved to look for employment impacting on performance of the succession planning.

Identification of skills gap and training needs- COVID-19 pandemic has had a direct implication on increasing the scope of skills mismatch while decreasing level of labour retention. For the large organisation in the case, a significant challenge affecting their operations is lack of relevant skills important to execute their roles.

Contingency Planning

This process is used for guiding organisation capacity to handle adverse events occurring or could occur in future (Sullivan et al., 2019). The importance of this is harnessing a flawless business strategy and to implement and improve level of management of prevalent challenges. An important approach is identifying and prioritising risks. For each critical role, potential workforce disruption scenarios need evaluation in terms of likelihood and impact. Risks like attrition, skills shortages or external events are considered. The roles most vulnerable to identified risks then have contingency plans developed (see figure 2);

Figure 2: Contingency Planning Process

Approaches

Organisation uncertainty– Uncertainties in modern business environment call for implementation of flexible contingency planning. For attainment of a forward-based objective, the case organisation need to ensure they prioritise on investing consistent commitment. Complexities and current rules in risks management evidence the most significant risk which impact their capacity of accessing a good talent pool. Considering this, the large organisation ensure they are appropriately placed for risk management linked to professionals and as such to leverage assess of performance for attrition management.

Organisation Structure– According to Romero-Silva et al. (2018), organisation structure is informed by structural contingency theory. Through a success in contingency planning, it is possible to achieve a holistic structure, organisation characteristics and maximising set gains.

In conclusion, Succession and contingency planning play a vital role in reducing workforce risks for organisations. Succession planning develops talent pools internally to fill vacated positions seamlessly. Contingency planning establishes fall-back options to deploy if key roles become vacant unexpectedly. Together they help organisations sustain operations and maintain required skillsets and experience levels during times of change, shielding the business from unnecessary disruption (Giberson et al., 2009). Regular review and update ensures plans stay relevant in addressing emerging risks proactively.

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