Summative Assessment for Resourcing and Talent Planning

Question One: Labour Market Conditions for British American Tobacco

British American Tobacco is a multinational company with its headquarters located in London. It is a group of companies that operate in a decentralised form of management and follow a centralised code of ethics and employment principles. Among the regulations are ensuring a healthy local consumer market and ensuring that the company follows national requirements in its countries. The company is also dedicated to diversity in the labour market to ensure equality during the hiring process. It also encourages fairness and dignity in the workplace environment to ensure that each employee is given equal opportunities for growth and development. British American Tobacco’s code of ethics in the hiring process is also against exploitation in the labour market. The organisation has strict policies against child and forced labour in all 180 countries. These policies and codes of ethics have been applied in the UK and the US labour markets.

The UK’s labour market trends are highly competitive due to decreased unemployment since the COVID-19 pandemic. As of 2019, the UK has experienced a gradual increase in payrolled employees of about 275,000 employees per month. By February this year, the country has recorded 29.7 million payrolled employees reducing the unemployment rate by 3.9%. In addition, vacancies in the UK have increased by approximately 1.5 million as businesses recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, with a gradual increase in the weekly hours, thus promoting productivity in companies. However, reports show that the weekly working hours are yet to reach the pre-pandemic levels, hence the need for organisations to present competitive strategies to attract and retain highly qualified personnel. British American Tobacco has developed various policies to enable the company to position itself strategically in the highly competitive labour market in the UK. Among these strategies is increasing rewards based on employee performance and career progression. In addition, the company offers competitive salaries to qualified individuals and provides healthy pension schemes, annual bonuses and health benefits. BAT also provides third-party benefits to ensure that they attract and retain qualified personnel in the highly competitive UK labour market.

The US’s labour market is characterised by a high unemployment rate and 164.6 million individuals eligible for employment. It also has low employer concentration, a higher labour force and poor anti-competitive labour practices. The labour markets also have high discrimination, with people from white racial backgrounds getting better job opportunities than the minorities in the society. The employers in the US labour market have higher power and exploit the labourers by offering low salaries, especially to the minority groups, unpredictable working schedules, harsh working conditions and limited chances for career and opportunity advancement. In the long run, the poor conditions of the labour market affect economic growth and shrink the product market. British American Tobacco is ranked among the best places to work in the US as it has established favourable working conditions. The company offers flexible working hours where employees can choose the most convenient working hours, thus achieving productivity in the work environment. In addition, the Human Resource Management workforce hires highly skilled and motivated personnel to perform a professional work environment. However, BAT employees report complex hierarchies in the operational structure, making promotions and salary increments tedious processes. Employees also have to advance their academic qualifications to qualify for salary increments. The strategies that BAT has put in place have enabled the company to create a competitive niche in the labour market.

Question Two: Roles of Government, Employers and Trade Unions in Ensuring Future Skills Needs are met

The government plays a significant role in ensuring progressive skill development in the labour market to fulfil the skills needs of individuals. First, the government develops specific rules and policies to ensure that organisations constantly generate platforms necessary for skills development. It also acts as a watchdog to continually monitor the economic market structure and niche in the labour market. In cases where the labour market requires a specific skill set in the changing business environment, it can develop strategies such as subsidising the cost of education in the field. Secondly, the government can also develop strict minimum wage policies to ensure that companies in the labour market offer higher wages to the employees. An increase in the minimum wage may require employers to hire employees with higher academic qualifications and better skills. The ripple effect of a minimum wage policy may lead to an increased need for employees to advance their careers and undertake activities that may improve their skills set to meet the demand in the labour market. Lastly, the government can implement policies like compulsory education advancement for payrolled employees. The modern-day business environment is characterised by accelerated technological progress and highly competitive markets, which requires a country to maintain a high skill-base among employees. Enhancing compulsory education advancement increases the possibility of meeting future skills needs.

Employers also play significant roles in ensuring future skills needs are met in the labour market. Governments often offer competitive funds to employers, whereby they compete for the funds by submitting employee training proposals. In the recommendations, employers develop training strategies that will ensure that all employees are trained and that their skill sets improve to meet the needs of the business environment. Such competitive funds allow employers to train employees according to the available technologies in the market. They also work together with training institutions to ensure that the participants acquire highly competitive skills. Employers can also invest in private sponsorship to allow their employees to embark on formal training in local or international training facilities. They encourage the employees by paying for the training programs and compensating them through salary increments. This encourages employees to pursue such programs to improve their skillset and enables them to maintain a competitive advantage in the highly competitive labour market. Employers benefit as they can retain highly skilled employees. Through constant training, employers can ensure future skills are met for sustainability in the labour market.

Trade unions also play a vital role in ensuring that future skills are met in the job market. They advocate for employees and other significant stakeholders in the labour market. Trade unions comprise people with similar positions and needs in the labour market, thus giving a voice to the involved parties to pursue education and rigorous training. Trade union members are often facilitated to access regular training and learning resources that help them achieve future skills needs. The unions also remind their members to advance their skillset and seek institutions that help individuals pursue education. Trade Unions also allow employees to negotiate for better salaries and better compensation when they advance their education. About seventy per cent of members of trade unions confess that they often pursue education advancement due to the support they often receive from their respective unions. The support offered involves encouraging members to pursue education, guiding them on the most relevant resources and availing resources that may promote self-directed learning among its members in the labour market. Therefore, trade unions play a significant role in encouraging their members to enrol in skills development programs and availing necessary resources.

Question Three: Principles of Effective Workforce Planning and Tools Used

Workforce planning is the ability of an organisation to forecast, analyse and plan the supply and demand of the workforce to ensure that the organisation meets its long-term goals. It enables organisations to review the current employees in the work environment, understand the current needs of these employees and their future needs, and understand the gaps that may exist in the supply and demand in the labour market. Workforce planning enables organisations to identify the recurring needs of employees and helps them retain highly skilled employees by matching them with the right roles in an organisation. Thus, organisations use workforce planning to develop effective hiring strategies appropriately and boost the company’s productivity.

Strategic workforce planning aims to address two critical requirements in an organisation. First, it seeks to align the workforce with its current and future goals. It achieves this by analysing the essential skills required to meet an organisation’s goals. Second, strategic workforce planning helps an organisation to develop long-term strategies to acquire and retain skilled personnel to meet its goals. It also incorporates important principles such as the involvement of major stakeholders in the workforce planning process. The organisation’s top management involvement includes setting the vision and the direction that the company should take and ensuring that the resources required are put in place. It also actively communicates the plan to employees and other necessary stakeholders that may be associated. The second principle is to determine and analyse critical skills that may be necessary to meet the current and long-term goals. The business environment changes rapidly due to changes in technology and budgets in the external environments; thus, the need to determine the skills that will remain viable is achieving organisational goals through the changing business environment. The third principle is to analyse and assess gaps in human capital to ensure that they develop the necessary skills to improve organisational well-being. These gaps may include technological know-how, HRM skills, and leadership, among other administrative decision-making processes. Workforce planning helps companies determine gaps that may exist and limit business growth.

The fourth principle of workforce planning is to improve the capability necessary to achieve administrative and educational strategies in an organisation. This is achieved by helping top management enrol into training programs to help them become more flexible and competent as they carry out their administrative roles. It also streamlines the administration process in a company and helps manage other employees to meet the short-term and long-term goals. Workforce planning helps build a transparent work system and encourages accountability in the system. It achieves this by developing clear guidelines to facilitate the decision-making process and ensuring that the parties are held accountable for their actions. The fifth principle is to evaluate and monitor the progress of the workforce planning strategy to check for significant shortcomings and determine whether it helps achieve the desired outcome. Evaluation and monitoring also allow organisations to predetermine whether the fixed human capital aligns with the organisation’s goals and ensure that contingency measures are put in place to ensure efficiency in the workforce planning process.

A strategic Workforce planning map and Scenario Planning are practical tools used by Human Resource Management to align the human capital to organisational goals and improve communication within the workforce planning process. The Strategic Workforce Planning Map creates a top-down working map that enables the HRM to visualise the planning process’s ultimate goal and identify significant objectives to enhance efficiency within the company. Scenario Planning helps HRM develop real-life solutions to address real-life needs in a work environment. The management tool allows organisations to build tactics and evaluate them by analysing future possibilities in the work environment.

Question Four

Basic Succession and Career Development Plan

The primary function of the succession and career development plan is to link current staff to future roles in an organisation that is expected to expand in the near future. The expansion is attributed to the growth of L-Matte Company over the past ten years.

Future Needs

• The organisation will require skilled personnel to work in new extension L-Matte Companies established in the Asian market.
• The company will require to recruit an administrative task force to oversee organisational responsibilities in the new market and make decisions that will help the company establish itself in the foreign Asian market.
• The organisation will require culturally diverse individuals who understand the Asian market and those who can communicate in at least Asian languages.

Linking Current Staff to Future Roles

• Interested employees are advised to apply for the basic succession and the career development plan.
• The interested candidates should be willing to undergo rigorous training and be ready to relocate to the proximity of the new company in Asia.

Competencies and Skills

• Selected employees will participate in a leadership training program to improve their decision-making processes.
• They will also participate in training that will help them understand Asian cultures and their way of life to increase the chances of business success in the new market.

Goal setting

• The HRM team will accept applications for the new positions and assess to select the most suitable individual for the posts.
• The team selected will replicate the professionalism and effectiveness of the company in the Asian branch.

HR Contribution Plans for Downsizing an Organisation

One of the significant responsibilities of HR personnel when downsizing an organisation is communicating the plans with the involved stakeholders. The information should be communicated to the top management, which develops a downsizing plan and develops ways to implement the plan. The HR collects accurate data necessary to help top management make correct decisions when downsizing. HR Management also ensures fairness and equity in the downsizing processes of a company. The data collected displays the role and responsibilities of each employee, especially those that might be affected by the downsizing process. This allows the top management to retain effective and highly skilled employees in the organisation. It also allows Human Resources to cut down a company’s expenditure by minimising labour costs. In the long run, the company can use the limited resources to train and retain highly skilled personnel to allow productivity and business growth. Therefore, the employee population remaining after the downsizing exercise is easier to manage and educate to help develop a healthy working culture.

HR Contribution to the Development of Job Descriptions, Person Specifications and Competency Framework

An HR personnel issues a job description document that contains the duties and the responsibilities of the most viable candidate for employment. It allows provides guidelines of what is expected among an employee and helps them align with the objectives of an organisation. On the other hand, a person specification is a complete description of the minimum skills, knowledge, and personal traits that an individual should possess to enable them to perform the duties of the job vacancy. The document job description and person specification document create a framework that enables Human Resources to identify the most qualified individual to carry out specific tasks in an organisation and ensure that the employee aligns with the vision and the mission of an organisation. Lastly, it creates a competency framework that enables HR to guide qualified employees towards achieving a workforce that has a shared understanding and one that maintains excellent individual performance behaviours.

Question Five

Main Legal Requirement for Recruitment and Selection

Every organisation must follow various legal guidelines when recruiting and selecting skilled personnel. Different countries have different requirements for the recruitment and selection process, and each organisation is expected to adhere to the legal procedures. However, each organisation is expected to adhere to all discriminatory offences when selecting and recruiting a new workforce. First, organisations should conform to Equality Act (2010) and abstain from discriminating against employees based on age. Any individual above the acceptable age bracket should be given equal opportunities in recruitment and selection. In addition, organisations should restrain from gender and disability basis. Organisations should allow both men and women to compete for positions in a company. They should also offer equal opportunities for the selection process and recruitment process. They should provide equal opportunities to qualified disabled individuals. If the employer feels that the disabled individual may be limited from performing the task due to physical inability, they should notify the necessary authorities. Other discriminatory factors that organisations should restrain are sexual orientation, race or religious beliefs of an applicant.

Secondly, organisations should adhere to the Data Protection Act (1998), which dictates that the Human Resources personnel should protect the employees’ data. This involves their performance, skills and other personal details entrusted to, failure to which the information may be exploited. Employees should also have access to their data and should have a right to decide how the information is used and stored to ensure their safety. They should also be involved in publishing the data to reduce exploitation cases. However, the organisation can share an employee’s information with or without their consent if it is a matter of national security. Personal information can also be shared publicly if the employee is not alive, as the Data Protection Act applies to living individuals.

Strengths and weaknesses of two different methods of recruitment and selection

Recruitment Agencies

In the modern-day business environments, organisations have access to recruitment agencies to recruit and select employees for companies. Recruitment agencies have their advantages for an organisation. First, an organisation can benefit from a recruiting agency as it has a shorter hiring complex that is flexible and fast. Such agencies use social media platforms to identify individuals with personal and academic skills who are able to fulfil the needs of the employer. Thus, they often have a large number of applicants, thus making the process relatively easy. Secondly, recruitment agencies are able to scheme through a large number of personal information issued by applicants. In the long run, they are able to access highly skilled employees for the employers. Recruitment agencies also help companies get highly qualified employees as they often promote regular training and self-directed learning to ensure that their employees are able to keep up with the rapidly changing business trends.

However, recruitment agencies fail to offer cultural fit for the employers. The employees they hire often lack the ability to match with organisational culture thus limiting smooth assimilation of employees in the work environment. Secondly, recruitment agencies are quite expensive compared to the traditional sourcing of employees through internal Human Resource Department. The agencies are often expensive as they often avail skilled personnel anytime an organisation requires to hire. Lastly, organisations that use recruitment agencies to hire their employees may be unable to achieve employers branding. Lack of employer branding limits the organisation to develop an employer culture, which may bust the organisation’s reputation as the best employer in a certain region of field.

Personal Interviewing

Personal interviewing is the face to face interviewing process where the interviewer and the interviewee asks and responds to questions directly. It has its advantages, which compels employers to use the personal interviewing process. First, employers are able to judge the technical skills of the candidate based on the vast information provided by the interviewee. It also helps overcome language barriers that may be present between the involved parties. Each participant is able to use communication techniques such as body language and other techniques in case of the language barrier. Lastly, it can help create a rapport between the candidate and the employer as they are able to interact face to face.

However, personal interviewing is a time consuming process as the interviewer communicates with one individual at a time during the interview. The interviewer also requires more time to decide on the most qualified individual for a position. Secondly, personal interviewing is limited by geographical location as the participants should meet face to face. Thirdly, personal interviewing is labour intensive as it requires a large panel to interview an individual. The panel interviewing the individuals may require compensation for the time spent on the recruitment and selection process.

Question Six

Reasons why people leave or remain in an organisation

Employees choose to remain or leave an organisation due to the work environment. They often seek a work-life balance. If an employee is able to become productive in the work environment as well as maintain a healthy social life, they become satisfied thus increasing employee retention. Secondly, employees may leave or remain in an organisation if they are aligned appropriately, depending on their skills set. Lack of alignment may lead to stress, pressure and low motivation in the work environment and they end up leaving the organisation. Thirdly, poor communication channels between the top management and the employees may increase the likelihood of an employee leaving an organisation. Organisations should create strong communication channels to enable employees to air out their problems and also share viable solutions, thus increasing employee retention.

Costs of a dysfunctional employee turnover

Dysfunctional Employee turnover can damage the employer’s identification brand due to the inconsistent interactions among customers and business partners. Employee retention helps the organiation to maintain healthy cultures that attract customers and business partners. Organisations may lose team productivity due to reduced morale among the employees. Low team productivity results in poor decision-making practices and poor services to customers, thus affecting the company’s productivity. Lastly, a company may incur more money as they hire and rehire employees within a short duration. Thus, a dysfunctional employee turnover costs an organisation’s reputation, low productivity and increased costs in the hiring process.

Strengths and weaknesses of two different approaches of retaining talent in an organisation

Recognition and rewards

Organisations often benefit from recognising and rewarding employees who perform exemplarily as they are able to motivate the employees. Employees will likely show off their talents more if they are rewarded through monetary and non-monetary means. Lack of recognition and rewards may cause demotivation and poor performance. However, organisations may be inclined to use recognition and rewards as the only means of retaining talent, thus causing poor results. Secondly, the approach is only viable to employees in departments such as sales whose work is quantifiable.

Flexible working environment

Organisations may use the flexible working environment approach to retain talent. One of its benefits is that it increases employee engagement leading to productivity. Providing a flexible working environment allows individuals to maximise on the hours that they are most productive and can use the least productive hours undertaking self-directed learning. However, flexible working environment may lead to poor communication between the top management and the employees especially when an employee requests to work from home. It can also lead to employee isolation when an employee works from home.

Question Seven: Recommendations for an Organization on Good and Lawful Practices for Managing Dismissal, Retirement and Redundancies

The Human Resources Management should keep up with the changing trends of legal updates to ensure that they are able to practice according to the lawful practices. The HRM can achieve this by reading about the trends and researching more often in case of any changes. Secondly, the HRM team can maintain good and lawful practices by ensuring that they do not discriminate employees on racial basis, age, gender or disability. Practicing equality in the hiring and employee retention process enables the organisation to participate in good and lawful practices.

To manage redundancies, the Human Resource Management should provide fair reasons to the affected employees as to why they may reduce employees. They should also be open to various options they the top management, among other stakeholders, should endorse to reduce redundancy and achieve productivity in the work environment. On the issue of retirement, the HRM should ensure that they uphold the Equity Act (2010) that forbids organisations from discrimination. HRM should ensure that they refer to laws that enforce the retirement age among elderly employees. Lastly, the Human Resources Management team should manage dismissal by providing fair reasons to an employee before they release them. The fair reasons include poor conduct of the employee, poor performance of the employee, redundancy in the workplace, if the employee breaches code of conduct by being involved in illegality, or if there is a conflict of interest between the employee and their responsibilities in the company.