Planning in Organisation for Creative Workforce - Essay Example

PLANNING IN ORGANISATION FOR CREATIVE WORKFORCE Planning is the most important aspect of organisational management. Workforce planning is the key to acquire the kind of people the organisation needs and to retain them through various motivating factors such as salary, promotion, job security, learning opportunities, performance appraisals etc. Bramham (1994) states that human resource planning or workforce planning refers to the organisational activity of assessing and evaluating employee issues to ensure that the organisation would be capable to have the needed worker calibre in future. Taylor (1998) suggests that planning is done in an organisation to ascertain the availability of best suitable employee at best suitable position when the organisation needs it. It shows the criticality of organisational planning concerning human resource. Every organisation needs to plan in a proactive manner the labour needs that will arise in future. It will ensure that the organisation strives to attain the employees with suitable skills and attitude to train them for upcoming change. In this way, the organisation will have the 'right team' prepared for challenges when the time actually comes. Mullins (1996) maintains that human resource planning if done in an efficacious manner can enable the organisation to take imperative steps for the enhancement of employee productivity level at the right possible time. It assists the organisation in meeting all the necessary human resource requirements from hiring to firing in a systematic way. This reflects that human resource planning makes an organisation realise the factors undermining the productivity and calibre of its employees keeping them from achieving organisational objectives before it becomes too late. Most of the organisations do not actually plan to acquire highly qualified and skilled labour force, but most often to retain the employees on whom the organisation has already exerted substantial money and time. It is much easier to find and hire a person that is needed by organisation, but it is rather difficult to retain an employee who actually suits the organisation. Mathis (1997, p4) claims that human resources in any organisation remain under employed for organisational success. He says that workers are more likely to work less than their capacity if organisation does not properly plan their activities and motivate them in their work. This suggests that most of the organisations fail to utilise its workforce due to lack of planning leading to employee dissatisfaction. An employee who does not find any motivation into the job he performs, learns nothing out of the routine work, is not rewarded for any outstanding performance, and sees no challenge in his job is less likely to be motivated to work enthusiastically and perform at his best. Bramham (1987) propounds the most important aim of human resource planning in an organisation to foresee future need for employees not only in quantitative terms but also in qualitative manner such as the skills, calibre, performance and attitude required for particular types of jobs. Dessler (1999, p2) says that human resource management is all about devising policies and strategies for the employees working in the organisation. It includes selecting, training, evaluating, appreciating and providing convenient working environment for the employees. It shows that planning for creative workforce is very crucial for the survival and success of an organisation. The organisations use planning to select the kind of personnel it needs, motivate them and retain them towards future enhancement of organisational objectives. The organisations plan to realise organisational needs for workforce in future and take calculated steps to retain its employee through various means. In fact, human resource planning does not only enable an organisation to retain its employees but also to 'treasure' them so that they can gain more creative and efficient workforce. The use of planning by organisation to gain more creative workforce encompasses various methods such as training, employee development, skills enhancement, career planning, employee satisfaction, performance appraisal and job security. All of them lead to employee retention, which is highly favourable for the organisation. Employee Training Training is one of the most important aspects of workforce planning. Without training, no organisation can direct its employees, polish and utilise them towards better accomplishment of organisational goals. Training is not just a term; rather it is a complete process to introduce an employee to his future tasks and goals. It has been defined by the Manpower Services Commission (1981) as, "A planned process to modify attitude, knowledge or skill behaviour through learning experience to achieve effective performance in an activity or range of activities. Its purpose in the work situation, is to develop the abilities of the individual and to satisfy the current and future needs of the organisations" Training is one of the factors capable of making the employees stick to their jobs. If training is subsequent and periodical, it enables the employees to learn continuously enhancing their knowledge, which is sometimes more than financial benefits one derives from the job. Meister (1998) confirm this idea by saying that, "knowledge changes quickly, and people have to keep up". Kleiman (2000, p18) illuminates that "the fundamentals of a good employee training program are: orientation, soft skills training, and technical skills training". It reflects that training starts with "orientation" i.e., it begins with introducing the employee in a warm manner to the new place and get him acquainted with the job requirements. It then goes on to making him aware of his responsibilities and enhancing the right skills and attitude necessary for the job. Employee Development And Career Planning Organisations need to undergo planning process for the purpose of developing employees potential and undertake proper planning for their careers. Employee development requires planning in order to ensure the organisation gains more creative workforce that are beneficial for the organisational success itself. Developing the capabilities of employees suggests that organisation is preparing and putting its efforts to turn its existing employees into more capable staff for tomorrow. Bruijn and Friesen (1982, p64) illustrate the importance of employee development as, " The costs of not providing staff training and development are high, and represent a potential waste of human resources and talent. Job dissatisfaction, boredom, isolation, inefficiency, low productivity, high turnover, and an inability to attract and retain high calibre staff members" can serve to be the potential outcomes. It mirrors that organisation will risk the creativity of its workforce if it does not properly plan for the development of its employees. Mathis (1997, p314) suggests that, "development can be thought of bringing about capacities that go beyond those required by the current job'As such, it benefits both the organisation and the individual's career". Therefore, employee development planning is not only advantageous to the employee efficiency and growth but also leads to the future organisational prosperity. Career planning is yet another aspect of employee development to prepare them for changing market situations and enable them to learn innovative career advancements. It highly builds the employee moral and builds their trust into the employer and organisation. Moreover, when employees feel that they are learning and earning both while working for an organisation, their creativity and motivation level will rise. Moses (2000, pp134-139) says that career planning provides assurance to the employees that organisation is willing to invest in their capabilities and endow them with more responsibilities so that they can conveniently reach their career goals. Nunn (2000, pp20-21) says that career planning is specific to every single employee and it should be designed to ascertain their career goals and the way to achieve them. Skills Enhancement Before making any employee get started with the job, the employer should plan the skills needed for the successful accomplishment of the job. Gerbman (2000, p101) says that today's world is transforming at a rapid pace with the advent of Internet in business, so the organisation should also ensure that it is within the reach of its employees. The organisation should make available the right kind of information to prepare its employees for the job responsibilities, so that they can build necessary skills within themselves before they start to work. The skill enhancement process is not something to be done only once before the employee takes up his work. It is rather an ongoing process that should continue during employment at reasonable intervals so as to continuously brush up on their skills and to cope with the changing environment. This also needs planning and can really help the organisation to gain more creative workforce through subsequent skill enhancement. Employee Satisfaction If any organisation succeeds in achieving this objective, it can attain more creative workforce out of the existing workers. Satisfaction is the factor that is most influencing in driving the performance of employees at the optimum level. Garger (1999, pp35-42) comments that the employees having a feeling that organisation has no respect for them are not likely to put all their efforts into work. Jurkiewicz (2000, p55) maintains that the most important factors influencing job satisfaction for an employee are "feelings that the organization can be relied on to carry out its commitments to its employees and feelings that the individual is of some importance to the organization". If the workers continue to get some challenging work and their efforts into the work are acknowledged perpetually, they are likely to put their heart and soul into the work and remain committed to the organisation. Organisations should treat its employees as important for the success of company and its business. When employees feel that they are important for the organisation, they will certainly feel responsibility in their work. Gerbman (2000, p101) observes that organisation needs to realise that it requires the manpower to reach its goals. Additionally, the employees also need to realise their importance in the company. In fact, it is said that employee satisfaction does magic even better than salary and other financial benefits. Wagner (2000, p64) confirms this view that salary and other monetary benefits are motivating factors but employees also need satisfaction concerning their jobs, learning, career development etc. They are willing to enhance their learning, knowledge and skills to grow for future career prospects. Thus, an organisation reaching a particular standard of employee satisfaction is more successful than the ones having poor planning for workforce development, because if the employees of an organisation are satisfied, they will deliver more quality into their work. Nunn (2000, pp20-21) propounds that if these needs of employees are quenched by the organisation, it will really help to heighten the level of satisfaction and fulfilment among the employees. Logan (2000, pp48-50) emphasises that if a company wants to achieve a standard in customer satisfaction, it should first look for ways to enhance the level of employee satisfaction as both are certainly correlated. Therefore if the employees are satisfied, customer satisfaction will rise for sure leading to financial rewards for the organisation. Performance Appraisal Performance appraisals are the essential key to the proper planning by the organisation. An organisation should be well aware of the level to which each employee is performing so as to be in a better position to evaluate and reward the workers on the basis of their performance. Many organisations take up various planning methods to devise performance appraisals to stay informed on the employee efficiency and performance. Performance appraisals are not only useful for employers but are also equally important for employees to assess their capabilities and then compare it with the standards required for a particular job. This will help the employees better serve the organisation while employers will be facilitated to have a apparatus between job requirements and employee performance. Hendry, Bradley and Perkins (1997, p20) describes that performance management is "a systematic approach to improving individual and team performance in order to achieve organisational goals". Byars and Rue (2000, p275) illustrates that performance appraisal refers to: "The process of determining and communicating to an employee how he or she is performing on the job and, ideally, establishing a plan of improvement. When properly conducted, performance appraisal not only let employees know how well they are performing but also influence their future level of effort and task direction". ' The above definitions suggest that performance appraisals require extensive planning process on the part of the organisation. The standards should be predefined for particular jobs and should also be well communicated to the new and existing employees. Once the apparatus is set, the employees should be evaluated on a periodical basis and rewarded on the scale of performance. Dessler (1997, p343) says, "'Appraisals provide information upon which promotion and salary decisions can be made". Not only the performance appraisals are essential for an on-time evaluation of employees, but also they serve to the organisational interest of gaining employees with ultimate calibre and aptitude. Cornelius (2001, p141) emphasises on the importance of performance appraisal to gain more creative workforce for organisational success. He says, "Effective performance management can make a major contribution towards the achievement of business objective while maximising the contribution of employees. Moreover, an appropriate use of performance appraisal systems '.can provide valuable assistance in supervising and developing staff within work teams also". CASE STUDIES: HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING IN THE CORPORATE WORLD As discussed above, planning is crucial for the acquisition, development and retention of creative workforce. Modern organisations in practical apply human resource planning strategies to select the appropriate personnel and utilise them towards individual and organisational growth. For this purpose, they employ different methods of planning and implement them at different times to make the most of the prevailing situation. The following are some case studies based on some modern organisations' practical emphasis and experience of human resource planning. Case Study: Tesco Plc In the year 1985, a study concerning the customer store experience was conducted at Tesco Plc in which the management discovered that the store employees' attitude and behaviour with the customers was leading towards a decline in the company's sales. As the supermarket competition was extremely high in UK at that time, the customers were more inclined to shop at the places providing them better store experience with good customer service. When the management of Tesco Plc came to know about this issue, they took immediate actions to enhance employee moral and store behaviour. The first and foremost step they took was the "empowerment" of their employees. They allowed their employees working at stores to resolve customer issues immediately without having them go through a series of steps involved in customer query resolution. They even asked and trained the employees to handle customer complaints spontaneously for instance, whenever a customer would come with a complaint associated with any product, the workers themselves took the initiative of swapping it with the desired product. According to Tesco plc, this step has had the most powerful impact on the improvement of customer store experience. This all happened because they gave their employees a feeling of empowerment and self-respect leading to employee moral enhancement, which sometimes does more wonders than monetary benefits (Good Companies Better Employees, accessed 15.04.06). Case Study: Human Resource Planning In British Gas Cardiff The British Gas Customer Service Centre is located in Cardiff, South Wales with about 2500 employees in the company handling the customer calls concerning the company's Gas and electricity sales. The company needs to hire and retain skilled workforce to provide timely response to customers. However, due to the presence of a number of call centres in the area, the company faces the problem of employee retention, on which it has to pay a great deal of attention. The company follows a systematic human resource planning system. It places extreme emphasis on the issue of employee satisfaction, which it believes to have a direct relationship with the customer satisfaction. It carries out both internal and external research to evaluate the level of employee satisfaction in the company. It launched the 'employee community involvement' program to further enhance employee satisfaction at work. The program included employee involvement in volunteering activities, evaluation of employee satisfaction through survey and research, adoption of various employee development schemes, enhancement of employee skills, improvement of employee promotional and rewarding opportunities for their work, ensuring maximum employee retention etc. When, after some time the results of the scheme were traced, the company itself was amazed to see the outstanding improvement in employee satisfaction and retention level (Good Companies Better Employees, accessed 15.04.06). Case Study: Ericsson Ericsson is very keen about human resource planning and deems it necessary for the organisational success. It performs the human resource planning in two forms within the organisation, short and long-term. In both the planning processes, the company undertakes organisational research to evaluate and analyse future workforce needs and working environment. The company maintains a human resource department where the top managers undertake different planning processes. More emphasis is placed on the planning for organisation's internal and external environment to determine any transformation in employee needs, values and tendencies along with the market shifts, skill requirements and technological advent. This is done to ensure that the company's manpower is well equipped with the knowledge and calibre require by market so they can become more useful for the organisational success. References Bramham, J. (1987). "Manpower Planning," In S Harper (ed.): "Personnel Management Handbook". London: Gower Bramham, J. (1994), "Human Resource Planning", (2nd Edition), London: IPD Bruijn, E. and Friesen, M. (1982), "Investing In Human Resources, Staff Planning And Development At The University Of British Columbia Library", Advances in Library Administration And Organisation, p64 Cornelius, N. (2001), "Human Resource Management: A Managerial Perspective", (2nd Edition), Holborn, London: Thomson Learning, p141 Cowling, A. and Mailer, C. (1998), "Managing Human Resources", (3rd Edition), London: Arnold Dessler, G. (1999), "Essentials of Human Resource Management", Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall, p2 Garger, E. M. (1999), "Goodbye Training, Hello Learning", Workforce, Vol. 78, No. 11, pp 35-42 Gerbman, R. V. (2000), "Corporate universities 101", HRMagazine, Vol. 45, No. 2, p101 Gratton, L. (2000), "Living Strategy: Putting People At the Heart Of Corporate Purpose", London, Prentice Hall Hendry, C., Bradley, P., and Perkins, S. (1997), "Missed A Motivator'" Peoples Management, Vol. 15, pp20-25 Jurkiewicz, C.L. (2000), "Generation X and the public employee", Public Personnel Management, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp55-75 Kleiman, M. (2000), "What happens if you don't train them and they stay'" Occupational Health & Safety, Vol. 69, No. 1, p18 Logan, J. K. (2000), "Retention Tangibles And Intangibles: More Meaning In Work Is Essential, But Good Chair Massages Won't Hurt", Training & Development, Vol. 54 No. 4, pp48-50 Manpower Services Commission (1981), "Glossary of Training Terms", Third Edition, London: HMSO Mathis, R. (1997), "Human Resource Management", (8th Edition), Minneapolis, West Publishing Company, pp4, 314 Meister, J. C. (1998), "Ten steps to creating a corporate university", Training & Development, Vol. 52, No. 11, p38 Moses, B. (2000), "Give People Belief In The Future: In These Cynical Times, Hr Must Assure Employees That Faith And Work Can Coexist", Workforce, Vol. 79, No. 6, pp134-139 Mullins. L. J. (1996), "Management and Organisational Behaviour", (4th Edition), Pitman Publishing UK Nunn, J. (2000), "Career planning key to employee retention, Journal of Property Management, Vol. 65, No. 5, pp20-21 Storey, J. & Sisson, K. (1989) "Looking for the Future", In J. Storey (ed.) "New Perspectives on Human Resource Management", London: Routledge. Taylor, S. (1998), "People and Organisations, Employee Resourcing", The Cronwell Press Ltd, UK Wagner, S. (2000, August). Retention: Finders, keepers. Training & Development, Vol. 54, No. 8, p64 Website Good Companies, Better Employees, accessed April 15, 2006 [Internet]: http://www.centrica.co.uk/files/pdf/envrep/csr_Good_companies_better_employees.pdf www.ericsson.com Read More