Contingent Workforce Planning at Motorola, Inc - Case Study Example

Contingent Workforce Planning at Motorola In the new era, the number of companies whose employees are not employees in tradition sense, but contingent workers, is increasing. This new form of human resource is because; the specialized organizations and companies on commercial basis are able to provide businesses with workers who are still under the agencies providing these services. This trend is available in most countries regardless of its economy. Since such recruitment agencies and companies of this kind of workforce have become a more significant component in terms of labor formation and employment in most sectors of industry and economy, there is enough evidence that businesses pays significantly less attention to recruitment and staff managing problems due to the use of OCWM. Consequently, a company where contingent workers are responsible for usual staff and form inter-corporate culture comes up ((Kaila, 2005). This significantly results in increase activity and contingent labor influence, which leads to insecurity of the employment relationship. Despite of the Motorola being an international company working in more than 70 countries worldwide, it is affected by the same human resource problems. The modern companies use contingent workers. Initially, the company’s human resource system was based on the transactional relationships of different staffing and recruiting firms. The firms were responsible for the staff selection and making contracts in the market. Consequently, this approach had many problems that related to lack of coordination and staff management. There was also lack of common corporate contingent labor plan sourcing, disparity between the contingent workers pay rate and that of the company’s full time workers and high costs of sourcing. Among the Motorola Company’s problems, there are two main ones: the first one is associated with the company’s business activities cycle. This required a certain degree of flexibility of the staff’s number. The second problem relates to the high cost of the previous staff recruitment scheme, which involved a great number of staffing companies and agencies. There are some facts that affect the problems and issues at the Motorola Company. Recruitment of contingent employees is a modern tendency in big companies and Motorola is a no exception. The trend of hiring temporary workers has reasons, and as earlier mentioned, this trend is due to the cynical nature of the industry. This requires flexibility of staffing. Among the other reasons that a company use the work of contingent workers is due to the inability to organize employment and training of specialists, which is in accordance to their needs. In Motorola, we can see that there was no approach to the staffing, which resulted to many complications and problems. The analysis of the situation at the Motorola helped to reveal some features and facts that affect problems and issues. The increase in number of contingent workers that are employed in the company is the reason for the instantaneous growth of staff turnover. This fact put an additional liability on human resource managers (Cook and Gildner, 2005). This is because; their actions were required for adaptation of new temporary workers. Errors of the human resource, in that period of staff adaptation lead to sacking of workers. This is the main reason for the growth of the staff turnover. Secondly, the existence of two different sets of workers- the contingent and the permanent employees, doing the same work in the company, created some tension and separation among these groups. The reasons for the separation include; differences in payment and, reimbursements package and the general relation to the Human Resource. Another fact affecting the problem of contingent workers is contingent workers were used to implement more difficult tasks, and were given shorter work contracts as compared to the permanent staff. This created an extra burden on the Human Resource managers of the company, who had to combat with the tension. In addition to that, a redeployment of the functions of the Human Resource managers of Motorola and the managers of the recruiting companies, had an effect in that managers of agencies followed the private status of contingent workers (Dowling, 2008). Similarly, monitoring and managing the quality and productivity of the work of contingent workers, remained the unchanged duty of the Human Resource of the company. The agencies that provided contingent workers to Motorola were still involved in implementing the Human resource functions in the company. This included the transfer of function, screening, and the recruitment of new employees. Recommendations The analysis of the situation at Motorola showed that the company’s staff is not a consistent group of employees. This is because in addition to the salaried employees, there were contingent workers (Kaila, 2005). As a result, the best decision will be to merge all staff to be under one management structure. Human Resource management should be performed on all the existing staff, regardless of their status. The new system of Human Resource management will be tasked with ensuring that there is a comfortable work environment for all employees. It should create a team of professionals too. The greatest team success can be realized through the suitable selection of staff and the ability to warrant maximum work productivity of all the workers both permanent and contingent (Dowling, 2008). Creating an office of contingent workforce management will aid to succeed in that. This also solves the early existing problems. The transfer of the functions of screening contingent workers to agencies led to the loss in control of the ability and qualification of contingent staff. This problem is solved in the following form; i. The company coming up with a two-tier system of recruitment. In this case, the company selects employees according to requirements and qualifications. At stage two, the HR managers conduct interviews for those candidates who passed the qualification test at stage one. ii. An additional training program should be implemented. This should be conducted by a special staff-training agency. The training should target all the employees including the contingent ones who have skills that are important and needed in the company. The duties of the office of contingent workforce include; integration, coordination and bringing all the functions of the human resources in one unit (Dowling, 2008). This will be realized through implementing the principles of work with the staff and interactions. In conclusion, a contingent workforce that is designed will help to build a proper unified approach in the company, in relation to staff selection, educating new employees, management, and training. This model helps to solve the existing problems and it is very effective. Work cited Dowling, P., Festing, M., & Engle, A. D. (2008). International human resource management: Managing people in a multinational context. London: Thomson Learning. Kaila, H. L. (2005). Human resource management. Delhi: Kalpaz Publications. Kandula, S. R. (2009). Strategic human resource development. New Delhi: PHI Learning Pvt Ltd.qa Cook, M. F., & Gildner, S. B. (2006). Outsourcing human resources functions: How, why, when, and when not to contract for HR services. Alexandria, Va: Society for Human Resource Management. http://www.ukessays.com/essays/management/contingent-workforce-planning-at-motorola-inc-management-essay.php Read More