Workforce Planning and Critical Management Activity - Coursework Example

Workforce Planning Workforce planning, a critical management activity, cannot logically be separated from assessment of opportunity. It plays a crucial role in retail sector used as a coordinated effort in order to adjust and balance its resources, and produce programs of logical action. Since management executives are faced with the necessity of utilizing scarce capabilities and resources in limited periods of time, allocation is a major problem. Effective allocation can only be achieved, however, through planned behavior. By enabling the conservation and allocation of human and physical resources, management planning provides the basic means for designing the marketing mix, implementing management programs, and establishing new management objectives. Although finance and production have long been planned, management activity has not. Often it has been performed rather haphazardly. The emphasis on planning of management operations (which is new, and has been stimulated by the management concept) is now widely applied. Workforce planning is concerned with predetermining courses of management action. It is based on both management intelligence and the assessment of opportunities, since it deals with the future in respect to both perspectives and operations. Management programming and management action are its major objectives, which are achieved through organizational implementation (Bradford et al 2000). Two general approaches to management planning exist: a deterministic or general formula approach, and a dynamic approach. The former, a rather static approach, usually details the management planning procedure as follows: (1) determine objectives or goals; (2) set up a plan to achieve them; and (3) control the elements to make sure they conform to the plan. The sequence is goals, plans, and control. This approach ignores the realities of management situations (Bryson 2004). The dynamic approach stresses that retailers should plan for change. It underscores the fact that plans are not merely the results of objectives, but that plans affect objectives. The goals and objectives can be changed, as can the plans. Changes in management opportunities, for example, result in changes in company objectives and hence changes in management planning. In addition, a company might purposely set out to change its management plans in the sense of improving them (Bradford et al 2000). For organizations, planned activity is goal-directed and achieves a more efficient expenditure of management resources. Workforce planning necessitates classification of a companys goal or objective; but recently there has been a change in the perception of planning (Bryson 2004). A company first specifies goals and then develops plans to carry them out, thus being able to achieve the goals. Goals thereby determine plans -plans are ways of reaching goals. Another dimension of the relationship between goals and plans stems from the fact that an organization does not have a single corporate goal; it has multiple goals. Thus, a decision that at first appears to be a compromise among conflicting goals actually creates a major-goal. This goal is the weighted average of all corporate goals rather than a single goal. As the basic vehicle for matching ends with means, or management resources with market opportunity, management planning becomes the mechanism through which a company is brought into line with the external environment (Kay 2003). Planning is an essential function of management, which has a forward-looking, integrated, and balanced view of total action. Management planning encompasses the perspective of the future, the types of objectives established, and the strategies and tactics to be employed. Through management planning, the fundamental strategies of the business enterprise are conceived on the basis of market needs, forces, and opportunities; and management is implemented as a philosophy of business operation and a way of corporate life (Bryson 2003). It is evident that the planning of management involves (1) corporate values and objectives; (2) the appropriate personnel; (3) personal values and objectives; (4) management opportunities; (5) management barriers; (6) the business organization and its resources; and (7) the time horizon and space dimension (Campbell, 1997). All of these factors must be combined in an integrated network of activities. In each company subsystem, concessions must be made in order to achieve a unified plan. Temporal and spatial relations are particularly important. The major goal of management programming is programming the marketing mix. It balances management resources and inputs in terms of the communication mix, distribution mix, and product and service mix previously described. management programming is, then, a process of devising or arranging the correct order in which various mixes should be initiated and completed, based on flexible application, evaluation, and revision. It bears on the sequence of management operations in which the outcome of preceding operations governs future ones (Becker, 2003). Since various divisions or functions of business are highly interdependent, management activities are also interdependent, and since manufacture customer relations are intertwined, programming becomes a necessary activity (Becker, 2003). Management programming helps retailers to determine and specify the tasks necessary to carry out management strategies, in proper sequence and relationships, dictating who will perform each task, how it will be done, the resources needed, and the time and target dates (Goodstein et al 1993). It tries to allow for various eventualities and to map what might be done given each. Similarly, the marketing mix is divided into subtasks (goods and service mix, distribution mix, and communications mix) that are further divided for programming purposes. For example, programming advertising includes media selection, the allocation of funds among media, and the timing, themes, layouts, and appeals of the ads (Becker, 2003). Time relates to management planning because markets are inherently concerned with temporal factors. Market potential and purchase decisions presuppose a specific period of time. management efficiency is measured on the basis of sales or profits over time, and management programs are laid out in terms of a time period -- a quarter or a year. However, the time aspect may be considered in another way. In retail environment, management planning rests on the sales forecast, which is a consideration of future events (Goodstein et al 1993). As a result, planning is involved in the determination of expectations. The question, what would happen if markets or competitors strategies change in a specific manner, is extremely important. Management plans must be closely related to budgets, since they stress the profit and cost expectations of alternative management programs. Rooted in management plans, budgets become their financial expressions. Budgets are also used to control and implement plans (Bryson, 2004). Myers states (cited Bryson 2004, p. 54): “We know of no other factor of near the significance of planning which could have so directly induced a change in behavior of the magnitude observed. The data would suggest that the directness and influence of planning on management practices was very substantial indeed, and that changes up or down in planning would result in very significant changes in management practices” Workforce planning requires sales projections for such periods as one, three, five, and ten years ahead. These projections predict customer and competitor reactions; attempt to gauge acceptance for new products; and highlight economic, social, demographic, technological, psychological, and political changes, all of which are difficult tasks to perform -nor can they be performed with the degree of precision available in other more concrete situations (Goodstein 19). Information that provides a perspective for future operations is invaluable for corporate decision making. One of the major characteristics of the adoption of the management philosophy is that plans and programs replace haphazard management methods. By providing the means for anticipating the firms future requirements along an orderly, continuous, systematic, and sequential basis, management planning avoids crisis decisions and concentrates on integrated management programs of action and employees development (Bryson, 2004). In organization with weak workforce planning, it is important to introduce gradual changes and transformations. On every stage of change implementation, the reputation and strong leadership qualities of managers are the crucial elements. Another skill that will be useful is a positive attitude, especially on the stage of change implementation, because this is the stage when something could go wrong and spoil general expectations. In critical situations it’s important to maintain composure and positive spirit, otherwise the staff will feel leader’s uncertainty and become reluctant to changes. Arguably, people remain the ‘key factors’ in organizational change. Therefore, it is reasonable to draw attention to the staff motivation, in order to deliver successfully the change and to eliminate individual resistance ((Bryson, 2004). During the restructuring and deletion of one of the departments and consequential redundancies, people may start to worry about their future; as a result people might be de motivated. As the second factor, the theory distinguishes motivators or a growth factor. great attention should be drawn to the restructuring of jobs when making changes within an organization, because nature of the work might be one of the motivating factors. If the nature of a job is well designed an employee is genuinely encouraged to self-develop and exercise self-management learning (which is undoubtedly needed in change process) (Kay, 2003). The manipulation and co-option skills of managers means identifing the leaders oposition and finding ways to control them and make them a part of the change program and stratgies initiatives. Teh use of explicitl or implicit‘ methods or, in other words, implementation of power culture forces employees to accept change threated with firing, transfering or not promoting. Enforcing planning change in organization is all about managing risk (Bryson, 2004). In sum, workforce planning is a rational way of translating experience, research information, and thought into management action. It is a pragmatic, organized procedure for analyzing situations and meeting the future. Based on information about ends and means to determine various causal relationships, trends, and patterns of behavior, it is concerned with the selection of alternative strategies. Workforce planning is an integrated, intelligent, rational process for guiding business change. Such application of strategic planning, thinking, and management, drawing upon the vast resources of a variety of organizations and institutions, can have significant positive effects on the efficiency of state and local government, the improvement and simplification of selected service delivery functions, and the financial viability of individual agencies and jurisdictions. This combination will help organizations with weak culture avoid a failure and introduce changes at the short period of time. The change process will be essential aspects of strategic improvements. Strangely enough, of all these characteristics, change is the must misunderstood. The very idea seems completely foreign to the modern mind. It is often deliberately confused for advantage--strategically. Generally speaking, careless use has made the word meaningless and rendered contemporary organization all but dysfunctional. As a matter of fact, it is so exclusively a part of strategic systems that they all necessarily engage in strategy, even in refusal. The results are disastrous: promises are not kept, expectations are not fulfilled, and good faith and good will are lost. Bibliography Becker, G. 2003, Human capital. New York Columbia University Press, 3rd edn. Bradford, R. W., Duncan, J. P., Tarcy, B. 2000, Simplified Strategic Planning: A No- Nonsense Guide for Busy People Who Want Results Fast. Chandler House Press. Bryson, J. M. 2004, Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations: A Guide to Strengthening and Sustaining Organizational Achievement, 3rd Edition. Jossey-Bass; 3 edition. Campbell, D.J. 1997, Organizations and the Business Environment. Oxford: Butterworth- Heinemann. Goodstein, L., Nolan, T., Pfeiffer, W. J. 1993, Applied Strategic Planning: How to Develop a Plan That Really Works. McGraw-Hill; 1 edition. Kay, J. 2003, Foundations of Corporate Success. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read More