STRATEGIC ANALYSIS OF TUALATIN CITY FROM A HUMAN RESOURCE PERSPECTIVE - Essay Example

? STRATEGIC ANALYSIS OF TUALATIN FROM A HUMAN RESOURCE PERSPECTIVE s College Strategic Plan of an organisation is a vital player in the success of an organisation if it is devised properly. The lack of clarity is the main reason why organisations fail to achieve their goals and objectives, regardless, of a strong strategic plan. It is a must, therefore, to analyse and ascertain all the factors of the strategic plan in detail, so that it may not have any vagueness. Most strategic management plans of organisations fail to provide the Human Resource perspective. Organisations considering their future plans and needs must analyse their strategic plans from HR view. Although, this analysis may not be an exact reflection of organisation’s future, however, it would certainly provide Management with certain feedback that can help them form pathways for the achievement of their strategic goals. We, therefore, use the strategic management plan of Tualatin City, situated in the state of Oregon, US and will try and devise a human resource plan for its future needs. This plan would be used as a basis to check if the organisation is on the right track in the longer run. The management plans of an organisation cannot be acted upon without meeting its HR needs. If an organisation plans growth, it must also plan its personnel needs, accordingly. Keywords: Strategic Plans, Human Resource, Analysis STRATEGIC ANALYSIS OF TUALATIN CITY FROM A HUMAN RESOURCE PERSPECTIVE About Tualatin City: Tualatin City is a part of Washington County that comes under the jurisdiction of Oregon State, in the United States of America. The city covers a total area of 20.2 sq. km with population amounting to 26000 citizens. The reason for its fame is the fact that tourists often pay a visit because of Bridgeport Village which is an upscale European-Style shopping area. The city is also famous for Tualatin River that flows in the northern part and a wide array of green belts and recreation parks ("Tualatin oregon," 2012). The City Council of Tualatin City has devised a Strategic Management Plan for a medium term period which they termed as ‘Vision 2018’, with the primary objective of making the city a better living place for the residents and visitors. In subsequent discussion, we will have a look at the key strategic goals of the organisation followed by HR implications that would affect the successful achievement of these goals setup by the City Council of Tualatin City (City Council, 2012). Key Strategic Directions & Priorities: The key strategic priorities of City Council of Tualatin City for a period of next five years are: To provide better transportation facilities to the residents as well as the visitors. Reduce congestions and provide a separate track to bike and cycle riders. Also, expand the mass transit system and build new roads and bridges. Preserve and develop city’s natural and unique resources. This will include meeting all the stakeholders of the Tualatin River and building/updating banks and creeks over the rivers. It also includes preserving green belts and recreation parks present in the city. To ensure that residents are living safely and peacefully, within the boundaries of Tualatin City. This will include devising a community feedback mechanism, evaluation of safer routes to hospitals, schools and financial institutions and, introducing newer reforms in the police department. Continue with the current architectural plans of the city and updating them when required. Increasing recreational activities by providing sailing, boating and swimming activities across the river and increasing public art and plantation in the city. Increasing the economic viability of the city and look to provide a solid revenue plan for the city. This will be achieved by increasing policies pertaining to land and taxation. Also, a new marketing plan for the city needs to be devised which would attract outsiders and investors. Urban Renewal Plan for the South-Western part of the city needs to be updated and Community Conservation Strategy needs to be implemented. Enhance citizen liaison programs and civic awareness programs. Increase the amount of local TV and radio programs. Also increase the ‘meet n greet’ programs in the city’s proximity. A Geographic Neighbourhood program with the city as its facilitator also needs to be initiated. Maintaining green sustainability project for the city. This includes creating plan for green sustainability for the city. The partnership would continue with Sustainable Washington County Community and the focus would shift to matters affecting environment and enforcing mechanisms for land, air, noise, and water pollution. Human Resource Factors Affecting the City Council of Tualatin Strategic Plan Following are the presumed factors that are most likely to affect the strategic plan of the City Council if we consider the human resource needs over the period of five years: Tualatin isn’t a city of professionals; hence, it would be difficult to find the local workforce to implement proposed objectives. In case, if the professionals are hired from outside, then it will severely affect the council’s budget. These objectives for ‘Vision 2018’ can be categorised into several functional areas like finance, environment, marketing and general human resource need for state departments such as police and metropolitan workforce. These mentioned departments would require specialised and full time workforce and there aren’t specialised schools for producing this workforce, therefore, this skilled labour needs to be imported which would be an additional cost in the City Council’s budget. For securing the city, according to the Vision 2018 plan, a large number of personnel (initial estimate is 100) needs to be hired in the police department. The current size of the police force is around 80 people as of today, and another 100 permanent hiring’s would be required in the next five year as the population is expected to increase by 8000 individuals . There would be additional need of this recruitment because new projects would be initiated which will require extra vigilance. Adding to this is the increasing crime rate and usage of drugs which needs to be trimmed down. Also, a Police Citizen Academy facility needs to be established which would act as a liaison between community and police and would also be used to train new officers. Legislation would be an important factor since City Council of Tualatin is a Government agency. Hiring laws of the Oregon State would probably stall the hiring efforts of Tualatin City Council since they have to abide by all the compensation and insurance policies which would be an additional toll on the recruitment budget. Training of new employees would be a challenge as it would require additional budget. Hiring’s from outside may not be successful in the shorter run as new employees will have to study the organisational culture at City Council Tualatin and they may not own the organisation when compared to local residents of Tualatin City. Employee relations would be an additional issue in the recruitment procedure. Local employees may not be on the same terms with the specialised employees being hired from outside. On the other hand, City Council would be looking for cultural diversity since they plan to market Tualatin City as a city for future tourists and business. Cultural diversity would also help in cross – functional teams and thus, increase the efficiency of the workforce (City of Tualatin, 2012). Human Resource Implications for the Stated Strategic Directions Following are the human resource implications that can be extracted after a thorough analysis of the strategic management plan of the Tualatin City: The current workforce of the Tualatin City Council needs to be increased (by an approximate 100%) . Certain training programs needs to be created while existing programs needs to be updated. Retention policies, performance management and compensation policies needs to be created and updated on newer lines, where required. Need to cut on the expenses on the other fronts and increase the Human Resource hiring budget because if the recruited human resources is unable to perform, then it will be a potential loss of Return on Investment. Relevance of HR Implications From a Strategic Perspective The two selected HR implications that will be the focus of the HR policy are: 1) Ensuring that the staffing and recruiting needs for five future years are met whereas different retention and compensation policies are enacted as well. 2) Human resource budget allocation needs to be increased. For this purpose, other expenses need to be trimmed down and certain programs need to be initiated from HR platform that can add some revenue to its allocation. These two implications are the most important ones. As discussed earlier, the City Council of Tualatin City is increasingly interested in starting projects the following departments: A) - Police B) - Public Works C) - Revenue Department D) - Marketing Department Of all these departments, police and public works need to staff the maximum number of employees. A police Citizen Academy needs to be setup and current policeman needs to be retained for future projects. Policemen are also required to work against the drug abuse and increasing crime rate in the City area. As the city will continue to grow, more public places will be added that would require extra vigilance and monitoring. These plans include working on the Town Centre Plan and South Tualatin Concept Plan. The Public Work department has an enormous work to do in these coming five years. It can be presumed that their personnel would also need to double since there are many projects at their end. These projects includes the Town Centre Plan, the plan to update ark work in the city, construction projects and recreation activities that needs to be done within these five years. Other municipal projects will also be taken care of by the public works team. The marketing team needs enhancement too, and the proposal is to have a team of four marketers working under a marketing manager, who will be responsible for the complete marketing plan, strategy and recreational activities. The Finance Team would hire around seven more people. One of them will be the Finance Head and will have a team of six which will look after public finance, general revenue and expenses and, budget allocations for different departments. For all this recruitment, the HR team need to pick up volunteer graduates who after minimal training, with the respective departments can carry out these hiring and selection procedures. The budget allocation of the HR department needs to be increased since they have to carry out these above mentioned selection and recruiting procedures. A considerable amount of the budget would go to employee’s training and, compensation and benefits allocation. Moreover, HR would decrease its expenditure by involving fresh volunteer business graduates and interns for the recruitment and selection procedure. HR Policy Statement The City Council of Tualatin City is committed to achieve the general welfare of the Tualatin City through its own very people. The Council is a non – profit institution that looks to capitalise on the local talent pool and enhance its functioning by diversifying. Personnel Management is the turning wheel of the Council and the Council is composed of its people and it works for people and for the best interests of the Tualatin City (HR Toolkit, 2012). The primary goals of the Council’s HR policy are to make sure that: Employees and Staff members are selected based on their capabilities and zeal to work in the best interest of Tualatin City Best employees are retained in the light provided by best practices of people management and HR (Jeans, 2011). Diversity and equal opportunity are the main drivers of the HR policy without discrimination of any sort. All employees would go through a best process of training and guidance, thus, polishing their skills and competencies to the maximum of their potencies (Bogan & English, 1994). All employees would be rewarded with intrinsic and extrinsic rewards based on their performance which would be evaluated in the light of the Council’s Strategic Management Plan. Mentoring of all sorts would be done to fresher and new graduates, thus, instilling in them the confidence and zeal to learn. It is incumbent on Human Resource Department to provide guidance, advice and practically support the employees in matters pertinent to the general functioning of the City Councils procedures and projects (Heathfield, 2012). Strategic Human Resource Plan A. Brief Background The City Council of Tualatin City has envisioned a plan known as ‘Vision 2018’. To fulfil the personnel requirements of Vision 2018, we are formulating this Human Resource Plan which will be used in accordance. B. Objectives of the Plan The main objectives of the plan are: - To deduce a step wise mechanism for hiring people in different stages while the Vision 2018 plan is executed - To allocate adequate resources and budget for the human resource team at City Council of Tualatin to effectively carry out their plans. - To find newer ways of adding revenues to the current allocation of Human Resource budget - To ensure that current employees are retained C. Strategic Alignment These objectives are in complete alignment with the Strategic Management Plan of the Tualatin City. In fact, these objectives provide an insight on how to fulfil the primary and secondary human resource requirements required for the proper implementation of the proposed plan that are in accordance with the Vision 2018 plan. These objectives also focus on the granular requirements of the human resource department that needs to be fulfiled. D. Major Assumptions Following are the assumptions that we have taken into account: 1) Vision 2018 document will be taken as the final guideline and no changes would be made to it. 2) The population of Tualatin City would increase by 2.5% every year (Onboard informatics, 2011). 3) Tualatin City will have adequate funding to carry out the activities proposed in Vision 2018 plan. 4) There will be no major migrations or natural calamities in Tualatin City. E. Use of Planned Milestones and Measures for Monitoring Progress Measures for monitoring the whole progress can be devised in the same manner as the strategic management plan would be. The milestones of strategic management plan would prove to be the milestones for this strategic human resource plan as the outcomes and expectations for both the plans is same. The achievement of every objective in strategic management plan would be used as a benchmark and gauge for this human resource plan (Berry, 2012). F. Ethical Considerations Following are the ethical considerations that should be the guiding principle for the selection and recruitment process: 1) No employee would be selected or promoted on favouritism 2) Religion tolerance should be practised 3) Employee Harassment of any type wont be tolerated 4) No measure taken by City Council whatsoever, should harm the environment or anyone’s life 5) A policy of adequate disclosure and non – competency should be enacted (Scott, 2011). References Berry, T. (2012). Milestones make your business plan a real plan . Retrieved from http://articles.bplans.com/writing-a-business-plan/milestones-make-your-business-plan-a-real-plan/44 Bogan, C.E. and English, M.J., (1994) Benchmarking for best practices: winning through innovative adaptation. McGraw-Hill, New York City Council. (2012). City of Tualatin Oregon. Retrieved from http://www.tualatinoregon.gov/citycouncil/about-our-council City of Tualatin. (2012). Tualatin Oregon. Retrieved from http://www.tualatinoregon.gov/sites/default/files/fileattachments/citycouncil/webpage/12174/councilstrategicplanfinal.pdf Heathfield, S. M. (2012). How to develop a policy. Retrieved from http://humanresources.about.com/od/policiesandsamples1/a/how_to_policy_2.htm HR Toolkit. (2012). Child care human resources sector council. Retrieved from http://www.ccsc-cssge.ca/hr-resource-centre/hr-toolkit/hr-policies-employment-legislation/developing-hr-policies Jeans, P. (2011, January 09). What are some of the best practices for managing people?. Retrieved from http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-best-practices-for-managing-people Onboard Informatics. (2011). City data: Tualatin, Oregon. Retrieved from http://www.city-data.com/city/Tualatin-Oregon.html Scott, S. (2011). Small business. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/ethical-issues-facing-hr-10821.html Tualatin Oregon. (2012). History of Tualatin City Retrieved from http://www.tualatinoregon.gov community/history.cfm Read More