Resource and talent planning (RST) assessment activity 2 template

Resource planning report

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Word count:2600

Introduction
HR planning enables the organisation to plan before so they could sustain a
stable supply of qualified and skilled staff members. This report aims to provide
information and understanding about resource planning through which MicroTech
Systems could evaluate and plan their workforce needs and demands. This report
seeks to provide an understanding of the methods of resource planning, which
includes the fundamentals of effective workforce planning and consideration on good
practice in retirement. The main aim of this report is to provide succession planning
and different manners through which organisation can be benefitted, different roles in
skill development, handling misconduct and under-performance, downsizing, and
redundancy.

Resource planning methods

Workforce planning identifies the procedure of assuring the organisation
obtains present and potential access to the human asset that requires to execute
efficiently and effectively. Workforce planning includes determining present and
future staff requirements and reflecting upon the most cost-effective and adequate
approaches to attract and retain these people. There is also a factor of constant
evaluation of personnel effectiveness and executing the required measures like
initiatives of learning and development to assure that the staff remains competent and
proficient.
 Strategic workforce planning is associated with the overall business aims and
objectives of organisation and the long-run mission and vision of the organisation. In
this context, strategic workforce planning might put significance on succession
planning as a benchmark to assure the required knowledge and skills are present
always in the executive staff members (Sparkman, 2018).

Workforce planning offers numerous benefits to the organisation; these are:

- It enables the organisation to react to change more strategically and swiftly, as
the managers of organisation could acknowledge challenges in the business,
workforce, and market
- It increases productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency as employee obtains the
necessary skills and best fit for the role.
- It strengthens the potential of the organisation to facilitate the accomplishment
of the output of the business currently and potentially.
- It advances a mean for inspecting cost and directly associating expenses of the
workforce against organisational outcomes and outputs.
- It helps with the determination and management of the individual with the
knowledge crucial for efficient and effective organisational activities, and the
management of maintenance and knowledge of allied memory of the
organisation (Sparkman, 2018).

There are many ways in which MicroTech Systems can determine the skills
demand; three from them are;
Skill Gap Analysis:
A skill gap analysis is a technique to measure the difference among the real
conditions and the potential objective conditions. Organisations apply it to determine
the skills which an employee requires, but it does not inevitably have yet to execute
their role and to conduct specific activities efficiently and effectively. For HR, skill
gap analysis is a method to discover what the knowledge and skills which the
employees lack. Once the HR obtain this data, they could deal with skill gap within
the workplace. This could be executed through succession planning, L&D investment
decisions, reskilling, and upskilling (Galport & Azzam, 2016).
Advantages:
- Provides an understanding of the overall workforce.
 - It enhances individual learning and development.
- It assists with strategic workforce planning.
- It results in improved recruitment.
- It builds competitive advantage (Galport & Azzam, 2016).
Disadvantages:
- It has cost and time restriction of gap analysis.
- It has apprehension amidst staff.
- It decreases employee morale (Galport & Azzam, 2016).

Labour Market Analysis:

Labour market analysis is the element of the recruitment process in the
organisation as it assists in finding the most skilled and competent employees for the
role which is offered as well as assures that the proposes a competitive remuneration
package to the employees (Joll, et al., 2018).
Advantages:
- It helps in the market survey to identify the salaries.
- It determines pay practices, merit, and ancillary pay.
- It helps in consulting with management on the staff requirements.
- It determines areas of competition between employers (Joll, et al., 2018).
Disadvantages:
- It has lower productivity.
- It has higher cost (Joll, et al., 2018).

Labour turnover analysis:

Labour turnover analysis, also called as staffing turnover, indicated the
percentage of the number of workers who leave the organisation through resignation,
dismissal, or attrition (Akinyomi, 2016).
Advantages:
- It decreases negative impact of individual.
- It reduces manpower cost.
- It has newer ideas.
- It sets the right culture (Akinyomi, 2016).
Disadvantages:
- It creates a negative image of the organisation.
 - l It creates a lack of knowledgeable and experienced employees.
- It creates an increased cost of recruitment, training, and development.
- It decreases the performance (Akinyomi, 2016).

Management of Retirement
The rules and regulation have been substantially changed in recent years.
Employers could not put pressure on the aged staff members to take retirement. As
according to the amended law, employees are permitted to stay in the firm as per their
choice. The employers acknowledge valid organisational causes that why a particular
retirement age is significant, appropriate, and justified, and they have the capacity to
facilitate this retirement age towards any discrimination claim (Cotton, 2020).

The major considerations that MicroTech Systems must evaluate are;

- Federal regulation forbids discrimination opposing to individuals above the
age of 40. Approximately every obligatory retirement demand is illegal.
- Employers must comply with the Equality Act 2010 and must avoid
discrimination towards any individual because of their protected characteristic
(age).
- There is no law for the standard age of retirement.
- No benefit plan of the employee might stop pension accrual or hold plan
contribution for the worker due to the age.
- Job candidates pursuing to return to the workplace cannot be discriminated
due to their retirement.
- The organisation must not make supposition concerning the employee’s
performance because of their age (Cotton, 2020).

Succession planning:
Succession planning is defined as the strategy or the process to communicate
the leadership roles, often the possession of an organisation to a particular employee
or set of employees. Another term used for succession planning is replacement
planning. The succession planning is used to ensure that the entrepreneurship
continues to function smoothly after the firm’s employees retire, move on to new
positions, leave, or pass away (Pipatanantakurn & Ractham, 2016).
It increases the accessibility of capable and experienced workers who are
ready and capable to manage and accept the company's roles. A liquidity event can be
provided by the succession planning allowing the relocation of authority and
ownership to rising labourers (Budhiraja & Pathak, 2018). Succession planning is
used by the companies to ensure that the employees are developed and hired to
occupy the key roles within the organisations.
In MicroTech Systems, the replacement planning is used to identify the
fundamental positions within the company, and it includes drafting who will be
successful in replacing the existing role-holders when they move on to new positions
or abandon the organisation (Stephens, 2016).

Following are the benefits of the succession planning within the MicroTech
Systems:
By the aid of succession planning, the employees and the leaders of the
MicroTech Systems will be able to share the company's vision and values. There will
be increased job satisfaction and empowerment as the employees will be aware of the
existence of opportunities for advancement and ownership. Moreover, there will be
more potential individuals available for the management positions in MicroTech
Systems (Pipatanantakurn & Ractham, 2016). The likelihood of losing experienced
staff will be less. Minimum expenditure on the financial resources for the searching of
candidates will surely benefit MicroTech Systems.

Elements of succession planning 9 box matrix

The 9 grids in the diagram can be used to evaluate the elements.
 Develop Review the
Identify Agreeing
succession role and
Identify posts possible successors
plans through analyse gaps
that will need successors and creating
discussion of in
to be filled development
people and development
plans
posts plans

The fairness and transparency of the succession plan are important for
developing a successful succession plan. It helps people develop and place them in
the right position at the perfect time for developing and existing roles (Budhiraja &
Pathak, 2018). Therefore, it should be fair and open. The plan could operate fairly and
transparently within MicroTech Systems by transferring the responsibility of updating
the data in the personal files to the employees themselves as they are the best source
of data about their own experiences and skills. For attaining transparency in the
succession plan, the systems can be used by the company that are not complicated but
easy to use. The access to these systems should be immediate and secured for the
employees. Technology, especially the internet, is a strong enabler that can be used as
a tool by MicroTech Systems (Stephens, 2016).

Different roles in skills development

Role of Government
 Leitch review of skills was commissioned in 2004 since British government is
concerned because of the issue of discrepancies among the level of skills attainable in
the working-age population and the nature of skills required by the employers. The
other issue is the collapse of the United Kingdom to engage on a global scale on
account of skill level. Hence, the government plays its role by funding for the
apprenticeships (Crowley, 2019).

Role of employers
The employers prepare for the future workforce by working in close
association with the colleges, schools, universities, graduate recruitment programs,
and apprenticeships to help formulate the degree programs that meet the future skills
needs. These developed programs aid employers to verify that the graduates possess
the skills required to advance in the proceeding years (Mcguinness & Ortiz, 2016).
The employers of MicroTech Systems can instil the reskilling programs to
ensure the meeting of future skill needs. They play a significant role in addressing the
skill gap. They create internal pathways for promotion and skill development. The
employers of MicroTech Systems have developed a pay for skill program that is
designed to provide the opportunities to the company's employees to obtain raises by
acquiring various levels of skill development (McGuinness & Ortiz, 2016).

Role of trade unions

The trade unions play an active role in ensuring that the future skills are met
by fostering learning in the organisation. It offers support to the employees of
MicroTech Systems in accessing learning and helps in improving the quality of
learning programs that are known to be the learning opportunities. The trade unions
facilitate the access to training and learning thereby providing the means of skill
development to the employees of MicroTech Systems. Hence, in this way, the skill
gap is addressed (George, 2019).

Managing underperformance and misconduct

The Acas code of conduct
 The Acas statutory code of practice on grievance offers basic instructions to
the employees, employers, and representatives. It embarks on the principles for
managing grievance and discipline situations.
When the disciplinary and grievance issues are unable to be resolved,
MicroTech Systems should seek the help of an independent third party. The third-
party can be an internal intermediary only if they are not engaged in the grievance and
disciplinary issues. The external arbitrator is often more suitable (Suff, 2020).
Many of the disciplinary and grievance issues can be settled informally. The
Acas code of conduct for the grievance and disciplinary set forward the fundamental
needs of fairness. This seeks to provide rational behaviour in many of the occasions
(Suff, 2020).
Disciplinary situations involve misconduct and under-performance. For under-
performance issues, it can be addressed by the MicroTech Systems employers who
have separate capability procedures. For misconduct cases, one of the good practices
in MicroTech Systems is that disciplinary hearings and investigations should be heard
by different people (Suff, 2020).

Difference between conduct and capability

Conduct and capability are two different issues in the workplace. Capability is
when the worker is ineffectual in acquiring the standards of performance that are
expected. This inability is a consequence of lack of ability, health, training, skill, etc.
However, the conduct is related to the behaviour of an individual not meeting the
expectations at the workplace.
The following issues can be resolved by either the implementation of formal
or informal methods. The informal methods include employee's annual appraisal
system and regular face to face meetings (Suff, 2020). These informal methods can be
used to identify the improvement area in the beginning. The required standards are
clarified. The causes of the underperformance are addressed followed by
determination of the training needs. Then, the expectations for improvement are set.
This is how these two informal methods can solve this business issue in MicroTech
Systems.
Whereas, the issues can also be handled by using formal procedures in
MicroTech Systems. One of the formal ways to handle the misconduct and
underperformance of the employees is following the disciplinary procedure. The other
method can include following the performance management procedure or capability
procedure possessed by the MicroTech Systems (Suff, 2020).

Downsizing and redundancy

Downsizing is defined as the reduction in a company's workforce which may
either be permanent or temporary. It is an unfortunate but common practice done by
businesses to achieve reductions in cost and liabilities (Redman, 2016). Employment
downsizing is the norm of work-life in both the public and private sectors. However,
downsizing and elimination of redundancy is not always done to save a company
from going completely insolvent, but it is also done to achieve efficiency. Recently,
many companies are following this trend of trimming their headcount for attaining
maximum efficiency and saving costs. Basically, the downsizing of employees is
driven by the belief that there are two ways to make money; either by cutting costs or
by increasing revenues (Suff, 2020).

Layoffs and job restructuring

The first step in reducing headcounts is job restructuring. Job restructuring
shifts the employees’ tasks to reduce the number of employee positions. Although it
should be noted that the restructuring must be done in a way so as to ensure that no
employee is overburdened, and the job distribution is done equally amongst remaining
employees (Weeks, 2020).

Reduction in contracting hours and overtimes

Along with the reduction in headcount and employee layoffs, another smart
way to reduce labour cost is to reduce the contracting hours of the employees. It will
be a smart approach by MicroTech Systems to deal with low customer demand.
Although overtime is sometimes necessary, and it cannot be avoided. In times of
crises, companies have to cut costs by not making payouts for overtime. Therefore,
MicroTech Systems would discourage overtime if it is not avoidable. MicroTech
Systems would stop supplementary payments for employees working overtime
(Weeks, 2020).
Recruitment Freeze
When companies start to suffer losses, the knee-jerk reaction is to lay off
employees. This might not always be beneficial as experienced employees are
valuable assets to the company, and as an alternative MicroTech Systems can freeze
the recruitment of employees and save labour and training costs (Weeks, 2020).
Acas code of practice
Employers should be cautious when dismissing employees on the grounds of
downsizing and redundancy. Violation of the workforce reduction laws is taken very
seriously, and MicroTech Systems can face litigation for wrongful termination
(Weeks, 2020).

Conclusions
The following report discusses the resource planning methods MicroTech
Systems that explains the principles of effective workforce planning along with some
good practices while planning to resource. It elucidates the succession plan of the
organisation and its benefits to MicroTech Systems. Various roles of the government,
trade unions, and employers in ensuring future skill development have been discussed
in this paper. Moreover, some good practices concerning the Acas code of conduct
have been defined and implemented on the MicroTech Systems for the management
of misconduct and under-performance. Also, the ways to reduce headcount and labour
cost in MicroTech Systems that aligns with the present legislations have been
assessed under the heading of downsizing and redundancy.

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