Bowey’s stability index
Length of service in months over a two-year
Period of all current staff added together
Length of service in months over a two-year
Period if all staff had worked for the full two years
This looks at actual length of service and calculates a stability percentage.
For example there is 30 staff they could have worked a total of 720
Months (i.e. 30 x 24 months =720)
Suppose one woman left during the two years. She is excluded from the data because she is no longer ‘current’.
The 29 remaining staff have service as follows:
20 with 24 months each*
2 with 18 months
4 with 10 months
2 with 3 months
1 with 1 month
Note that some of the 20 could have been there far longer but we only count the last two years service
The total service is 563 months so the formula becomes:
563
X 100 = 78% stability (i.e. a very sable workforce).
720
Forecasting demand for employees
RS didn’t seem to give to much information away but they do manly recruit internally. This tells us they don’t need to bring in as many people from outside the company when they can recruit people with in the business but if RS feels they need to bring in other people for necessary reason they will, this can give opportunities to experience things and develop new skills for which can move forward them to their next level. Internal staffing includes job analysis, skills audit and performance review, which are, include in forecasting demand for employees see appendix (3)
These are the activities that I recommend RS do:
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Stock Taking - What is the quantity of staff available in this organisation?
Job Analysis: Job analysis is to collect and examine detailed information that’s provide employees and supervisors with a basic description of jobs describing duties and characteristics in familiar with and different form other positions or jobs. Whenever a large organisation introduces a new job or reviews existing jobs, it calls upon the expert knowledge of the job analysis.
Skills Audit: skills audit is a survey of the skills that examines qualifications and experience of all existing staff that works for RS components. These skills can determine whether they are suited for that particular job.
Performance review: performance review is looking at employers to identify the staff potential that they can bring to the organisation and to identify training needs for certain staff for certain areas of the business.
Every single one of these should be incorporated in RS forecasting demand for employees and are the stages that RS should put their employees through to see that they are getting the best out of their workers.
Other influences on the internal supply of labour that RS should monitor
- The organisation trading and production patterns
- Demand for their products
- Technological and administrative changes
- Capital investment plans
- Acquisitions, divestments and mergers
- Product diversification
These are the things they look for when forecasting demand for employees in RS Company.
Other factors that RS take in consideration is sickness
Other issues that are covered are influences on internal supply of labour is sickness can turn out to be true or false but in the real world there is a lot of sickness that can be turn out to be false and this could make RS go into trouble if they don’t monitor their staff well for them to keep an eye on their staff they monitor against:
- Performance in the previous year
- Trends in other department in the same industrial sector
- National sickness absence figures
Ways of controlling and monitoring sickness and bogus sickness include:
- Keeping proper records of sickness for all staff
- A policy of sick visiting by the personnel manager or by the company nurse
- Return to work interviews after one day of absence; this puts pressure on people who regularly have the odd day off ill but do not want the embarrassment of an interview each time.
- A clear statement to staff that regular period of unexplained sickness could lead to a disciplinary procedure or even dismissal.
Accidents
RS do have heath and safety regulations (e.g. on lifting and manual handling) that are from the EU. This has reduced the level of accidents in the workplace this is due to many old fashioned factories that have now been updated with better heath and safety regulation to apply by.
Implementation and review
- human resources planning process
Implementation and review look’s at the companies’ human resources planning process (see appendix 12-13) to see if it effective. This means have RS recruited the right number and right quality of people the need to help their company.
RS should have a look at number of different environmental influences that could affect the supply and demand for labour, which could lead RS into trouble for the future if the don’t this involves the following;
- Collecting information on social
- Political
- Legal and Technological changes
- Industrial
This can be a good way to finding out what RS competitors are doing and this will lead RS to improve and plan ahead for the company.
RS should relate their internal staffing information to external labour market information for example:
- E.g. average pay levels – local/national
- Average labour turnover – local/national
- Unemployment trends – local/national
- Number of women – local/national
- Number of part-time / full-time - local/national
Recruitment and Selection
- Features of key recruitment documents
When RS recruit someone for a job they need to go though the recruitment process but before they go any deep into that they need to examine the job description and the person specification for that title. This means RS will have to go though these stages to find out if that person suited for that right post this will entitle:
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Job Description – job description are carried out by line mangers which RS have, they are the ones who need to find out what the job involves this consists of the line mangers carrying out appraisals of employees but the manger can not appraise the employee if that person does not know what the job involves, the lime manger needs to analyse the training needs for that employee, that person must know that task that job involves so that the employee can determine what training may be in need. All of these are what RS take into consideration when they do the job description which involves the main features which are:
- The job title
- The location of the job
- A brief outline of what the employing organisation does
- The main purpose of the job
- A detailed list of the main tasks required in the job
- The standards that the job holder will be required to achieve
- Pay and other benefits
- Promotion prospects
- The person to whom the job holder reports
- The person(s) who job(s) to the job holder
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Person Specification – RS person specification looks for the right person with the right qualities needed for that ideal candidate but not all the candidates have the skills needed to full fill that specific job. The person specification describes what they are looking out for when candidates fill in the form for that post, this bases the candidate specification upon seven separate groups of characteristics:
- Physique, heath and appearance
- Attainment
- General intelligence
- Special aptitudes
- Interests
- Disposition
- Circumstance
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Evaluation – the job description that RS do does patch up to the one in the textbook that shows what is needed in the job description. RS has a role profile that has the job description and person specification combine in one (see appendix14-15) , which covers all the basic needs that is require in the role profile, which is in better quality than the one in the textbooks.
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Letter of Application – the next step is to gather the right number of candidate to go through the interview but before they go through the interview the employees need to look through a number of application forms. These letters have to be structured in a appropriate (see appendix 31) way because the letters can describe who you are just by the way you style and the lay it out which is very important if you want to give a good impression to them, but RS do not require letter of application.
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The Curriculum vitae – RS do not use the curriculum CV they prefer to use the standard way of presenting their application form’s for their future candidates.
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The Application Form – the application forms are mostly normally used source of selection. These forms keep changing to get more information from the candidates, the forms include: Name, Address, Next of kin, Education, Training, Work experience, Qualification, Plus names of refers which the company can receive recommendation on their candidates.
The application forms that RS use is that I think that they try to expend on the forms (see appendix 16) to try and get much information out of their candidates as possible which I think is a good idea because that way you can see which candidate could be suited to the job post.
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Reference – reference are describe as a positive form this is when a teacher or formal employee will say positive things about you this will help you be consider for the job you want if the employee believes the references has a helpful statement.
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Medical references – this is one of importance to RS because employee are likely to carry out medical check (see appendix 17) because this could effect other employees that you work with and plus some jobs have specific health standards for the job.
Planning to fill a vacancy
Vacancy can happen in RS and it can happen in other companies to vacancy can occur if a person is made redundant, sacked, left, be taken over by new technology or even being dead. All these conditions can happen in RS, which is, and there are alternatives to vacancy came in.
- Alternatives to filling a vacancy
Alternative to fill a vacancy can occur in RS especially when the Human Resources management are under pressure for the vacancy to be filled. There are ways in which RS can save their money by:
- Overtime by the remaining employees
- Restructuring of the work
- Employing part-time staff
- More use of machinery/techno0logy
These alternatives can have a positive effect for employee’s for example more money this can boost the employee’s drive to do well in their job.
Factors to be considered when planning to fill a vacancy
In order to understand the early stages of planning to fill a vacancy RS needs to have a recruitment authorisation process to go through this consist of (see appendix 18)
- Scope
- Principles
- Process for recruitment
- Authorisation levels
All of these are important to RS, if a position becomes open in RS the line manger should be taking into account what changes could happen when a vacancy is left open they need to think about the changes that will occur in the role/department before giving out the recruitment authorisation from (see appendix 19).
- Has the job content changed?
- What sills are now required?
- Can the duties be re-distributed amongst other team members or resource utilised from other area of the business?
- Have there been any productivity/technological improvements?
- What future workload/resource issues may have an impact on the need to recruit?
All of these are important to take in when a vacancy is left open these are the sort of question that need to be answered so that the job will be fill in successfully.
If the company decides to go ahead and recruit someone new for the position
Internal recruitment
RS do a lot on internal recruitment which is good because the company is saving money which they need to do in order to bring in more supply for the company there are some good and bad advantages to recruiting internal staff they are:
Advantage side to it
- You will have less of training to do
- Saving money on recruiting
- Need no references because you are known to the company
- The candidate are local need no transport
- The Candidate might bring in future family members to the company if interested
- More internal recruitment staff will stay on longer if they think the might get promoted
- Internal can adapt more quicker to the job because they know what is expected of them
Disadvantage side to it
- No new fresh blood in the company
- Work staff will get jealous of the person being promoted
- The newly promoted may not be trained as well
External recruitment
Advantages side to it
- There is a much larger number of people to choose from
- Bring in new ideas to help the company
- Newcomers are likely to be more mobile than exiting staff and in a multi-site business this can be very useful to the organisation
- New ideas for the organisational culture plan
Disadvantage side to it
- It can very expensive to recruit people from outside the company
- Time can be an issue because they will have to learn new skills which take time to learn
- The references can be a pain because employers might find it hard to trust that person – people sometimes are given a good reference by their employers simply to help them get rid of them.
How does RS go about advertising the job?
RS is a large company and desires to get their company heard and to acquire people in the business, RS has many methods of getting their communication a cross to people and they are:
RS source of communication is that they use external agency as you can see from the above, which is how they get their message cross to people. Before they go ahead with the advertising they need to think how can they do this? Which is they need to think about what goes on the add which is the person specification- what type of person they are looking for the Job Description which is what the person will be required to do in the job these have to be consider before writing the advert.
When those aspects are done there is more important key points that need to be consider because if they don’t then the company could be sued so they need to think about the legal and ethical responsibilities before the release of the advert and they are:
Legal and ethical responsibilities
- Equal pay acts 1970
- Sex discrimination act 1975
- Race Relations Act 1976
- Direct and indirect forms of discrimination
- The Disability Discrimination
Other key points to consider
- Job Description
- Type of person
- Pay and conditions
- Place of work
- How to apply
- Depth of detail
- Ethics and honesty
- Placing the advertisement
The next step is where do RS advertise their job vacancies? Which is they advertise in the local evening paper and other paper plus internet job boards which is where candidates who prefer the internet instead of the paper to look for jobs. RS even have their own web site were they can advertise their supplies and vacancy which is found on this site contains all information they need to know about the company. RS specifically provides information on internal advertising and external advertising (see appendix 20-21) for details.
Carrying out interviews in RS
The final step is getting past your interviews; the interview should start of with a few non-related questions like how you doing? And how was your journey? Which is to put the candidates at, ease. RS don’t give out any information on the interviews that they do but they do give us information on the process to get to the interview.
Training and Development
RS is confident of its strong reputation for providing industry leading training and development. They are committed to providing relevant development opportunities for employees at all levels. Training and development services (both in-company and external programmes) are provided and are designed to meet a range of development needs including sales training, software skills, management development, training for leader and online staff and courses for support staff.
Identify key aspects of the business’s training and development programme
RS training is about developing their employee to have more abilities at their jobs which leads them to have more skills to continue on in their next stage when moving up in the company. RS Components finds training and development very important to the company they encourage training within the business which they have a UK Training Team that is dedicated to deliver internal soft skills training e.g.: report writing, presentation skills etc. they also use external providers to run courses there at RS. Staffs are sometimes sent externally to study specific courses that are not run within the business in the Human Resource department area.
RS have various methods of developing people which are:
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Classroom based courses: Classroom based course involves people brainstorming a topic and then moving onto the next flip and brain another area, it increases understanding and ensure everyone thinks about the subject plus this involves working in a small group which complete activities or brainstorm.
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PC based courses: this can be studied from your desk or in a quiet study area which can improve on your understanding of ICT skills which you need if working with computers
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One 2 one coaching sessions: RS has Concepts offer a wide range of personal coaching and mentoring to support individuals to grow. RS offer one 2 one coaching in skill development, so if you would rather use coaching for improving your sales skills, marketing, or time management they have the experts to support you.
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On the job training: this can help RS employees participate in learning at work have higher levels of pay, self-esteem and job satisfaction. Studies show that training can lead to between five and fifteen per cent higher pay. It's something that makes you feel positive about yourself and your employer.
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Reading books and watching videos: this is to increase understanding of a subject through visual aid and to understand the process.
The importance of Evaluating training in RS
RS do evaluate their training courses to see how effective they are in meeting their objectives (see appendix 22 for the document) this document is to be completed by the employee and manger if they wish to study an internal or external course. This is then signed to the relevant level of authority. RS need to have individual skills, knowledge or the development of competencies are needed to achieve their business objectives, these should be recorded on the Development action pack (see appendix 23) plan, which forms part of their Performance Review process.
Funding
Funding for training and development will be paid from a central training budget, therefore the Head of Personnel Services must approve any training and development that involves a financial cost before any financial commitment is made
Importance of training to the performance of the business
RS Internal Courses: RS training team chooses the courses that will be run for the year through the PIA= Personal Improvement Agreement and what the managers feel is required for their staff which relates to the description and the competencies required for that job (see appendix 27- 30). It is important to evaluate training in RS because they need to Identifying training and development needs, and helping individuals to improve their performance, are key responsibilities for line managers, so they are expected to be actively involved in their team’s training and development. Line managers are also responsible for measuring the effectiveness of any training and development undertaken by team members (see appendix 25).
Performance Management
The performance management process provides an opportunity for the employee and performance manager to talk about development goals and both create a plan for achieving those goals. Development plans should contribute to organisational goals and the professional growth of the employee. Performance management involves in:
Establish specific job assignments
Write job descriptions assign responsibility for strategic initiatives develop and apply performance standards
Discuss job performance with the employee and provide feedback on strengths and improvements needed
Conduct an annual performance evaluation
Plan for improved performance and employee development goals
Performance Management responsibility for RS is to help their employees to set career goals that are consistent with their skills, knowledge, experience and interests by providing feedback based on their observations and assessment of their abilities, readiness and potential. The assessment should be based on their actual experience and observation of employee performance and behaviour rather than on personal biases see appendix (32-36).
Benefits of managing performance
Throughout the appraisal period (typically one year), the performance manager observes and provides behavioural feedback on the performance of the employee, focusing on helping the employee to achieve successful performance. At the end of the appraisal period, and in collaboration with the employee, the performance manager prepares, writes, delivers and then produces a final copy of the written performance appraisal. The benefits are:
- Show training needs
- Gives good communication between employee and mangers
- My show useful skills
- It could reveal other problems like racial harassment or sexual harassment
- My show lack of effect
- Increase pay my bring out the best in employees
RS has various methods that they use for performance management which is Personal improvement agreement this document is used by all mangers who have staff reporting to them. The manager completes the document with the staff member present. They will set objectives for the staff member to achieve through a 12-month period and this will be reviewed on a regular basis on a one 2 one basis (see appendix 24).
RS approach might be influenced by motivation theory
RS Feedback based on observed or verifiable data is more likely to influence employee behaviour than feedback which cannot be supported by firsthand information. It is not always possible to observe employees at work, but you should build occasions to observe their performance into your work day. In that way, you provide opportunities to understand what they do, to talk with and get feedback from them, to see employees as they perform at their best and to recognize areas in which their performance could be improved. Performance management, observation involves noticing specific facts, events, or behaviours related to work performance and the results of work performance. Observations are the raw data upon which effective performance feedback may be based. The purpose of observing employee behaviour and the results of work performance is to identify and describe it in order to help the employee be successful and continue to develop his or her skills, knowledge, and experience.
Motivation theories
- Frederick Taylor - Scientific management
Frederick Taylor theory was that money would motivate employees to work hard that are true for some people but for others their motivation could be on the following:
- Enjoying the job
- Perks of the job = fringe benefits
- Discounts
- Pensions
- Free holidays
- Bonuses
- Hours
- Appraisals
All these can have an effect on employee’s decisions if they decide to stay longer which is a great thing for the company because this can motivate their staff to stay longer and improve in their work and also enjoy it at the same time
- Abraham Maslow – Hierarchy of needs (see appendix 26)
Abraham Maslow theory is his motivation comes from meeting unsatisfied needs this theory is good but not all unrealistic because an employer basically cannot offer such opportunities to all their employees that wouldn’t be improbable and Maslow seem to think that one and all is self actualised by labour this is not true numerous people are self actualised by aspects of their personal lives for example bring up children plus work is just a resource to pay the bills.
- Douglas McGregor – Theory x and y
Theory x – Douglas states that:
- Employees are lazy who dislike extra responsibilities
- They are not interested in their job
- Need close supervision
- Do not like change
- Not interested in the future success of the company
- Prefer to be told what to do
Theory y – Douglas states that:
- Employees are interested in their work
- Do not need to be constantly supervised
- They will naturally work hard without being told
- Accepts changes in the company
- Employees care about the future for the company
Douglas McGregor theories are still used today in many companies and in most companies there are ten to have a lot of theory x than theory y which is great for the organisation.
Identifying the Theories to RS Company
RS are influenced by theory x and y because in their call centre staff are more supervised by mangers and by technology so that way they know if their staff makes outside calls that is not related to their work plus RS do not think their employees are lazy at their job. There are some similarities in Fredrick and Maslow theories towards RS which are that RS do have the following:
- Bonuses for their staff
- RS have a high pensions for staff who stayed with the company over matter of time
- Higher wages when moving up in the Hierarchy
- Control behaviour
- RS have hours that can suit their staff
- RS have a positive management staff
RS motivate their staff by having the right environment for their staff to work in which is very important to the company because with out that staff will find that they will start to lose their employees and the business could fail. RS motivate their staff by the following;
- They give bonuses to staff who have improved in their work
- Have special events for their staff e.g. Christmas, birthdays fireworks parties
- In their canteen they have sits faces each others so that they interact with one anther
- Incentives is were you work for it and receives bounces for it for example an employee receive so many calls in certain of hours be given bounce for the work.
RS needs to have these because if they don’t they will lose their employees and will find it difficult to employ more staff and if that happens they business of RS will fail.
Bibliography
Books
AVCE business text book
Web sites
Antoinetta Palazzo Human Resources page