Explain giving examples how Woolworths should go about HR Planning?

The four stages of HR planning that the business will need to consider are:

• Stock taking
• Forecasting the supply of labour
• Forecasting the demand for employees
• Implementation and review

The first stage of HR planning that Woolworths will need to consider is the use of the Labour stock take. The purpose of the labour stock take is to find out exactly how many staff that the company has available to them after taking into consideration the number of staff that are leaving the company and the quality of the staff available to the company. When using a labour stock take, Woolworths should use a combination of job analysis and performance review, the use of a skills audit will be of little benefit to the business as this method assesses the skills and qualifications of the employee and little qualification is needed to work in the retail area that the business operates in, a combination of the performance review, this involves looking at the performance of all the employees within the organisation in order to identify staff potential and to identify where staff have more training needs. This will enable the business to. The use of the job analysis will enable the business enables the business to gather all of the information available about all of the jobs within the company, this information can then be used by the company to formulate the specific requirements that they will need of the staff for their future labour requirements.

The use of the labour stock take will enable the company to find out the nature of what employees they will need in terms of the workforce in the future. The company would need to either recruit the employees from internal positions; particularly if people are needed from inside the organisation for promotional vacancies such as employees being promoters to department or even store managers. This would be the most viable option for the company in this case, because of the location of the company.  The company would need to carefully consider the profile of the labour market, in particular the state of the economy in the area. With the economy doing so well problems are created in this area, in particular problems are created with West Berkshire already being such a high employment area.

However with West Berkshire being such a high employment area with many people already being employed the company could find it difficult to attract the right people to fill the jobs that are required within the company. Therefore the business will need to perhaps target different segments of the workforce to recruit the staff that it will need in the future. For example the business may be able to target less obvious segments of the workforce such as single mothers etc that are not obvious targets for employment where there will not be a as high level of demand for these people as so the business may be able to attract them to work at the business more easily than someone who is already employed.

In order to decrease the outflow of the labour fall out from the company there are two possible solutions, which the company could use to reduce the number of employees that are leaving the organisation. The first of these is to offer the employees a non financial incentive, the use of training should be given to the workers so they become multi skilled and are able to switch from one job to another if needed , this may perhaps lead to the employee being more motivated . Having an employee who can operate in more than one job will be of benefit to Woolworths as the need to bring in temporary workers to cover for illness will be reduced as will the labour costs for the company. Further training of the employees to fill different roles in the organisation may motivate them more to stay with the business rather than leave, as they may feel that the business has taken into consideration the interest of the employee. Linking to Maslows hierarchy of needs by providing for the higher needs such as esteem needs by giving the employees more involvement in the company perhaps motivating the workforce more and giving the employees more of a desire to stay at the organisation.