Assignment Task 1: How can workforce mobilization be used to address shortages identified when reviewing data on staff turnover? (50-75 words)
Assignment Task 2:
A) Name three sources you would use to research and review current and predicted external labor supply data, and demographic and economic data, to forecast human resources supply. What type of information do these sources provide? Why do you think these sources would provide a valuable source of information? (100-120 words)
B) You have been asked to review your organization's staff budgets as it is a factor that may affect workforce supply. What 14 things would you include in your calculations?
C) When calculating staff budgets, which method would you use? Why? (100-150 words)
Assignment Task 3:
A) By law, what are organisations required to do or not do in relation to diversity of their workforce? (100-150 words)
B) Identify five advantages of having a diverse workforce. Do not limit your responses to those ideas listed in the text.
C) Your organisation develops websites and online marketing tools for small business. The organisation does not have a particularly diverse workforce. In particular, the organisation does not tend to recruit older workers. This is because management feel that older workers will not have the technology skills needed to carry out work, even when they have qualifications in the field. What would you tell them about the need for and benefits of a diverse workforce? (150-200 words)
Assignment Task 4:
A) What are retention strategies? (50-75 words) Provide five examples of things an organisation might do in an attempt to retain staff.
B) The organisation you work for makes and sells jewellery. In the past few years, the organisation has found that they are not making money on their line of watches so they have decided, as a part of their organisation strategy, to stop selling watches. This means that the workforce will need to be modified because watchmakers will no longer be needed. How might the organisation modify its workforce? (50-75 words)
C) The organisation you work for sells PCs and laptops. They have decided that they are going to start selling computer tablets (eg iPads). They are expecting that this will significantly increase sales and will mean that more sales staff are going to be needed. How might the organisation modify its workforce in this situation? (100-150 words)
Assignment Task 5:
A) Define turnover. Why do organisations need to analyze turnover rates? (40-60 words)
B) You have analyzed the turnover rates in your organisation and feel that they are unacceptably high. Others in the organisation argue that turnover is to be expected. What would you say to them? (100-150 words)
C) You work for a hotel. In the past year, 35% of the hotel's employees have left the organisation. The organisation deems this level of turnover to be unacceptable. You have conducted exit interviews with these employees.
The reasons employees have cited for leaving the organisation include:
- more pay
- better career opportunities/ restricted opportunities for advancement
- lack of challenge
- negative relationships with supervisors, managers
- overloading employees
- incidents of discrimination
- health and safety issues
- poor job security
How would you address unacceptably high staff turnover rates with each of these reasons in mind? (75-100 words)
Assignment Task 6:
A) How would you explain the difference between role development and career development, both of which can be used as retention strategies? Why is it a good idea to implement each of these strategies? (150-200 words)
B) What one strategy would you implement to retain required skilled labor? You do not have to limit your ideas to those provided in the text. You might have your own ideas as to how organisations can retain skilled labor. Why do you think your chosen strategy is most important or would be most effective in retaining skilled labor? (100-150 words)
Assignment Task 7:
A) What would you do to manage diversity in the workplace? You do not need to restrict your response to ideas presented in the text. Provide at least 10 examples.
B) Write a diversity policy that supports an organization's requirements for diversity in the workforce. (1 page)
Assignment Task 8:
A) Outline the advantages or disadvantages of the following different methods that can be used to source skilled labor.
a. Online recruitment (at least five advantages and one disadvantage).
b. Company website advertising (at least one advantage and two disadvantages).
c. Newspapers (at least four advantages and three disadvantages).
d. Trade and professional journals/ magazines (at least three advantages and one disadvantage).
e. Employment/ recruitment agencies (at least three advantages and one disadvantage).
f. Direct applicants (at least two advantages and one disadvantage).
B) Your organisation installs home theatre equipment. You have several teams that carry out installations and each team is overseen by a supervisor. One of your supervisors has resigned and you now need to source skilled labor to fill that position. You feel that some of the team members might be suitable for the position. What recruitment strategy might you use in this situation? How would you do this? (100-150 words)
Assignment Task 9:
A) How might you communicate workforce objectives and rationale to relevant stakeholders/ employees? Provide at least 10 examples.
B) You work for a hospital. Previously, specific nurses were given all weekend shifts. Feedback gathered from other nurses has revealed that all nurses would like the opportunity to work weekends when greater shift penalties are paid. The organisation has decided that from now on weekend shifts will be distributed equally amongst all nurses. Write an email to be distributed to all the nurses that work for the hospital communicating objectives and rationale of the changes to relevant stakeholders. (150-200 words)
Assignment Task 10:
A) Identify two groups other than employees whose agreement and endorsement you would seek when setting objectives and targets and creating workforce plans. Explain why their agreement should be sought. (75-125 words)
B) Your organisation has decided that the business will no longer give employees rostered days off to compensate them for working overtime. Instead, employees will now be paid for any overtime they complete. What would you say to obtain agreement and endorsement for these changes? You should provide a transcript of a three minute speech that you would give to employees outlining the objectives of this change. You need to show that you have considered objections to or barriers to employee endorsement of this change. (200-300 words)
Assignment Task 11:
A) What are contingency plans? (50-75 words)
B) Develop a contingency plan to cope with the extreme situation of a large number of employees going on strike without notice. (200-300 words)
Assignment Task 12:
A) What is an implementation plan? (20-30 words)
B) It has been determined that your organisation needs to make changes to its workforce. Some staff will need to be recruited, some will need to undergo training, some will need to be redeployed and others are going to be made redundant. You have been asked to head up a team that is going to develop an implementation plan. None of the team has done this before so it is up to you to explain what an implementation plan should contain and how it should be written. What would you tell them? (150-200 words)
C) What things would you include in the WBS section of an implementation plan? (100-150 words)
Assignment Task 13:
Read the article and answer the questions that follow.
Change in the workplace is a source of stress
NEW YORK-Erika Muller still remembers the Rolaids and the sleepless nights during a corporate shakeup eight years ago. Just a week after she started a job with a consulting firm in Connecticut, the chief executive shocked the staff with an announcement that the company was being acquired.
'It was obviously very traumatic,' she recalls. 'When a majority of your workforce is on the road and rumors start flying nobody knows what's going on. They just told us everything's fine, everything's fine.'
The reassurance failed to soothe colleagues. Instead, uncertainty triggered emotional meltdowns. A friend from human resources who knew she would be laid off broke down awaiting her day of reckoning.
'She was a nervous wreck to the point where she was getting ill and she was taking days off,' Muller said. Another colleague, overwhelmed by the anticipation of big changes, went into a funk and began to slack off, prompting a dismissal threat from the bosses.
The trauma of a big organizational change can cause emotional scars for employees, and leave employers grappling with resignations, increased sick days and worker malaise.
Researchers say executives often fail to consider the emotional responses of employees when formulating and announcing major changes. Those emotional responses can determine whether an employee resists the changes, merely complies with them or is engaged and excited.
'For many people, changes don't need to be stressful, but the way they're handled by their companies cause them undue stress,' says Mel Fugate, a professor with the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University.
Managers might expect that when change arrives, employees will assess the situation rationally. Those at the bottom might start polishing up resumes, for example, while top performers or members of unaffected departments might ignore or even be excited by the changes.
But emotions, researchers have found, get mixed up in decision-making and lead to unintended and negative outcomes. A worker in an unaffected department, for instance, might feel helpless or anxious about the fate of friends in other parts of the company, triggering a response known to psychologists as escape-coping. To managers, it's known as calling in sick, quitting or considering other jobs.
Even a brilliant new corporate strategy or a perfectly conceived merger can leave workers stressed and unmotivated. Change can make workers feel threatened by the potential for job loss or changes, or believe chances to advance are threatened.
These feelings can be reduced when a company communicates a change clearly, referencing how employee roles will change and identifying a clear vision for the new organization.
Secondly, the researchers concluded that managers who act as role models will reduce escapist behaviour by employees. Managers, they say, might model other ways of coping by, for instance, proactively discussing their own concerns and past experiences.
Employees can help themselves by identifying their own complex emotions during a shakeup. 'It's good to be self-aware,' Fugate said. And when managers do a poor job communicating, employees should seek out the boss on their own. (Chatham Daily News 2008)
A) According to this article, what are the possible negative effects of when organisations do not develop and implement strategies to assist workforce to deal with organizational change? Provide at least five examples.
B) According to this article, what can organisations do to assist the workforce deal with organizational change? Provide at least five examples.
C) What are two of the strategies would you develop and implement to assist the workforce in the article deal with organizational change? Why do you think these strategies would be successful in reducing the stress that comes with change and helping employees to deal with change? (100-150 words)
Assignment Task 14:
A) Outline the issues that can make it difficult for people from diverse cultural backgrounds to secure employment. (150-200 words)
B) Identify six strategies with the potential to attract and recruit more Indigenous Australians to help organisations to attract a diverse workforce. You might need to carry out your own research to complete this activity.
Assignment Task 15:
Read this extract from the article Keys to Best Practice Succession Management and answer the question that follows.
Best practice in succession management
Our research has found that 'succession savvy' corporations possess several traits that characterize their winning approaches to succession management. First, their succession systems are easy to use. Winning systems are non-bureaucratic, uncomplicated processes-with a unified approach to ensure consistency and maintain objectivity across business units, organizational levels and geographic areas.
The best systems are developmentally oriented, rather than simply replacement oriented. The system becomes a proactive vehicle for managers and executives to reflect on the progress of their talent and the opportunities they require for genuine development. Highly effective systems always actively involve the very top players in the organisation. Senior executives view effective succession management as a critical strategic tool for attracting and retaining talent.
Best practice succession systems are also effective at spotting gaps in talent and identifying important lynchpin positions-the select set of jobs that are critical to the overall success of the organisation. Succession planning does the job of monitoring the succession process, enabling the company to ensure that the right people are moving into the right jobs at the right time and that gaps are being spotted early on.
The most successful systems are built around continual reinvention. Best practice companies continually refine and adjust their systems as they receive feedback, monitor developments in technology and learn from other leading organisations. Where old systems were characterised by complete confidentiality and secrecy, today's systems actually encourage involvement by individuals who are participants and candidates. Under older systems, few participants knew where they actually stood in terms of their potential for career opportunities ahead.
Developmental activities:
Developmental activities do not dramatically differ from one best practice organisation to the next. In every case, these companies invest the majority of their time and resources in top-tier (executive) talent. There are four major common factors in how best practice organisations engage their current and future leaders in developmental activities:
i) They believe that the most important developmental activity is job assignments or work experience, so they spend considerable time balancing the organization's need to fill vacant positions with assignments that will help key people grow and develop their potential.
ii) They use a variety of developmental activities including mentoring, coaching, job rotation, traditional educational programs and formalized feedback processes.
iii) They try new approaches to development, including special assignments, action learning and web-based educational activities.
iv) They find that computer-based technology has expanded their ability to effectively monitor developmental activities.
Development plans and courses:
Best practice organisations also use a mix of internal and external university-based education and development courses. For example, EnCana, a Canadian energy corporation, offers an internal MBA program called the Management Forum. This program provides management education by bringing best practices to participants, aligning management competencies with strategic direction to meet current and future needs.
With the vast and accessible training opportunities available through the web, organisations are making a wide array of courses available to their employees online. A good example is Dow Chemical, which currently has 60 tools and classes available online in its internal development program, including programs on ethics, Six Sigma, and root learning maps that explain strategy, economic profit and so on. More and more emphasis is being put on career planning and individual profiling as it relates to succession management.
Individual development plans are used by all best practice organisations. These firms look closely at employees' career preferences and try to match their interests and career development to a future job within the company. Employee career preferences can influence the development process and employee preferences are honored where possible.
Performance management and 360-degree feedback are linked throughout the succession management process and are the main tools used by best practice organisations to place employees into development plans. The tools are tied together and based on core and leadership competencies. Most of the organisations also employ the results of 360-degree feedback for development purposes.
Measuring long-term success:
Developing leadership talent is a long-term investment. The effectiveness of today's systems is determined by their ability to move talented individuals at an appropriate pace into the right development opportunities over the span of their careers. Tracking the progress of individual participants is a necessary dimension of a best practice succession process. The most successful systems must also measure their own record, identifying developmental opportunities, filling them with the right people at the right time and spotting looming shortages or gaps in both talent and developmental positions to rectify these gaps quickly.
Best practice organisations employ a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods of measurement and assessment to ensure that desired outcomes are achieved and to provide the broadest and most fine-grained range of perspectives on the system's real effectiveness. The long-term success of these processes is the product of the owners' willingness to constantly revisit and redesign the systems themselves. Continuous improvement in both process and content is required for true success.
A) What is succession planning? (50-75 words)
B) Identify 10 characteristics outlined in the extract of best practice succession planning systems and management that ensure desirable workers are developed and retained.
C) How would you identify desirable workers who can be developed and retained to fill key positions that might become vacant within the organisation? You do not have to limit your ideas to those provided in the text. Why do you think your method of identifying desirable workers would be best? (75-125 words)
Assignment Task 16:
A) What is an employer of choice? (30-50 words)
B) Select one organisation that you consider to be an employer of choice. For example, Google is an organisation that is widely considered to be an employer of choice. What programs does your chosen organisation implement to ensure the workplace is an employer of choice? Provide at least five examples. You will need to undertake your own research to complete this activity; however, this research can be carried out online.
C) What program/ benefit would you consider to be the most valuable that might be offered by employers of choice? Explain. (100-150 words)
Assignment Task 17:
A) An employee who has been with your organisation for many years has handed in their resignation. You are surprised they are leaving and they have not really provided any reasons for their decision to exit. What should you do? (100-150 words)
B) Your organisation does not currently conduct exit interviews when employees leave the organisation. They do not feel that there is anything to be learnt from employees who are clearly disgruntled. They suggest that the employee will not have anything objective to say and that they will only be interested in criticizing the organisation. What would you tell them about the need to conduct exit interviews to identify patterns in turnover? (100-200 words)
Assignment Task 18:
Choose an industry in which there is an undersupply of labor. Summarize the situation in that industry. Explain why there is an undersupply of labor in that industry. What are the effects of the labor trends in this industry on the demand for labour? What can the organisation do to nullify the effects of the labor trends? You will need to carry out your own research to complete this activity. (200-250 words)
Assignment Task 19:
A) Create a questionnaire that could be used to survey organizational climate to gauge worker satisfaction. The questionnaire should include questions for each of the commonly used categories of organizational climate questionnaires. These questions need to differ from those given in the sample survey. You should ask at least 15 questions.
B) Ask three people to complete your questionnaire. Ideally, these will be three people from the same workplace but you might choose to survey family or friends about their work climate. What conclusions would you draw from responses to your survey about organisational climate and worker satisfaction? What advice would you give the organisation as a result of your survey? (100-200 words)
Assignment Task 20:
A) What was the global financial crisis? (50-75 words)
B) What were ten of the effects of the global financial crisis?
C) There has been a downturn in the economy on a global scale. Your organisation, which organizes overseas holidays for families, has been hit hard by this downturn. People are scared of spending money and are cutting back on luxuries including travel. As a result, you have too many staff for the amount of business coming in. What recommendations would you make in response to this situation? Provide at least three examples.
Assignment Task 21:
Read the article and answer the question that follows it.
Success Story-Backpacking Welder Makes a Long Stop in Darwin
Surfing the internet for job advertisements resulted in a life changing experience for Dutch backpacker Monique Kamsma.
In Australia on a working holiday, Monique discovered her welding skills were badly needed by local employers struggling to meet demands in a growing economy.
She was employed on the spot in Darwin by Universal Engineering Northern Territory, Managing Director Steve Tiley offered to sponsor her on a temporary business (long stay) subclass 457 visa.
Surprised by the offer, Monique agreed to give it a go. She has become so fond of Australia she is considering making it home.
'I would like to live here permanently,' Monique said. 'There is lots of space and the weather is great. Everywhere I go in Australia there are advertisements for welders. I can't see myself going back to Holland.'
Employer-sponsorship on a temporary basis can lead to a permanent employer-sponsored visa.
Steve said Monique was one of five overseas skilled workers employed at Universal Engineering because of skilled labor shortages.
'She is a good role model in a predominantly male environment,' Steve said. 'Welding is a trade that could do with a few more women. She has inspired others. As a result of her example, our receptionist is interested in learning welding.'
The Australian Government will maintain skilled migration places at 97,500 in 2006-07 to help meet Australia's short and long-term labor force needs.
It will complement measures the government is taking to expand the training of Australians, particularly in the traditional trades.
Monique has found that working in a tough, traditionally male field such as welding can be rewarding as well as challenging.
'I'm really happy that the employer-sponsored temporary entry program has given me the opportunity to become a first class welder and contribute to the Australian economy as well,' Monique said.
(Access Economics 2008)
A) What are three of the advantages government policy had on labor demand and supply immigration policies have in this example?
B) Choose one current government policy relating to labor demand and supply. This policy should not be the same as the one mentioned in the text. Write a one page report outlining how the government policy affects labor demand and supply.
Assignment Task 22:
A) You run a security business. You supply bouncers and security guards to a chain of nightclubs. A number of the nightclubs have complained that fights are breaking out in areas of the clubs when security staff is elsewhere. What changes might need to be made to the workforce plan to address this issue? (30-50 words)
B) How would you evaluate the effectiveness of change processes made to address the nightclub's concerns against agreed objectives? What should be done if the change was determined to be ineffective? (100-150 words)
Summative Assignment I:
1) How might organisations gather current information about labour supply relevant to their specific industry or skill requirements? Provide at least 10 examples.
2) Outline what industrial relations are and how they can assist organisations in maintaining a skilled workforce. You might need to conduct your own research to answer this question. (100-150 words)
3) Describe labor demand forecasting. What is labor supply analysis? (20-50 words)
4) There are a number of methods which can be used to estimate future staffing requirements and determine what actions need to be taken when forecasts suggest that organisations will have a shortage or surplus of employees. Identify and explain three. (300-400 words)
Summative Assignment II:
Project 1: Minnesota Management and Budget (nd) define workforce planning as:
'Workforce planning is the strategic alignment of an organization's human capital with its business direction. It is a methodical process of analyzing the current workforce, determining future workforce needs, identifying the gap between the present and future, and implementing solutions so the organisation can accomplish its mission, goals, and objectives. As a process, workforce planning includes elements such as strategic planning, workload projections, legislative forecasts, turnover analyses, and budget projections. Workforce planning forecasts the numbers of people and types of skills needed to achieve success by comparing the available workforce with future needs to determine needs that may be unmet (gaps). Workforce planning is a management tool that affects the full life cycle and range of human resources activities including recruitment/ selection, classification and compensation, training and development, performance management, and retention.'
Identify and explain the important aspects of workforce planning. Make sure you explain how they contribute to the overall process of workforce planning and the success of an organisation. Discuss how workforce planning is affected by a range of internal and external factors and strategies for retaining and attracting skilled labor. Outline the need for contingency plans and the impact of industrial relations.
Where possible, make reference to real-life examples of workforce planning (for example an organization's diversity policy, strategies used by an organisation who is recognized as an employer of choice, examples of industries experiencing labor shortages etc).
Your response should be approximately 3,500 words and be closely connected to the content in this unit of study and the definition provided by Minnesota Management and Budget, but you can group similar topics together. You will need to demonstrate that you understand and know how to apply the knowledge you have acquired from this unit. You will also need to provide evidence that you have completed your own research in relation to this project. Remember to properly cite and reference any material from other authors.
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