Analyze the need of human resource planning

P 4: Analyze the need of human resource planning, the information required and the stage involved in this process

Human resource planning

According to crane (1974) in Rudman (2002) HR planning is concerned with much more than efficient recruitment for new or replacement of employees so that organization have ” the right number and kind of people in the right place, at the right time, doing things for which they are economically most useful” .

Human resource planning is done to achieve the optimum use of human resources and have to the right number and types of employees required meeting organization goals.

In this course of action how HR managers find out the talented employees for the organization, in this planning HR manager should know about the requirement of business that which sort of human resources are required for the management or specific tasks. It involves forecasting of planning for the acquisition, retention, improvement and the utilization of HR.  

Example

World big organization invest huge amount of investment on their business, so they forced to upgrade own staff by providing latest skills and knowledge to them to compete with other fast growing companies in world, because this is the era of competition among the companies so they should be complete from every side.

Why Human resource planning is important

Organization have their own goal through they want to reach, but as we know that organization need capital, labor, machinery for production, but they need also Human resources to maintain, to check the organization so that’s why organization do human resources planning for concentrating on talented human resources that we can take optimum benefits, if any organization have good human resources to they can easily utilize the resources and can reach their organization goals, so that’s why different companies like Imperial plan for future human resources planning for short and long term.   

Example

If any company have everything regarding to their needs for starting a new business, and they do not have good human resources to operating, and utilize the organization resources effectively, so they will ruin the organization badly, because operating, checking, and take maximum output from only can take intelligent human resource, that’s why different companies trying to plan for the future human resource.

Objectives of Human resources planning

To understand how much optimum human are required

How to reduce the absentees and also reduce the extra  labor turn over 

To forecast future requirement of human resource

To provide control measures to ensure that necessary human resource are available as and when required

To link HR planning with organization planning    

The  anticipation and the impact of technology on job and hr

To   determine levels of recruitment and training

The measurement and estimation of cost and human resource

To provide a basis for management development program

To meet the needs of expansion and diversification program 

 

Human resource planning process 

1: analyzing organization plan

In this step the organization relate their objectives and plans for the organization, if they know and clear about the organization policies so they can easily concentrate on technology, productivity, marketing, finance, expansion, etc  human resources planning is the planning of the organization to achieve the objectives for long or short term.

2: Manpower forecasting

In this step most of the organization do forecasting that how much human resource we need for the future, how much effective and skills labor we need it for the organization, it’s all depend upon the organization how much the organization do sales and do production, how much employees they required, in this stage different mathematical ratio are use to find out the forecast of employees.

3: Assessment of Manpower gap

Total human resources will be identified that when organization done, supply and demand, so it will be easily for organization whether we are in deficit or surplus of human resource planning for future. Deficit will show how much number of person are recruited, outside while surplus will show termination of employees. Gap might be occurs in term of knowledge and skills.

4: Action planning

In this step when the gap are identified plans are transferred to fill the gap, the deficit are met through recruitment, selection, promotion, plans surplus manpower are maybe redeploy in other department. 

5: Monitor and control

When the action plans are implemented the HR arrangement and system need to be review and regulated, monitoring and controlling involve only on the utilization and allocation of HR over time. Right action at right time should be taken to remove the deficiencies. 

P 5: Compare the structured process for recruitment in any two organizations and evaluate the methods and media that can be used.

Systematic approach to recruitment process

Recruitment

Recruitment is very important for every organization, because it’s all about the human resource planning, so that’s why the overall aim of recruitment is process is to obtain the number of quality of employee that are require in order for the business so achieve its objectives. These things are practically done in following organization practically

The most important Job of human resources person is the selection and recruitment of employees, the success of every good firm is that they will hire talented staff, therefore its very important for any firm to sure of hiring talented employees,

PROCESS OF RECRUITMENT: 

The recruitment process begins when the human resource department starts receiving requisitions for recruitment from any department of the organization.  

The general steps involved in recruiting process are as follows:

Identification of the vacancy.

Preparation of job description and person specification.

Advertising of the vacancy.

Managing the response.

Short-listing.

Arranging interviews of the short listed recruits.

Conducting interviews.

Sources of Recruitment

INTERNAL                                                                                            

Transfer

Promotion

Demotion

Upgrading

Retired employees

Retrenched employees

Dependents and relatives of deceived employees

EXTERNAL  

Press advertisement

Education institutes

Placement agencies

Labor contractor

Employment exchange

Unsolicited employees

In above mention whether internal or external all are the sources which jobs are recruited, every steps are takes part for the recruitment, as we can say that advertisement on different medium can help applicants to know about the job, while helping out the organization to find the applicants for them, when they paid for them.

Employment agencies also a form of source which help the organization to find the talented candidates for the organization, they have all data of the applicants.

Imperial recruitment procedure

Vacancy arises in imperial, so they give advertising on media to aware new employees for the recruitment in Imperial, Imperial recruitment has job specification and description these things are involved in some steps.

The age of candidate should be 20 to 26

They arrange shortlist of interview in the HR branch of imperial

The candidate should be fit according to the imperial demands

The qualification should be F.A level for the candidates

The candidate should know about three languages, Pashto, Urdu and English

When they select them so give them training about their products

Inform them about the rules and regulation of imperial  

RECRUITMENT PROCESS OF CYBERNET 

As the organization under study is the Peshawar branch of CYBERNET. So the recruitment and selection procedure discussed below is the one practiced at branch level. 

The following figure briefly shows the recruitment process of CYBERNET at branch level: 

Recruitment Process of CYBERNET 

The in charge of each department is responsible for identifying the vacancy at his department. After identification, the in charge of that department informs the branch in charge.

First of all the in charge looks for internal recruitment and checks if there is any potential employee who can fit in the new criteria.

If they find the required employee, the employee is asked to fill the “position requisition form”, which is then sent to the Administration manager in Karachi Head Office who further passes it on to COO. See Annexure “D” for the position requisition form.

In case they do not find any potential candidate within the organization so then the branch in charge sends requisition to Head of the department in Karachi.

Head of the Department discusses it with the General Manager.

After getting approval from General Manager, the Head of the Department and the in charge discusses the job description which has to be advertised in the newspapers. In the job description the job position and specifications are mentioned.

If the employee is required in one location only, so then it is advertised locally and on brightspyse.com and if the employee is required in every branch all over the Pakistan then they advertise nationally in DAWN newspaper, Express News paper and brightspyse.com

The resumes are submitted at Peshawar branch for the local post in this region.

The in charge of the department and branch manages the response.

EVALUATION OF THE CURRENT RECRUITMENT

PROCUDURE 

The current recruitment procedure has the following flaws: 

Time Consuming: The current procedures that CYBERNET has adopted are time consuming because there are a lot of different people involved in selecting the employee and then the involvement and interviewing of employees from the Karachi head office makes it even more time consuming. Moreover because these employees who handle the recruitment and selection procedures are not from an HR department, they have different posts and several responsibilities, therefore it takes them a bit long to spare some time for these procedures as it is not a part of their job description.

Lack of qualitative/ quantitative recruitment: As there is no proper HR department even on the head office level so there so no experienced HR manager and as the employees who recruit and select are also not experienced in the HR field therefore it’s hard to ensure qualitative and quantitative recruitment. Moreover, as there is no HR department so the selection of the top level management is not as qualitative as it can be in the presence of HR experts. Therefore the applicants that they select might not be as competent as compared to the current labor market.

Lack of equal opportunity to employees: In the current internal recruitment process, the management selects the deserving employee themselves, which discourages the other employees and deprive them of getting equal opportunity.

No utilization of all the available resources:  In the current recruitment procedure the employers do not utilize all the resources that they have, they do not utilize the CVs submitted online on their website, nor do they keep track of previous CVs submitted for some other post.

P 6: Evaluate the interview as a selection technique and discuss range of alternative selection methods available

INTERVIEW

Interviews are conversation whereby an applicant interacts with one or more people who evaluate the candidate and, in a selection interview, decide on whether this person should be offered a job.

Interview structures

The structure of an interview is based on the degree of control exerted by the interviewer as to the predictability of what questions are asked and what information is required. When there are specific informational needs, then a more structured approach may be used.

Unstructured interviews are unplanned, uncontrolled, non-directed, unformatted, bilateral communications and flexible. They need skills in questioning and probing.

Semi-structured interviews are pre-scheduled, , major topic areas are controlled directed but flexible and there is a focused flow.

Structured interviews are pre-planned, interviewer directed, pre-formatted standardized and inflexible. They use highly-designed, have a full structure closed questions. They suppose a consistent format will get consistent responses.

Interview type

There are four common type of selection interview:

Situational interviews use situation-specific questions based on job and look at imaginary performance. They are conducted by specialists like psychologists or trained people.

Job-related interviews ask about past behavior on job. They are classically conducted by HR or managers.

Psychological interviews evaluate personality traits. They are conducted by working or organizational psychologists.

Competency interviews broaden psychological interviews to include competencies such as interpersonal skills, leadership and other identified key competencies.

Alternative selection methods other than interview

imperial & CYBERNET

The alternative selection methods for both the organizations other than interview are performance appraisal, tests, job evaluation etc

Performance appraisal

Every organization wants to know how much we are effective in work, and how we can makes it effective our work? That’s why organization want to do appraisal, that how the employees can makes improve their selves, from appraisal the efficiency of employees will be increase, because If their CEO come to know that the person is not working effectively so he or she might be dismiss or suspended. And if the employees working effectively so they will definitely get motivated, and its can help the organization to reach their target if they have good employees

Methods of performance appraisal

Traditional method

As the name shows its very old sort of performance appraisal, in this method organization check the performance of the employees, it’s on the basis of loyalty, and qualities which he or she.

Ranking method

It’s also one of the oldest performance procedure, the performance ranks the employees on the basis of their overall performance, its mostly used for comparative evaluation in organizations.  

Paired comparison

In this method employees are compare each other in group.  

Man to man comparison

In this method man to man comparison on the basis of number of units sold and much more it might be target achievement.  

360 degree feedback

A performance which is done by everyone in organization, where boss or any supervisor, they can evaluate high level boss in organization. 360 degree method is modern method.  

TESTS

It is commonly believed that exam tests are the true test of merit. Only the deserving pass the examination. All the rest fail. But the facts are not so. Examination is not the true test of merit. It is often seen that those, who do not deserve to pass, get through, while those who deserve to pass, get failed. The reason is that many candidates use unfair means and manage to pass the interviews.

The importance of an examination is still sufficiently great. Candidates, who are really good, maintain their record. All the examinations, passed by a student, taken together, reveal the true merit of that candidate. There can be no other proper way to judge the merit if each candidate. Government service, are also awarded on the basis of written exams and viva-vorce tests

Job Evaluation

Job evaluation is practical technique which breaking down a job into measurable pieces, so each job can be given a points value. In simple words it’s the process through which person are eliminate or check in organization on their positions, on the basis of authority and job.

Job evaluation methods 

Job Ranking

Different jobs is depending on their requirement, authority, responsibilities are ranked in organization, grading etc.

Job classification

Jobs are integrated or graded in groups or levels equal skills, responsibility, and importance and requirements.

Point method

Point method is an analytical method of job evaluation which is based on breaking down jobs into factors or key elements.

P 7: Evaluate selection practices and procedures in two organizations comparing this to “best practices”

SELECTION 

Selection involves the series of steps by which the candidates are screened for choosing the most suitable persons for vacant posts. The main objective of selection is to choose the right person for the vacant job. 

The general process of selection is as follows:

Checking each applicant against the criteria given in the job advertisement.

Short listing of Applicants

Notifying Short listed Applicants

Conducting Interviews

Verifying Credentials

Ranking Applicants

Reference Checking

Writing Selection Report

Follow-up procedure for candidates who successfully completed the selection procedure.

Negotiation of terms and conditions of the job

Formulate up a contract or written conditions of jobs.

Plan initial orientation for the new employees.

Reviewing the un-interviewed possible and marginal list of candidates and putting the potential candidates on hold for future.

Informing the unsuccessful applicants.

Selection process in Imperial and Chen One

When the recruitment process is finished than the selection process is start, in this process right applicants are choose for the right and deserving candidate, who have the ability to do the job and those who are not applicable for this job cannot be selected, because selection is meaning that fulfill the criteria for particular job.

Application scrutiny

The application forms gives to students and then those candidates are fill it, in this application is asked about the details that are they married, single, and have any experiences before, Imperial and Chen One provide the same things but the forms are different for the job, for example for the Manager post and sale person post have different forms.

Initial screening

In this step the applicants are going through a process where prospecting applicants are given necessary information about the nature of the job, and also important information about their education, salary expected gathered.

Employment testing

This test is all about the employees, Imperial testing the sale persons in their sales person in HR department, for few weeks and while test the Manager of franchise, stock Manager they trained them for two to three months, and familiar him or her with HR department accounted everyone one who is the part of the imperial, the Chen One also doing the same thing but the difference is that Chen one is Chenab group of subsidiary that’s why they are doing test employment differences from us, they more focus on skills and ability rather than testing other things.

Selected for task

In other organization they call them for comprehensive interview, while Imperial after testing they Hire person as their employees, because if the post is for Manager so they ask in the start how much he/she have the experience if they have so they hire it, and the Chen one is also doing the same thing but they offering more salary for the Post of Manager rather than Imperial because Chen one have strong background, they have Chenab group subsidiary.

Conclusion

Chen one is more effective recruitment and selection process than Imperial, they trained their employees more effectively than Imperial, they give more time on  training rather than Chen one, and as they have Chenab group of subsidiary, the Imperial HR manager accepted that they have more strong background and training system us. Chen one provide job security, while Imperial do not have, Chen one insured while Imperial or not. 

M 3: Apply the concept of human resource planning and stages involved in this process on the organization under study

HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING OF CYBEnet

Just like any other organization the objectives of HRP for CYBERNET is to forecast and plan for the acquisition, retention, utilization, improvement and disposal of the human resource of the organization.

CYBERNET does not have any proper HR department so they lack qualitative human resource planning. Although the planning is carried out because it is essential for any organization but it is not up to the mark because of the lack of HR professionals.

Following are different situation for which CYBERNET carries out different human resource planning.

Forecasting the work force for future and dealing with downsizing: In case of expanding its business, when CYBERNET decides to open a new branch at some location, so forecasting is carried out in order to know how much work force they would need for that specific branch. There is one HR employee at the head office; the employee after discussing the future requirements with the managers of different departments makes a report of the forecasted workforce; which is later considered while hiring. In addition, in order to determine that how many employees they need to hire or lay off, they consider their competitors strategies as well because they affect their business to a quite a great extent. For example; recently because their competitors are offering low prices so before CYBERNET considers to offer lower prices than it’s competitors; the Business development department, Chief Technical Officer and COO at Karachi decided to decrease the number of work force because cutting off their prices would affect their revenue and with less revenue generation they can not afford to have a greater number of employees because it would increase their expenses. Therefore they merged two departments of customer support and formed one department. They terminated some employees and reduced the duration of working hours. Now the main call centre is at Karachi and the technical staff here is just required for paying visits to customer’s home in case of some problem.

 Now here lies the main flaw in the HRP conducted for this situation. As it’s quite obvious that they copied the strategy of Mobil ink, Pizza Hut etc, as they also have one main call center now. But in case of Pizza Hut, it’s simple because the customers just have to place an order, inquire about the menu or to the most has to complaint. Then in Mobil ink; as telecommunication deals with voice data mostly so it is easy to solve the problem from one point but as far as CYBERNET is concerned, being an ISP it deals with data that has many complications and technicality. When the problem does not get solved on phone so then they transfer the call to Peshawar branch; now this procedure takes long and the customer has to explain and discuss his problem twice. Moreover the bounding between customers and employees gets weak. Now if they had carried out proper planning and if they had discussed it on regional level or if they had HR departments on regional level so they would have had better understanding of the situation and more suggestions to improve their plan.

Employee Turnover Rate: This year the employee turn over rate has been high as compared to other years and that is because of the lack of qualitative human resource planning. Seven employees have resigned just at the Peshawar branch. The COO of the company did not pay attention to employee satisfaction; he did not properly work on human resource planning for almost two years. Then after when he resigned because he had some business plans so new COO was hired. The company was facing loses and the new hired COO did not had a clear image of the situation, he took it at the lower management’s part and terminated a number of employees. Now this uncertainty and lack of job security with dissatisfaction made the employees look for better opportunities. Four of them resigned because they had better opportunities to avail. Now this is also a weakness at the HRP side because if proper HRP was carried out with ensuring employee satisfaction so the experienced employees would have never turned over.

Technologically Competent Employees:  Being an ISP company, one of the objectives of HRP is to hire technologically competent employees. For this purpose CYBERNET tries to recruit the best available employees and then train them in order to keep them up to dated. If they introduce some new technology then they properly plan to train their employees. In case any department has some problem in compatibility with the new technology so they train them as well. For example; when CYBERNET Peshawar branch was established, so the technical team here, dealing with all the networking were having problems in understanding the systems. Therefore CYBERNET gave them training of CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Association) and to reduce the training costs they trained them locally at some institution because if they had trained them at Karachi so it would have increased the expenses of training. On the other hand they do carry out expensive trainings while training their managers and in charges. Recently a training of two months was arranged for the managers which was for RS 1200, 0000/-. The only flaw it has is that when they arrange some training for a couple of departments, they invite two to three employees from every department and train them, then the employees invited further train the other employees at the branch, which results in quality training for some employees but for the others the guidance can lead anyway; resulting in misguidance.

To ensure employee satisfaction: One of the main objective of any organization’s HRP is to ensure employee satisfaction because it is very important to give your employees job security and to keep them hooked to your company because when they spend time with you they get to know about the organizational structure and culture, they get trainings and their skill level improves with time and after all this, if the company does not offer them enough to keep them loyal to their company then they are losing something very important and are providing other companies with the experienced and skillful employees. As far as CYBERNET is concerned, as already mentioned above that the employee satisfaction level is very low from a couple of years. They are offering them low salaries and are not giving them other incentives besides a little cash. The whole organization structure is weak having no proper distribution of work and weak job descriptions. There are no proper promotions. In fact there is no increase in the salary of the old employees. Recently a new customer care executive was hired at the Islamabad branch; her salary was more as compared to the customer care executive officer at Peshawar, who has been working here from more than three years. Now it explains the level of de-motivation. Moreover there is no room for employees to use their potential for self recognition. Most of them do not have any role in decision making.

Human resource planning for Imperial

HR department is the only department who should effective to choose those employees for organization who should be energetic, and do a brilliant planning for the human resource. As explain earlier this planning involves a lots steps that how Imperial do forecasting and control supply and demand of employees.

Imperial HR management focus only on youth to hire it, the HR management take decision regarding the vacant for job in Imperial, in first step the make list for the requirement of employees in Imperial.

In the second step they focusing on the languages, how much language should know by candidates and they choose fresh and young man to achieve the organization goal easily because being as sale person should be fast and young. And then check their performance in organization and give incentives when sales stock of any stall increase and sale out soon.

M 4: Make an effective judgment about different selection techniques that the organizations undertake.

RECOMMENDATIONS for CYBER NET 

Establishment of HR department:

 It’s very essential to establish an HR Department at the head office; having an HR manager, one HR Assistant and the clerical staff because this would help them handle the recruitment, selection, job evaluation, appraisal and firing of employees easily and in an organized way.  

Human Resource Regional Managers:

In addition to establishing an HR department at the head office, they should also appoint HRMs in every region. There should be a small HR department in every region; having one HR manager and some clerical staff. Moreover they should be given enough authority to manage the hiring and firing at regional level. This would not only result in qualitative recruitment but would also be time saving. Moreover the job evaluation would be carried out easily and accurately.

Furthermore, all the line managers should report regularly to the head office in order to keep track of the records and to communicate the results.

 

Outsourcing Recruitment:

Head hunting is very essential for any organization. After establishing an HR department the HR management should focus on the strategic dimensions of their function and should outsource functions that need expertise, experience, knowledge and best methods and practices. They should transfer some part of the recruitment process to an external consultant providing recruitment services. The entry level job/ lower management and some part of the middle management should be recruited by the organization’s HR management, where as the Consecutive level jobs should be handled through outsourcing; such as; recruiting and selecting CEO, MD, GM, HOD, COO, RMs, HR manager etc.  

With the experience and expertise of the third party, CYBERNET would be able to improve the quality of the recruits and the speed of the whole process. Also, outsourcing would enable the human resource professionals of CYBERNET to focus on the core and other HR and strategic issues. It would also give them a structured approach to the whole process of recruitment, with the ultimate power of decision making of recruiting with the organization itself. The portion of the recruitment cycle that should be outsourced range from preparing job descriptions to arranging interviews; the activities that consume almost 70 per cent of the time of the whole recruitment process. The results would not only be fruitful but the HR management would also get time to focus on other things like; retention, job evaluation etc. 

Advertising:

CYBERNET should properly advertise within the organization instead of choosing the employee by themselves. They should give equal chance to everyone and should not discourage the other employees. They should a