Techniques used to support the process of workforce planning
Workforce planning uses various elements to forecast and control future workforce requirements within an organisation. Each method has its own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to providing guidance on strategic workforce management.
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Managerial Judgment
Managerial judgment is the decisions managers make to anticipate the supply of employees given future business activities. Managers make qualitative forecasts based on the experience acquired and knowledge of corporations’ aims (Taylor, 2014). For instance, the managers of Sun Energy could predict the number of skilled workers needed for subsequent solar or wind projects using their knowledge of the industry’s shift toward green power (Farrell, 2020).
Pros:
This approach incorporates managers’ direct understanding of team requirements and organisational environment, which can result in adaptive and timely forecasts. It is also fast and cheap, requiring little data and tool usage. This method is especially applicable in fields that experience frequent changes in technology or market demand, such as renewable energy.
Cons:
Subjective and organisational managerial judgments can often be informal, not very standardized, and inconsistent throughout departments in the organisation. Lack of adequate data will have some positive or negative influence, such that the workforce needed might be overemphasized or underemphasized. In the case of Sun Energy, the company manager’s overoptimistic approach to anticipating employee attraction leads to staffing shortages, particularly in specialized positions such as “hydrogen technology” experts. Therefore, there is a need to complement managerial judgment with more quantitative analysis methods.
Scenario planning would involve developing different plausible futures and estimating the impact each of these may have on the organisation’s workforce needs. Such scenario planning will be very useful in preparing for uncertain or rapidly changing parcel delivery conditions (CIPD,2023); for example, ParcelCare may sketch scenarios of parcel demand growth, technology adoption, or even regulatory changes. It can help ParcelCare develop flexible workforce strategies that will help it respond appropriately to whichever future comes to pass by assessing how each of these scenarios may finally affect staffing levels, skill requirements, and employee availability.
Advantages:
Scenario planning can complement flexibility by enabling ParcelCare to program several possible futures and be ready for any of them. This suggests that the actions undertaken can be more proactive in contrast to a scenario where the organisation passively awaits developments before responding. The firm can forecast the challenges and opportunities that are likely to occur; hence, the actions taken by the firm will be more intentional rather than reactive (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014).
Disadvantages:
Scenario planning also has its complexities as well as limitations. It takes a long time and requires a lot of resources to develop and analyze different scenarios (Boxall & amp; Purcell, 2016). Moreover, forecasts are made based on informed assumptions, which at best can be called educated guesses, making this process more controversial.
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Critical Incident Analysis
Critical incident analysis concentrates on determining events or incidents that helped shape the workforce’s future needs (Klasnic et al., 2022). Therefore, by studying such events, organisations can enhance their potential to avoid or at least mitigate such occurrences, enabling an improved workforce planning approach.
Pros:
This approach is practical if used to estimate a company’s specific needs for skilled labour in high-risk or critical activities to enhance preparedness should the same situation arise again. It is essential in sectors where fluctuations in demand depend a lot on outside conditions, like the healthcare or logistics industries. Critical incident analysis is based on actual incidents and will, therefore, be quite accurate. Sun Energy can determine the availability of their workforce, allowing it to develop a contingency plan for potential future issues, such as a shortage of professionals in emerging renewable energy technologies.
Cons:
Critical incident analysis can be termed reactive in the sense that it depends on previous data and not future occurrences. It can sometimes only focus on narrow organisation needs, which makes it insufficient for large-scale workforce predictions. Additionally, Critical incident analysis is essentially retrospective. While past events may be useful in preparing for future occurrences, they may not be accurate, especially in a volatile industry like energy.
N/B: As you are asked to evaluate, forming a judgment is an important part of passing this AC. You may do so, as in Critical Incident Analysis above or managing judgment above, which forms Judgments for Sunenergy, or you could form a judgment as explained below, which forms judgment for Parcelcare.
Judgement
For ParcelCare, it is possible that integrating these methods will create a coherent and practical approach to balancing the workforce. Managerial judgment is excellent when there is a need for flexibility, timeliness, and utilization of managerial experience and discretion, making it more suitable for short-term, micro-level workforce planning needs (Tucker, 2019). However, they are just as subjective, and their inconsistency can affect accuracy and the ability to scale up the research. With systematic approaches, the extent of precision and standardization is higher, most importantly when the environment is stable; however, implementing systematic approaches means high cost and minimal flexibility within unstable environments (Akyol, 2023). On the other hand, critical incident analyses are most pronounced in their strong focus on specific highest-risk accident situations, yet their general weakness is reactive construction practice defect.
