Module Code: BSBHRM614

Module Subject: Contribute to strategic workforce planning

1 .Outline five (5) key functions of a Human Resources Manager, including a short description of each function.

Effective human resource strategies play a significant role in managing a workplace. The human resource manager is responsible for major areas that include-

• Staffing: the hiring managers are responsible to craft the requirement and screening the candidates to recruit the right person at the right place at right time.
• Compensation and benefits: managers are responsible to follow the protocol and offer the benefits and compensation to each employee as per market standards, roles and performance. Managers should be well versed with additional employee benefits to clarify the queries related to policies and benefit programs for employees.
• Learning and development: recruiting candidates is one phase of HR jobs. These employees are required to be retained for which the HR managers are responsible to initiate different training and development plans to provide the employees with career growth and skill enhancement.
• Maintaining the culture of the company: Managers are responsible for strategizing different practices to create strong relationships with employees who share the company’s vision, and mission, and to keep the goals congruent with the employee’s needs.
• Managing relations between employer and employee: Relations between employees and employers are another facet of the HR departments to oversee. To maintain equity and fairness in the workplace, HR managers contribute to the creation of corporate policies and support the department to manage different grievances at the workplace.

2  Discuss three (3) aims of human resources strategic planning.

3 aims of HR strategic planning are:

• To assess the current workflow and identify the causes of delays: SHRM includes internal scanning of the organization to understand the current workflow, bottlenecks, and other errors that are causing delays in different areas of work.
• Identify the current workforce and future demands for skills and competencies: the SHRM planning aims to understand the required skills and competencies for business. Based on the forecasting the planning of manpower is done both at national and international scaled markets to achieve the strategic fit.
• Managing the engagement levels: treating the employees as partners to keep them committed to the business.

3 Identify at least five (5) information areas that should be included in a Human Resources Strategic Plan.

The information areas that should be included in a human resource strategic planning are:

• The purpose of the organization includes its vision, primary objectives and mission
• People or the workforce planning to understand the current workforce of the organization and the required workforce to perform the tasks with adequate skills.
• Processes should be an important area for HR strategic planning as it enables understanding of the organizational structure methods and system of operation
• Performance is another important aspect to keep the employees aligned with the goals and identify the areas of improvement to plan the learning and development programs.
• Policies and principles to set the protocols for the organization and maintain the principles to achieve the goals without any unethical practices.

4  Explain briefly how a SWOT analysis can help to examine the overall functionality of the HR department.

SWOT analysis is an important tool that HR departments are performing to evaluate the overall functionality of the department. Strength and weakness areas examine the internal practices and opportunities and threats examine the external practices of HR.

For example in SHRM different areas of HR functions like organizational branding, employee retention, company’s compensation and benefits offerings, well-defined policies, and quality hire are signifying strength areas on basis of which the organisation can plan further. Some areas can become weaknesses if the organization is facing negative branding, more turnover, etc which helps to identify the causes and strategies to improve.

While considering the opportunities and threats- the latest technology changes, new skill emergence, and data on heavy demand for the workforce can be opportunities while the threats include policies breaching, violation, outsourcing talent for business requirements, competition, unemployment and other economic conditions. This analysis thus helps the HR departments to manage and modify the practices accordingly.

5 Discuss the four (4) key steps to be followed to identify future labour needs and skill requirements.

Key steps to identify future labour needs are:

Step 1: monitoring the current staffing situation: the starting phase is to assess the current staffing situation and performance of the existing workforce. This helps to identify the skills requirement and patterns to forecast future needs.

Step 2: forecasting the HR requirements: based on the current workforce and business requirements understanding the number of staff required, and jobs to be filled can be assessed.

Step 3: Future workforce profiles: in this step the workforce profiles are created to fulfil the demand for manpower and future labour supply as per job requirements.

Step 4: Gap analysis: this stage helps the HR departments to determine the gaps in skill requirements and the present workforce which can be filled with proper planning of new talent inclusion and development of the present employees. It helps the organisation to support the workforce and move forward with new required talent acquisitions

6 Discuss five (5) options that can be explored when seeking and recruiting staff.

Five options that help seek and recruit staff are:

• Hiring casual staff on a contractual basis
• Outsourcing talent as per business requirements
• Hiring from overseas or international business processes
• Recruiting new graduation to include new skills and talent at a lower wage rate
• Hiring offshore workers to support business processes from one country to other.

7  List five (5) benefits of using technology in recruitment and selection function of human resources.  

Benefits of using technology in recruitment function of human resources

• Wider reach to talents worldwide helps in faster quality hires
• Tracking the labour needs, having information of integrated employee database through workforce analytics
• Tracking employee performance becomes easy and effective with the inclusion of HR technology.
• A new generation of tools and technology in HR helps in better utilization of time and assessing the insights of employees and staffing as required.
• HR can plan better with available requirements data and also helps in reducing the cost of hire.

8  Outline the steps to be followed when developing a strategic plan. Explain each step briefly.

Steps in developing a strategic plan:

Step 1: assessing the current HR capacity: in this, the current workforce is to be assessed to develop the skill inventory and check the requirements of new hires.

Step 2: Forecasting the HR requirements: assessed both the demand and supply of the talents as required by the organizational needs to align the demand and supply of the workforce.

Step 3: Develop the talent strategies: after identifying the staffing needs the process of planning the talent addition is done which includes recruitment, selection, hiring, onboarding compensation, performance management, and maintaining employee relations.

Step 4: Review: in this phase, the evaluation is done of the hire to achieve the goals like profit, employee satisfaction, retention and production, Moreover, provides an overview of future requirements.

9 Outline the steps of risk management process. Describe each step briefly.

The steps of the risk management process are:

• Identifying the risks related to injuries, medical, environmental, financial, etc
• Assessing the risks in which the likelihood of the risks occurring and severity of those risks are evaluated.
• Developing strategies for risk management: in this stage the strategies are developed as per the severity of the risks that including avoidance (for lowest severity risks), modification (changing the activities to mitigate the occurrence of risks, acceptance where calculated risks are involved and choose to accept those risks, lastly sharing the risk with other collaborated organization through agreement or contracts.
• Implement and monitor: based on the implementation of the strategies of risk management the evaluation is done on whether the strategies are working or there are some changes for which modification is required.

10  Open communication to employees, local communities and shareholders should be a key component of a HRM strategy and should stimulate your organization to continuously improve its performance in this regard.Name three (3) communication tools that organizations can use for this purpose.

Communication tools required for open communication are:

• Performance reports and audits
• Internet usage through devices like computers, mobiles, video conferencing, etc.
• Newsletters

11 It is vital that when developing the strategic plan for HRM in your organization, you consult a wide range of stakeholders. Outline two (2) benefits of consulting various stakeholders.

The benefits of consulting various stakeholders are:

• Communicating with stakeholders ensures that they are aware of the changes that are implemented in the organisation
• Stakeholders get some authority to provide their opinion on the proposed changes that can help in better and effective planning to implement those changes without offending them.

12  Workforce plans and strategies need to be re-evaluated at least annually. Provide two (2) reasons for evaluating performance against HR plan objectives.

Reasons for evaluation performance against HR plan objectives:

• To ensure that the performance outcome is aligned with the HR objectives to achieve the organisational goals. The assessment helps in identifying the gaps, reducing errors and having consistent improvements.
• The evaluation is important to understand what is working and what is not working within the planned objectives and strategies so that it can be addressed within the timeframe.

13  Name four (4) methods for obtaining feedback on how well the organization has accomplished its action plan and the effectiveness of its outcomes.

Four methods for obtaining feedback:

• Scheduled meetings with management
• Progress report reviews
• Survey responses from customers and employees
• Organizational performance measurements