Workforce Planning: Forecasting

Workforce Planning

• Involves meeting business goals and surpassing competitors.
• Compares the organization's present state to future objectives concerning talent, like roles, skills, and performance.
• Focuses on having the right people with the right skills in the correct positions at the right time, for operational effectiveness.
• Achieves organizational goals at the right cost, for financial efficiency.

Workforce Planning Process

• Begins with forecasting labor demand and supply.
• Determines potential labor surpluses or shortages.
• Establishes goals and strategic planning.
• Implements programs and evaluation.

Forecasting

• It is the first step in workforce planning
• Determines the supply and demand for different types of human resources.
• Integrates financial, operational, and people data.
• Aims to predict labor shortages or surpluses in the organization.
• Uses both statistical methods and judgment.
• Examines complex, multiple scenarios.

Forecasting Surplus or Shortage: Labour Demand

• Usually forecasts demand for specific jobs or skill areas.
• Answers if the need for people will increase or decrease.
• Utilizes statistical models, including trend analysis and leading indicators.

Forecasting Surplus or Shortage: Labour Supply

• Details how many people are in job categories or have specific skills.
• Examines internal changes like career mobility and promotions.
• Uses transitional matrixes and expert judgment.
• Examines trends in the external labour market.

Transitional Matrix

• It is a visual tool showing the movement of employees between different job categories over a specific period.
• It includes analysis of internal career mobility and promotions.

Goal Setting and Strategic Planning

• Goals are derived from labor supply and demand analysis.
• Includes specific figures for job categories or skill areas, with a timetable.
• Quantifies Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs) required.
• Each goal has associated HR strategies.

HR Strategies for Addressing Labour Surplus

• Downsizing, pay reductions, and demotions are fast but cause high suffering.
• Transfers and reducing hours are fast with moderate suffering.
• Hiring freezes, attrition, early retirement, and retraining are slow with low suffering.

HR Strategies for Addressing Labour Shortage

• Overtime, temporary employees, and outsourcing are fast with high changeability.
• Retained transfers are slow but have high changeability.
• Turnover reductions are slow with moderate adaptability.
• New external hires and technological innovation are slow with low changeability.

Recent Impacts in the Labour Market

• Top-paid registered nurse in Alberta earned over $510,000 in 2022.
• Jobs most at risk of elimination by AI include finance, banking, media, marketing, and legal services.
• Jobs least at risk include manufacturing, factory work, agriculture, and healthcare.
• Amazon Web Services CEO suggests software engineers should learn skills beyond coding due to AI's impact.
• Meta is building an AI engineer to assist with coding tasks.
• The Cirque du Soleil: In March 2020, it closed all shows globally, losing $100M/month and letting go of 95% of employees, but by the end of 2022, it rehired 65% of employees and rebuilt its HR team.
• Big Tech Layoffs in 2022-2023 involved Shopify stating "Ultimately, placing this bet was my call to make and I got this wrong."
• Meta laid off 11,000 employees, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg stating, “I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here.”
• Amazon planned to eliminate over 18,000 roles.
• Google announced the layoff of 12,000 employees, around 6% of its workforce.
• Job cuts in tech result from firms slashing online advertising budgets, rising interest rates, uncertain macroeconomic conditions, and activist investors pressuring to cut costs and "cushy perks."
• Apple initiated a hiring freeze for positions outside research and development in October 2022, focusing on long-term investment.
• Banks and Telecoms made staff redundant in 2023-2024: CIBC indicated “as much as 5%” (3,000 people).
• CEO Dave McKay of RBC stated“Honestly, we overshot - we overshot by thousands of people.”
• Bell - 9% of the workforce (approximately 4,800jobs).
• TELUS - 6,000 jobs.
• Current workforce planning tools have become so sophisticated so how could companies so significantly overshoot?.

Applying Employment Equity & DEI

• Achieving these goals requires additional workforce planning.
• Focuses on analyzing subgroups, like women, Indigenous peoples, visible minorities, and people with disabilities.
• Workforce utilization review: compares employee proportions in protected groups to their representation in the labor market; also detects underutilization.

Succession Planning

• Identifies and tracks high-potential employees for top management or key positions.

Benefits of Succession Planning

• Requires senior management to regularly review company’s leadership talent.
• Helps develop experiences to ensure talent is ready and to attract and retain talent employees.
• Leverages data analytics and AI for predicting potential and defining development needs.
• Uses data visualization tools to present data and insights.
• Integrates complex scenarios through predictive modeling.

Recruiting Human Resources

• Any activity carried out by the organization with the primary goal of identifying and attracting potential employees.
• Three factors that affects who is hired: human resource policies, recruitment sources, and recruiter traits/behaviours.

Aspects of Recruitment

• Job Choice is affected by: Human Resources policies, Recruiter traits and behaviours, Recruitment influences, Vacancy characteristics, and Applicant characteristics.

Human Resource Policies in Recruiting

• Internal versus external recruiting: Promoting from within makes an organization more attractive.
• Lead-the-market pay strategies: Meeting or exceeding the market rate of pay helps compete for applicants.
• Social presence and reputation: Employer branding strategically attaches a visual, emotional, or cultural brand to an organization.

Indigenous Works

• Provides resources, training, and advisory services.
• Based in Saskatoon, SK.
• Emphasizes partnering to meet needs beyond the band office.

The RCMP Ribbon Skirt

• It is a symbol of resilience, survival, identity, and hope, representing diversity and strength in the ceremonial uniform.
• Yellow, red, blue, and white represent the four directions and RCMP colours, symbolizing unity.
• May produce mixed reactions as some view it as a part of reconciliation.

Recruitment Sources: Internal

• Organizations may emphasize internal or external sources for job applicants.
• Involves employees who already hold other positions in the company.
• Advantages: generates well-known applicants, usually cheaper and faster, and enhances employee morale.

Recruitment Sources: External

• Used when organizations need to recruit outside the company.
• E.g. no internal recruits for some entry-level and specialized positions
• Advantages: brings in new ideas and attracts a more diverse workforce.

External Sources

• Direct applicants: People who apply without prompting.
• Referrals: People who apply because someone in the organization prompted them.
• Passive candidates: Individuals are not actively seeking a job but are a significant source of top talent.
• Digital recruiting: Involves posting on company websites and/or social media platforms like LinkedIn.
• Ads: Typically generate a less desirable group of applicants at greater expense.
• Public agencies: Clients include both employers and job seekers, like the Government of Canada's Job Bank.
• Staffing companies: Private firms provide services for a fee.
• Executive Search Firms (ESFs): specialize in executive positions.
• University & College: Placement services, cooperative education, internships, and job fairs.

Digital Recruiting Evolution

• Digital job boards (e.g., Monster.com in 1994) attracted more job seekers and listings (1.0).
• Aggregators are used to aggregate jobs across multiple job boards (e.g., Indeed launched in 2004) and the rise of professional social networks (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook) (2.0).
• The use of Al extends reach to create best possible candidate pools, tailoring wording and content (3.0).

Comparing External Sources

• Use a figure with an X and Y axis
• Y axis (vertical) = information richness
• X axis (horizontal) = Information reach

Jobs filled Through external candidates vs Internal Candidates

• About 6/10 jobs are filled with external candidates.
• Overall: 38% filled with internal candidates versus 62% external candidates
• Executives: 43% filled with internal candidates versus 57% external candidates
• Management: 42% filled with internal candidates versus 58% external candidates
• Professionals: 39% filled with internal candidates versus 61% external candidates
• Administrative support: 42% filled with internal candidates versus 58% external candidates
• Trades, service and production: 52% filled with internal candidates versus 48% external candidates.

Evaluating Recruitment Sources

• Employers should monitor the quality of all recruitment sources.
• Yield ratio: expresses the percentage of applicants who successfully move from one stage of the recruitment and selection process to the next.
• Cost per hire: Divide the cost of using a recruitment source by the number of people hired.

Recruiter Traits & Behaviors

• Specialists in HR or experts of particular jobs.
• Recruiter's realism involves providing the right information and realistic job previews.
• Enhancing is a product of impact from timely feedback and recruiting in teams with job incumbents and/or supervisors.