Guidance for 5RST (LO1, 2, 3 & 4) Learners - HR Talent Planning

Activity 1 AC 1.1,1.2,1.3,1.4

Guidance for 5RST (LO1, 2, 3 & 4) Learners should provide written answers to each of the six questions of approximately 3900 words in total (divided appropriately across the questions). Learners should relate academic concepts, theories and professional practice to the way organisations operate, in a critical and informed way, and with reference to key texts, articles and other publications and by using organisational examples for illustration. All reference sources should be acknowledged correctly and a bibliography provided where appropriate (these should be excluded from the word count). Activity 1 AC 1.1,1.2,1.3,1.4 Learners should assess current market trends both nationally and internationally focussing on economic, social and cultural issues. Major trends in talent activities can all be examples. Discussion can evolve around tight and loose labour market conditions. The influence of government legislation and trade unions can all be explored and their impact assessed. Finally, learners can assess how the organisation can position themselves to be the employer of choice in the future. Activity 2 AC 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.6 Learners should offer advice on the basis of the downsizing and support this process with a series of both organisational and employee succession and development plans, with an overall strategy being offered to assist employees who remain with the organisation. Recruitment and selection techniques and requirements should also be analysed in line with the future needs of the organisation, with detail being provided concerning job descriptions, person specifications and competency frameworks. Activity 3 AC 3.1, 3.2 Learners should review retention techniques and offer best practice and ways the organisation can engage employees in order to retain key talent. Learners should offer advice concerning employees who may wish to leave the organisation. Analysis for turnover should be presented and the associated issues, which ensue, should be explored such as costs and reputation. The strengths and weaknesses of various retention techniques should all be evaluated. Activity 4 AC 2.5, 4.1 Learners should be able to advise the organisation on the more difficult talent planning procedures. An equal consideration of retirement, redundancy and dismissals should be conducted. Learners should offer the organisation a strategy for dealing with these issues and provide a blueprint to conduct these activities in a fair and coherent approach which is consistent, accurate and in line with any current legislation. Supporting documentation and laws may be referenced. Overall, best practice will be provided by Learners concerning a number of different human resource talent planning activities.

Human resource is one of the most prestigious and responsible departments for managing employees and measuring their talents.  Human resource management needs to maintain a set of responsibilities that can create learning atmosphere and opportunistic career management for the associated employees. Talent management is one of those responsibilities that the human resource management needs to maintain in terms of motivating workforce and help them accomplishing their personal and professional goals. Each employee seeks their career growth within an organization that creates a sense of reliability and long term loyalty. Talent management process is extensively researched by the business marketers since few decades. The study will develop enriched knowledge by exploring the conceptual and theoretical background of talent management. The obtained idea from the findings will help in analyzing the subject matter in a detailed way. This very specific study has provided detailed overview about the importance of making career development plan for receiving good performance from the employees.

Brexiters opined that the decision of leaving EU results an immediate cost saving. The country would not have to pay any contribution in EU budget. In addition, EU being a single market no tariffs is imposed on imports and exports. Britain also got benefits from the single market policy. Totolici (2015) opined that after the decision of leaving EU Britain had to face challenges in maintaining their international business successfully. The incident has left negative impact on the labour market. Large number of organizations failed to maintain business sustainability. The process of new recruitment and selection got saturated. In addition, the organization was completely unable to provide remuneration to the existing employees properly. The entire labour market at the time was highly affected due to the incident of Brexit. In addition, the rate of employee turnover from the organization rose immensely. The human resource managers failed to recruit new employees within business process due to this recession. On the other hand, the incident of Brexit has increased the scope of domestic business as well which is a major positive effect. Employability opportunity for the regional labours got increased.

As per overall scenario of current labour market the rate of unemployment is increasing day by day due to rapid growth of population and high rate of education. The decline of job vacancies is ultimately raising the market of competition. Bratton and Gold (2017) stated that participants in order to get an opportunity within the business organization have to be immensely competent and skilful from every perspective. There are three specific spheres where employees have to be very much competent in order to survive within business industry. Pandey and Sharma (2014) opined that the three specific areas include technological skill, communication skill and time management skill. However, the organization like TESCO while recruiting employees the business experts have to plan an effective workforce planning based on which the human resource managers can recruit the best employees as per their organizational compatibility desires.  At the same time, the employee wage rate in the current business scenario is also very high due to the rapid growth of globalization in the business industry. Organizations in order to retain employees have to make sufficient of remuneration structure for satisfying their needs and demands.  

There are several major ways of tightening labour market conditions. Scott (2014) stated that employers while recruiting the employees intend to invest more money and labour to recruit new employees due to large number of applications from the applicants. While recruiting new employees the human resource managers are providing sufficient salary package to pay their skills. At the same time, organizations before appointing an employee in the business field are targeting to provide them proper training and development session so that they can deliver the right services to the customers. In addition, one of the most effective ways of tightening employees within business field is to recruit current employees within the services. Jindal and Shaikh (2015) opined that current employees are having huge experiences in reading customers needs and desires. In this kind of situation, the business experts of organizations like ASDA focus on retaining current employees by providing more benefits and facilities at the workplace so that the employees do not get interested in switching over the company.

Loosening the labour market condition implies that employers have large pool of potential in hiring right people for the right post. In this situation, the recruiters become very much specific and choosy in hiring an individual employee as the number of application rate is high.  

Employers would have to invest large amount of money for making effective talent planning initiatives (Onyango, Njanja and Zakayo 2014). The investments that the employers need to take in several spheres. The areas of investment include giving proper training to the new employees, providing their necessary benefits at the workplace, giving them satisfactory remuneration in order to hire the employees.

As emphasized by Wahyuningtyas (2015), industry sets their target and criteria while hiring the employees. For an example, a beverage company like CocaCola would like to hire those employees within services who are very much competent and skilful in making product variety. In addition, as per the recruitment and selection criteria this specific industry has decided to focus on three major areas while appointing employees. These areas include communication skill of an employees, academic background and technological competency.

Government plays the most significant role in the infrastructure development and talent management planning of an organization. The organization like ALDI can afford sufficient amount of money for managing talents within their organization based on the sponsored money provided by government (Liu and Pearson 2014). For an example, if the business authority fails to make a good rapport with the government employers would be unable to provide a proper infrastructure to develop the talent management.

Trade union generally negotiates with the employers regarding the benefits and facilities that the organization tends to give to existing employees (Egerová et al. 2014). The primary roles and responsibilities that the trade union has to follow include:

• Making partnership and participation with the employers regarding the facilities and benefits provided to workers
• Increasing the rate of productivity for enhancing business profitability
• Suggesting the areas of development for employee retention
• Making good rapport with the employees in resolving any kind of issue facing at the workplace

In order to make effective talent management program the business experts have to be very much dependent on employer, the industry, the government and trade unions.

The principles and tools that the human resource managers should follow for talent planning are as follows:

• Human resource managers should show their equal respect and dignity to the employees of different geographical and cultural backgrounds. Employees are from diverse cultural backgrounds appointed within business process (Vassilopoulou et al. 2016). While providing talent management skills the HR managers should not show their biased attitudes towards any employee.
• HR managers while deciding talent planning session have to invest large amount of money for enhancing employee skills and areas of competency
• Employees need to provide a training sphere properly for enhancing the professional skills and competency of the employees.

Table 2: Potential succession and career plans for those employee

(Source: As created by the author)

While evaluating the case scenario it is observed that organizations are unable to draw customers’ attention due to the lack of product diversity. As opined by Barkhuizen (2014), consumers are not intending to pay their attention in purchasing fizzy drinks from organizations. However, in this kind of situation, the employees need to give their best effort in providing diversified products to the customers for expanding entire business process. From the perspective of this specific organization, the primary limitations that are identified among the employees of these organizations due to which talent management is needed are as follows:

• Lack of technological skills and competencies among the employees
• Lack of work-life balance due to over burden of pressure
• Unable to maintain various job roles simultaneously
• Lack of providing on job training for updating the professional skills and talents of the employees

Talent planning with required resources

In order to make employee retention the employers have decided to form effective talent planning program for motivating employees towards services

Table 1: Talent planning by highlighting downsizing of the organization

(Source: As created by the author

In order to develop job description and person specification plan successfully organization needs to focus on meeting some of the major requirements which are as follows:

• The employer of organizations needs to invest sufficient amount of money for developing the career progression plan and training session
• The human resource managers need to communicate with each employee effectively for making them alert about career progression plan
• The human resource managers need to collect decision from other managerial group before implementing career development plan

As per General Data Protection Regulation of UK, data protection act, 2018 implies that organization should maintain data security. The confidential data submitted by the applicant should not be leaked out without taking permission of the concerned person. People from different age group should get equal respect and dignity.  Both senior and junior employees should be treated equally. UK Equality act of 2010 ensures that employees should not be discriminated as per their age but as per skills and competency level. In addition, as per this act, vacancy should be preserved for physically disable or challenged people. They should not be neglected from being recruited within an organization due to their physical challenges. Pregnancy and maternity discrimination is considered under the category of UK Equality act. This act can be implemented when the employer shows reluctance in appointing pregnant women. By implementing this act women having pregnancy should get health facilities from the organization after recruitment. Organizations by following these legal factors should not show their biased attitude towards race, colour and nationality ethnicity. People having skills and competency level should be recruited within the services.