Manager Workplace Planning for Redundancy Essay.

Redundancy Plan

Discuss about the Manager Workplace Planning for Redundancy Plan.

Workforce planning is a core element of business planning that focuses on having the right people in the right job, at the right time, with the suitable skills. Based on the future needs and priorities of the organization, the redundancy planning takes place. It enforces organization to initiate workforce planning which is both strategic and action-oriented. Based on the Fynntown City Council Case Study, the downsizing strategies will be designed which must align to business goals and outcomes of the FCC.

1. Workforce planning is essential for avoiding the situation of redundancy where the position of employment of an employee is or will become surplus to the requirements of the business of employer (Davey, Fearon and McLaughlin 2013). It is important to plan for redundancy in order to maintain an effective workforce within the organization which may reduce the elimination of jobs or job categories by downsizing, rightsizing or outsourcing. Generally, a provision or existence of more than one means or resources to perform a function or activity tend to reduce the quality of deliveries due to shortage of skills or ineffective career progression of workers. In other words, the positions might become redundant within an organization when there is a decline in company revenue or/and wok available or the workplace looking to restructure and streamline of the organization. At this scenario, the employee often finds their position is surplus to the company’s requirements or needs. In these circumstances, organization or employers will announce to their employees to downsize their position which may sometimes no longer exist.

Based on the given case study of FCC, the positions at that region have become redundant and thus the Organizational Development team has identified similar positions and functions within Fynntown Council. In the council, there have been difficulties recruiting based on the number of factors including shortage of industry, scarce skill sets and market based forces. Thus, the objective of the workforce planning in relation to the redundancy is to reduce “Disguised Unemployment” where employees are working in a redundant manner where workers productivity has become nil (Davis 2014). Thus an effective redundancy plan is required to improve the staff turnover and mange regional people in a more effective manner. However, treating employees fairly during the redundancy process needs to be considered by the responsible authority of FCC.

2. The retrenchment strategy should adopt by the organization aiming at reduction its one or more business operations with the view to cut expenses and reach to more stable conditions in terms of the financial conditions. Generally, the retrenchment strategy takes place when a corporation decides to eliminate its activities through a considerable elimination in its business operations considering the different perspective in terms of functions, groups, and technology alternatives, either individually or collectively are called as the strategy of retrenchment (Melchor 2013). In the given case the retrenchment option has been recommended to revitalize its financial condition of Fynntown City Council. In the given case study, the voluntary redundancy takes place where organizations in the council encourages employees to voluntarily resign, typically in restructuring or downsizing situations.

There are three types of the retrenchment strategies which often used by the organizations to manage the workforce more effectively. These include Turnaround retrenchment strategy, Divestment retrenchment strategy and Liquidation retrenchment strategy.

Melchor 2013

(Source: Melchor 2013)

Turnaround Retrenchment Strategy: There are several business decisions when organizations feel that the decision made earlier is incorrect and needs to undergo before its damages the profitability of the company (Mohamed and Ali 2015). During the situation of continuous loss, poor work management, high attrition of employees, declining market share and poor quality of functional management and so on. Generally the need for this strategy arises due to the changes in the external environment such as government policy changes, saturated demand of the product, changes in product preferences and so on.

Liquidation Retrenchment Strategy: According to Osborne (2013), this strategy is the most disagreeable strategy rarely adopted by the organization that includes selling off its assets and the final closure of the business operations. Organizations involve in this strategy due to loss of future opportunities, spoiled market image, loss of employment and so on. There are several indications insist a corporation that necessitate a firm to follow the liquidation retrenchment strategy.

Types of Retrenchment Strategies

Divestment Retrenchment Strategy: This includes the downsizing of the scope of the business. Generally, an unprofitable portion or one of the strategic portions of the business has adopted this strategy for the effective management and stable financial position of the business.

In the given redundancy plan of the Fynntown City Council Case Study, councillors have asked to downsize the organisation’s employee numbers in the short to medium term to manage several operational and structural risks. This indicates organisations across the council have recommended divestment retrenchment strategy to support the workforce planning across FCC. In this context, the region has supported to adopt the voluntary redundancy under the downsizing situation. By taking voluntary approach, councillors can be motivated by the strategic choice to change the age structure within the company because median age of the organisational people is from the age of 45. By the voluntary retrenchment, organisations can avoid layoff, improved efficiency, competitiveness and reduce reliance on the markets (Mohamed and Ali 2015). In the given situation, the wise to downsize workforce offered financial incentives to voluntarily resign which is completely a different concept than involuntary retrenchments where the organisation decides on its own which are the employees it wishes to leave (Osborne 2013).

FCC needs to follow different ways to mitigate redundancies for ensuing turnover and retain the skilled workers in the workplace:

Decrease the agency staff:

By the elimination of the use of temporary staff from the workplace, the organisation could provide continued employment for those staffs that are permanently associated with organisations at Fynntown. In the last year, 35 permanent employees leave the organisation from the staff turnover. This rate could be increased by reducing the agency staff.

Reducing the External requirements:

For the economical development of the region, organisations needs to reduce the external recruitment either be deleted and the work redistributed amongst employee at risk of redundancy or any vacant position (retirement or voluntarily retrenchment). This is one of the significant step for skill labour retention at the workplace.

Effective employee turnover management:

Hiring the right people in terms of appropriate skill sets considering the work equality exposure across all employees at workplace and provide voluntary redundancy policy for though who does not fit with proper skill-set as per the organisational requirement (Goetsch and Davis 2014). Furthermore, encouraging generosity and gratification on the pre-social behaviour of employees can be practiced. To retain the skilled employee at workplace, organisations will appreciate by offering real time recognition. Offering flexibility of employees around work hours and locations is another consideration for the effective employee turnover management. Additionally, make opportunities for development and growth for employees is an effective strategy for the employee turnover management. In this case, the redeployment policy must be incorporated to avoid redundancy. However, the “Fair Work Commission” has stated that the “redundancy will not be genuine of it would have been reasonable in all of the circumstances for the person to be deployed”. This option would be better for the employers across FCC because productivity of skilled and known employees tend to be higher that the newly appointed one. Deploying those employees shall restrict the unnecessary redundancy at workplace.

Steps to Mitigate or Avert Redundancies

Succession planning and management:

Developing pool of talent to fill key areas and positions, organisations across FCC should maintain the succession planning. The succession planning approach helps organisations to identify, develop and retain capable and skilled employees in line with current and forecasted objectives.

Rothwell et al. 2015

(Source: Rothwell et al. 2015)

Organisational change is the natural phenomenon and indeed a tremendous pressure for employers to assist their workforce. An organisation can face several types of changes. For instance, physical move may impacts on employees and this results decreasing productivity until workers acclimate to the new destination. On the other hand, workforce reduction for the cutting expenses, litigation, reorganisation and many others are vital needs to be managed by managers of the organisation. Thus organisational change often elicits concern and discomfort among employees. The following strategic actions need to be maintained:

Concentrate on effective delegation: Managers of organisations across FCC should concentrate on effective delegation during the initial stages of the change process. Concentrating on effective solution, managers and employee both can manage the assigned workload, and secondly it gives employees a sense of involvement to the decision making at the organisational change.

Open and effective communication: It is essential to communicate the reasons for the change along with the process required to make the change (Armstrong and Taylor 2014). For instance, if managers need to initialize a procedure, then it is require a lot of initial labour to get the new process up and running. Employee must aware all these things while maintaining the transparent and an effective communication. In short, it is important to understand the upcoming changes which are going to take pace in FCC.

Personal counselling through training and development: To deal with changes, employees need to undergo with suitable training procedure provided by the employer that will help to adapt the changes. This will make employee more confident and increase their capabilities. Furthermore, these employees will be able to maintain more responsiveness during the planning and the execution at their assigned job responsibilities.

Monitoring and Implementing: Employees need to monitor how the change is playing out in the corporation (Crawford et al.2014). For instance, employee can observe how the overall production process affect on their performances and such impacts must be conveyed with the management. In this way, the entire change management system within the workplace will be observed and adapted by employees.

The term industrial relation refers to the system in which workers, employers, and representatives along with the interaction with the government for the following rules to maintain the governance for building work relationship (Smilowitz, Nowak and Jiang 2013). However, such labour relations system much be conveyed by the human resource department. This industrial relation often affected by the unfairly dismissal or disputable redundancy policies of the organisation. An employee can become redundant when an employer no longer needs that persons job to be performed by anyone. It takes place due to changes to the operational requirements of the workforce. According to the Workplace relations Act 1996, the proper justification or genuine redundancy policies in terms of dismissal, termination of employment, shall be maintained by the human resource management of the organisation. There are certain objects emphasise the importance of maintaining a strong economy considering low inflation, high employment levels and international competitiveness. For maintaining effective legislative rules in the redundancy situations, employers must consider all possible alternatives, such as redeployment. Working under the healthy industrial relationship, a notice must be given to the employee before talking decision to proceed with a redundancy at the workplace (Chrobot-Mason and Aramovich 2013.). There is a ground for raising a personal grievance of the employee believes that their employer has acted unjustifiably. The fair workplace relation act must look whether

The redundancy s for “genuine” commercial reasons
The provisions related to the employment agreement have been observed
The reasonable act in the way of redundancy was carried out or not

Workplace planning objectives:

The growth of the organisation is completely depends on accomplishment of the workplace planning objectives because employees are the main driving force or internal resources of the firm (Asch, Mattock and Hosek 2013). Since the redundancy program, the workforce has been dropped by 30 percent overall. By the use of voluntary redundancy program, organisations of the Fynntown region has motivated by the strategic choices to change the age structure within the company. iN Currently Employer of Choice objectives are as follows:

To develop diverse industries for embracing the needs of the community by protecting the natural environment lifestyles, and the culture and heritage of its members through the economic and social, cultural, environmental initiatives
To provide efficient, equitable and effective services to the community of Fynntown region for enhancing lifestyles of communities

Recommendation Strategies for Assisting Workforce

The current workforce strategy is completely aliened with the workforce planning objectives. Though the region is full of diverse industries, the demand for labour is quite high. By making many efforts of economic, social, cultural and environmental initiatives, and councillors provides a strong leadership which certain unfolds many options for an effective workforce management for the future as well. Incorporating teamwork, accountability, service excellence, continuous improvement, respect and integrity into their workforce plan, this can be expected that organisations across Fynntown region will manage their workforce while offering diverse community services. To meeting the vision and mission of Fynntown Council, the organisation maintains the equality in terms of offering job opportunities in respective of the gender. Considering purely on the basis of skills, abilities, competencies, employees are recruited. However, the company has been facing difficulties to recruiting people based on a number of factors including specific skills requirements, industry shortages and market based forces. However, the redundancy program initiated to downsizing number of employees and tries to retain skilled and full time employees into the workforce. In the last calendar year, 20 percent of the permanent employees leave organisation out of which 16.6 % took voluntary retirement which indicates that organisations tries to change their strategic direction to perform better to employ more skilled people which are in shortage in the region. However, the increasing monotonous work neither provides career progression not operational excellence from the perspective of employees. In this context, Fynntown City Council has already been committed to provide workplace diversity to foster strong community engagement, tolerance and fairness by the organisation’s equity access and equity policy. This would be a retention strategy for those who provide skills, competencies at the workplace. By providing the succession planning, the organisation increases the operational capabilities of the existing employees. By fair recruitment process, retrenchment policies, access and equity policies the organisation has made alignment with the workplace planning objectives.

Organisational Climate Survey Question	Answer
1. Does Fynntown Council provide effective services to achieve present and future needs of communities?	Yes, though the region is supported by diverse industries including tourism, manufacturing, engineering, fruit production and many others, FCC provides effective services for community across the region. The council embraces the needs of the community by increasing and protecting the natural environment, lifestyles and positively considered the culture and heritage of its members.
2. Do you think that Fynntown Council is capable of maintaining good industrial relationships with their employees?	Yes, Because the organisation has maintained the work diversity, equality as per the fair legislation. For instance, employees are recruited in respective of the gender, age clause. However the company has retrenchment policies for ensuring better productivity and operational efficiencies.
3. Are the redundancy policies genuine?	Yes, there are all alternatives are evaluated such as redeployment before considering retrenchment policies at the workplace. In this context, the company is planning for voluntary redundancy by downsizing number of employees at the workplace. This will reduce the operational costs, increase the productivity and made changes in term of strategic changes such as retaining permanent skilled employees for the betterment of the organisation. In short, the HR department supports workforce planning across FCC by the effective redundancy planning in the short to long term to manage this risk.
4.How does the company access and equity policy for employee retention	Fynnland council is committed to maintain a workplace where employees get respects and values diversity. The company believes in value of access, equity and fairness across the all level of the business (Dickens 2012). The purpose of this policy is to reduce bias and preferences, promotion inclusive practices, maintaining mutual respects among employees, consumers, and visitors as well. All these practices are made to ensure high employee retention across FCC.
5. Do you think that the organisation offers fair treatment by the undertaking the recruitment and selection policy at their workplace?	By focusing on finding passionate and energetic employees for better customer service delivery, the organisation has followed a systematic recruitment and selection procedures. The main focus was to treating applicants fairly, maintaining privacy policies to ensure private information is kept confidential and managed appropriately Adelman and Lugg 2012.). By maintaining a sequential steps such as filling up the position based on the specific authority and duties, by going through the proper interview process the candidates are selected. By providing feedbacks to unsuccessful candidates, the organisation makes the entire selection process transparent and fair.
6. What were the reasons behind voluntary retrenchment in the last year?	The organisational development plan finds difficult to identify people at similar skills and functional abilities. The organisation founds certain employee surplus at their workplaces which tends to ensure zero productivity at the end. The authority used voluntary retrenchment to reduce manages the risk of shortage of skills, industry competitiveness and market based forces from other industries as well.
7. Do managers maintain non-discrimination statement at the workplace?	Yes, The employee mix suggests that the organisation has recruiting people based on the skill, competencies and not discriminating employees as per their gender. Currently, the organisation have 50:50 employees, delegating and responsible for different duties at the workplace.
8.Does the organisation maintain the WHS obligations for measuring employees safety at the workplace?	Yes. To maintain the favourable working environment, the company upholds WHS obligations. Such obligations ensure that all grievance are addressed in timely and unbiased manager. The organisation welcomes workforce diversity by utilizing an equal opportunity recruitment strategy. By upholding the ethical standards of respect, tolerance and fairness the company provides full safety workplace to their employees.

Recommendations for effective labour market:

To align with the Employer’s choice strategies and workforce planning, the organization should concentrate more effectively use of the labor market.

The organization should implement the succession planning strategies for establishing the long term association with their employers. Employer should consider employees as the resource of the organization. In this context, succession planning is important by which an organization can identify internal employees as potential candidates for filling future vacancies that may arise within the organization (Grau 2014). Starting relevant training sessions to perform different roles is challenging for employees as well as an efficient alternative for the organization. In the last year, 20% employees leave the organization of which 29 people were resigned and retired. There was situation when employers found their skill as excess at workplace and on the other hand, employees may found their job less challenging and less career progressive. To restrict this situation, the organization can plan for succession.

The communication transparency must be maintained for the effective productivity of the labor market. To allow employees in decision making, the organization can increase the value of the employees which automatically concentrate more employee engagement at the workplace.

Monitoring the performance using potential matrix of employee, the organization can assess their pool of talent. Based on evaluated statistics, the company needs take initiatives to facilitate them so that employee gets the maximum job satisfaction from their employers.

To Date: 06/07/2016

The Mentees of FCC

Sub: An invitation to the Mentor Program meet-and-greet event

Dear Sir/Madam,

This mail is provided for to give an idea about Succession planning program at your organisation. The succession planning process refers as the talent management planning so that losing a certain employee or the senior management people would not disable the regular operations of the organisation. However, this planning process would be more effective across FCC if it is performed at all levels in the organisation. By developing skills and competencies, organisations can get benefits by the following the succession planning. The main purpose of this program is to explore the potential benefits of successful benefits at the workplace to effective manage the workforce (Barak 2013). By implementing this program the company can serve the contingency plan for future uncertainties. On the other hand, managers get to identify various skills sets among the team members by insisting the success planning. By the completion of the succession plan, the internal employees would be able to survive more adverse situation during the uncertain situation.

Regards

(_)

External Labour Trend

Source of Information	Impact on Supply	Impact on Demand
Creating a safe work environment is sensitive for the success of the organisation. Maintain Occupational safety and health at the workplace	WHS laws	Can avoid or reduced health and safety hazards and thus results decreased costs and damages to the business	To address the obligation of WHS, enhanced productivity will be produced by employees
Creating equal exposure between male and female	The Work place gender equality act, 2012	Getting higher operational expense from employees both male and female	Job satisfaction and feel more committed towards the workplace (Leblebici 2012)
Maintain work place diversity to increase productivity and maintain a transparent of workforce policies in terms of recruitment, retrenchment and selection (Sposato et al. 2015)	The Fair Work Act and National employment standards	Allow employees to decision making and establish an healthy employee-employer relationship	Extended employee engagement, more confident and feel valued

A transparent and open relationship must be maintained to increase the communication within employer-employees. For instance, if an effective leadership allow employees to take part in decision making or present some opinion, then employees feel valued and thus it will improve the internal relationship with each other. This further creates a strong employee engagement within the workplace.
For building the constituency of engaged employees, employer must focus on engagement at local and organisational levels. By holding employees accountability the organisation can increase the organisational commitment of employees.

References:

Adelman, M. and Lugg, C.A., 2012. Public schools as workplaces: The queer gap between “workplace equality” and “safe schools”. Law Journal for Social Justice, 3, pp.27-46.

Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S., 2014. Armstrong's handbook of human resource management practice. Kogan Page Publishers.

Asch, B.J., Mattock, M.G. and Hosek, J., 2013. A new tool for assessing workforce management policies over time. Rand Corporation.

Barak, M.E.M., 2013. Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. Sage Publications.

Chrobot-Mason, D. and Aramovich, N.P., 2013. The psychological benefits of creating an affirming climate for workplace diversity. Group & Organization Management, 38(6), pp.659-689.

Crawford, E.R., Rich, B.L., Buckman, B. and Bergeron, J., 2014. The antecedents and drivers of employee engagement. Employee engagement in theory and practice, pp.57-81.

Davey, R., Fearon, C. and McLaughlin, H., 2013. Organizational grief: an emotional perspective on understanding employee reactions to job redundancy. Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal, 27(2), pp.5-8.

Davis, K., 2014. A Critical Analysis of ‘Genuine Redundancy’Cases Under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth). ANU College of Law Honours Thesis, (15-02).

Dickens, L. ed., 2012. Making employment rights effective: Issues of enforcement and compliance. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. pearson.

Grau, D., 2014. Succession Planning Stepâ€Âbyâ€ÂStep. Succession Planning for Financial Advisors: Building an Enduring Business, pp.147-170.

Leblebici, D., 2012. Impact of workplace quality on employee’s productivity: case study of a bank in Turkey. Journal of Business Economics and Finance, 1(1), pp.38-49.

Melchor, O.H., 2013. The government workforce of the future: Innovation in strategic workforce planning in OECD countries (No. 21). OECD Publishing.

Mohamed, A. and Ali, A., 2015. Voluntary retrenchment: voluntary or mutual separation scheme. Industrial Law Reports, 1, pp.i-xvi.

Osborne, S.P., 2013. Voluntary organizations and innovation in public services. Routledge.

Rothwell, W.J., Jackson, R.D., Ressler, C.L. and Jones, M.C., 2015. Career Planning and Succession Management: Developing Your Organization's Talent-for Today and Tomorrow: Developing Your Organization’s Talent—for Today and Tomorrow. ABC-CLIO.

Smilowitz, K., Nowak, M. and Jiang, T., 2013. Workforce management in periodic delivery operations. Transportation Science, 47(2), pp.214-230.

Sposato, M., Feeke, S., Anderson-Walsh, P. and Spencer, L., 2015. Diversity, inclusion and the workplace-equality index: the ingredients for organizational success. Human Resource Management International Digest, 23(5), pp.16-17.

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