Report On Work Design Pilot To Support Innovative Behavior At CERA

CERA Human Resource Planning

Discuss about the Report on Work Design Pilot to Support Innovative Behavior at CERA.

Human resource management is part of the core business strategies and needs as much attention like any other department in the organization. These involve many activities ranging from human resources planning to human resource design but we will be limited to the two. For any organization to strategically grow the market size and create competitiveness there are internal changes takes place to realign its human resource.

CERA needs to redefine its human resource after years of operation and after a realization that there are missing links to building more innovative workforce due to poor human resource planning and work design. The human resource management is a platform on which workers needs are addressed in a diversified business like CERA. Expansion and diversification pose a challenge to Israel Tobin who is the human resource manager. Nonetheless, their human resource management approaches that are generally applicable to the departments in CERA. For illustration, in the department of human resource management, the human resource manager focuses on an effective way to respond to the employees’ shortage and how to bring the balance between the supply and demand for the skilled workforce (Shih, 2015). CERA’s approaches to work analysis and design will vary because of the company have different jobs in the different businesses.

In the case of CERA, we can define HR Planning as a way of translating organizational goals into human resource objectives of skilled labor, number of workers and allocation. Deriving from the organizational objectives, we develop integrated organizational policies.

Human resource planning involves a logical sequence of events as established by Kramer et al. (2014, p. 211)

Israel Tobin and his team started the process of human resource planning by gathering required market information on the likely demand from the bigger part of Sydney and after expansion to NSW, also the demand that will arise after expansion of their market to other parts in Sydney.

Then they tried to use these markets demand to translate it into staffing. The strategic choice they tried to make was to forecast labor demand and labor supply and determine the nature of and size of the gap. They used statistical and judgmental methods to forecast market demand into labor demand and labor supply. After identifying the gap then the team continued to goal setting and planning. There are various options to close the demand/supply gap, depending on whether there is a forecast surplus or shortage of staff (Kramar et al).

Work Design

Demand forecasting was made for particular workers sets and areas that required specific competencies for the company’s present and five years period. The most useful leading indicators for forecasting staffing needs are government expenditure on infrastructure development and the policies and plans for developing commerce and residents.

They found that determining the supply of labor is more straightforward than determining labor demand for the company. CERA looked at current staffing in its various jobs and skill categories and then had to adjust these figures based on anticipated terminations of jobs, promotions of workers, transfers to other areas, voluntary turnover and retirements. A transitional matrix (also called Markov analysis) is a tool of analysis used by organizations to study workers and how they transition in different job categories in and out of the organization. Israel Tobin applied Markov analysis in his meeting with the Civil Engineering and Planning Divisions. The team drew a summary of labor demand and labor supply data into two spreadsheets as shown below.

By analyzing the data above, it was clear that in the next five years CERA will be faced with a labor shortage. The analysis covered a period of five years forecast of the likely labor demand. The company was expected to employ more workers to meet the market demand and also for the purpose of its prospective growth strategy to the new market. To avoid labor shortage, the goal plan is formulated as with options classified by speed and revocability.

It is important to make note that when making human resource goals and specific plan from the findings above, you have to consider the strategic choice of the organization and organizational culture.

After deciding on the course of action, CERA needs to implement the program and do the evaluation. Implementation undertakes particular actions which are designed to affect objective set by the planning team. The process inherent steps are observed to put the goals in the right direction and ensure that the intentioned object of those goals is well aligned with the plan devised.  The whole program calls for accountability, authority, and resources available to accomplish the stated goals.

Evaluation of the plan often occurs regularly whereby it can be carried out at particular intervals or continuous. It is a critical component of important company programs which are put in place to see that the goals of the plan are achieved. For the purpose of effectiveness before actual implementation certain measures are put in place. The measures may include statistical goals and time schedules, surveys of the workers affected by the program, any other method which will be effective in measuring the results of the implementation program. The overall objectives of the program implemented are then compared with the outcome of the whole program to see whether they helped in solving the human resource problems. Out of the results, the experience got from the evaluation, are used to modify the strategies previously applied for long-term planning. After HR planning CERA will be able to focus on analysis and work design. The other important part is work design a responsibility give to Rachel Amaro.

CERA needed to do the analysis and work design (Arnold and Randall, 2016). The work analysis and design are one of the critical parts to creating and enhancing innovativeness in the jobs. To implement HR planning strategy is virtually difficult without doing full work-flow analysis, job analysis, and job design (Lawrence, 2010). A manager needs the appreciation of their unit workflow process for maximum productivity and success. For her to understand this process, she must also have details of the information about the jobs that exist in her job unit through job analysis. When she has a better understanding of workflow process she can restructure works for assurance that the unit can achieve its set objectives and also the workers in that unit become motivated, satisfied, safe, healthy and achieve. This is crucial for creativity and innovation in CERA.

The CERA business strategy affects how works are designed and work together. The company is different from other companies that compete on the basis of cost. CERA compete on the basis of service/product differentiation and innovation (Kistner, 2010). For instance, in public sector and non-profit organizations, the way services are provided to customers depends much on how the jobs are designed. Work design, therefore, is dependent on the setting within which the organization does its activities and the strategic choices it makes about how it will position itself in its environment.

Job design defines the scope of work, how the job will be performed and every task that pertains to the job (Kramar et al. 2014, p. 192). It involves the change of tasks or the how the job is performed in the already existing job. This is the area of interest in CERA. This is the work that Rachel is required to accomplish.

On the other hand, job analysis has several contributions to HR practices. It is the process of gathering information about the job of interest (Morgeson and Humphrey, 2006). To do a job analysis, it involves workflow analysis, questionnaires, interviews, surveys and observations in gathering all information about the job. Job analysis is important in work restructuring, employee learning and development, HR planning, selection, career planning, performance management and job evaluation

There are four approaches to any work design:

The motivational approach – the approach establishes that work design is guided by work autonomy, goal clarity, extrinsic job feedback, Social interaction, Task variety, Task identity, skill-level requirements, skill variety, intrinsic job feedback, Task significance, learning

The mechanistic approach – focus on work specialization, task simplification, specializations of tools and procedures, single activities, job simplification, repetition, over time and job automation

The biological approach – uses strength, lifting, shift work, endurance, physical differences, wrist movement, noise, climate and work breaks to explain work design.

The perceptual-motor approach – the approach focus on lighting, information-processing requirements, programs, workplace layout, displays, information-input requirements, information-output requirements, memory requirements, printed job materials, stress and boredom in explaining the work design.

The choice of the approach to be applied depends on the organization’s strategy and culture. The most appropriate depends on the outcomes she wants to achieve. In CERA case, the outcome is to enhance innovation of workers in Drafting Office.

In Drafting Department, Rachel is required to do a pilot work design to foster creativity and innovation in CERA. The approach to use will solely dependent on this objective (Ceylan, 2013). Ceylan is examining the innovation performance of organizations, notably, so-called commitment-based HR practices.

HRM Innovations selectively identifies the best talent for the job (Jain, Mathew & Bedi’s 2012). They established the connection between HR innovation with company performance and organizational culture.

The most appropriate approach work designs for Drafting Office in CERA are mechanistic, perceptual-motor and motivational.

Perpetual- motor work design approach – focus on the employee psychological abilities and limits. The approach main goal is to design jobs in a way that ensures they do not exceed people psychological abilities and limits. This approach commonly attempts to expand dependability, safety and user responses by designing jobs to reduce information-processing requirement. This approach is suitable to CERA. Engineering works involve a lot of mental work, therefore designing a job this job using perpetual-motor approach will be one of the best choices in fostering innovation and creativity.

Motivational work design – she will focus on the job features that affect both mental and motivation of the employee. Attitude differences such as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, satisfaction and work participation, and behavioral variables such as performance and attendance are the most important product of the work design. To increase meaningfulness of jobs, job design emphasizes on motivational approach.

Mechanistic approach – mostly aims at reducing the complexity of the job so that to increase employee efficiency, by simplifying the jobs to the extent anyone assigned to do that job can do it with little training. These approach emphases on creating a design that carries out the concept of job specialization, skills simplification, and repetition.

These approaches are applicable in drafting office where the pilot work design needs to be carried out. The approaches will improve the creativity and innovation in drafting area. To achieve these, the approaches create efficiency, motivation, specialization, and learning process.

Conclusion

Human resource planning is the heart of human resource management for the organization to be competitive in the market. Planning for HR is as important as other functions of the management. HR planning helps the company to be futuristic in terms of labor forces and market responsiveness.

From this report it is clear for CERA to achieve job efficiency and effectiveness in the next five years, it needs to realign it human resource planning goals and work design to the organizational strategic goals and culture. It is clear that it will experience the labor shortage in its five years strategic plan. To achieve expansion and growth in Australia the company needed to carry out human resource planning and job analysis and design.

HR planning and work design are two inseparable areas of human resource management. To carry out work design, one must plan the work and strategize HR planning goals. Planning lay a foundation on which work design is based. There, the report started by examining CERA HR requirements to establish the workforce required before carrying out work design.

Rachel Amaro needs to shift her paradigm thinking and see the light of the modern human resource planning needs and benefits it accrue to the whole organization. As well outlined by this report it will become clear on how to carry out work design in the Drafting department. This report recommends carrying out analysis and work design so that it’s growing and expansion prospects will be achieved. In so doing workers will be motivated, there will be specialization, fewer resources will be used, there will be improved efficiency, and eventually, an environment that fosters creativity and innovation.

This report seeks to advise Rachel Amaro on how to design jobs in her Draft Management Office to support innovative behavior. On her part, she did not saw the need for additional work on HR management. She saw this as added word workload whereas they have been doing well without human resource management. For her to do this work design, she need an integrated us of HR planning and work design, both are used together to achieve a common objective. So in this report we will establish the human resource planning and work design of CERA.

References

Arnold, J. and Randall, R. (2016). Work psychology. 6th ed. New York: Pearson Education.

Shih, K. (2015). Labor market openness, h-1b visa policy, and the scale of international student enrollment in the united states. Econ Inq, 54(1), pp.121-138.

Ceylan, C. (2013). Commitment-based HR practices, different types of innovation activities and firm innovation performance. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24(1), 208-226. doi: 10.1080/09585192.2012.680601

Jain, H., Mathew, M., & Bedi, A. (2012). HRM innovations by Indian and foreign MNCs operating in India: a survey of HR professionals. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 23(5), 1006-1018.
doi: 10.1080/09585192.2012.651332

Lawrence, P. (2010). The key job design problem is still Taylorism. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31(2-3), pp.412-421.

Kistner, L. (2010). Determining and executing new product strategy: Integrating the product innovation charter and the fuzzy front-end. Doctor of Philosophy. Capella University.

Morgeson, F. and Humphrey, S. (2006). The Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ): Developing and validating a comprehensive measure for assessing job design and the nature of work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(6), pp.1321-1339.