Question 1
My organisation is based in the UK and France, UK population being 66.5 million (UK,2018). and France 65.2 million (France,2018).
Although the Countries are similar in size of population there are quite a few differences within the Market Trends. – See Appendix 1
2017 figures show France has 28,184.20 thousand people employed and 3210.80 thousand unemployed, with 289.00 thousand Job Vacancies this would suggest France is loose market.
A Loose market means France is very much employer lead, there are over 3 times the amount of people looking for work than vacancies available. This has significant effects on recruiting, organisations will have huge numbers of applicants applying for each position, most of these applicants will be over qualified and highly skilled. Strategically, Organisations could reduce their salaries as candidates within such a competitive market would accept reduced wages to gain employment.
Even if organisations in France were to reduce their salaries, they would possibly still pay employees on average more than the UK pay their Employees. France pays on average around a hundred pounds more a week that the UK do.
At the moment, France and the UK both pay similar National Minimum wage, France’s living and family wage is higher than the UK, however, In the UK [Tax, 2018] higher wage earners are capped at paying 45% tax on salaries and France charge up to 59.4% tax. (although France to contribute more to pensions). So they France may pay more, but they tax more too
The UK has more people employed than France at 32,476 thousand, However the UK unemployment rate is three time lower than France at just 992.60 people unemployed and with 848 Vacancies, makes the UK a tight market.
Being a Tight market, means the UK market is very much a candidate lead market. Organisations find it more difficult to find employees due to high overall national employment levels.
Strategically, organisations have to source candidates and persuade them to leave their current position, they will have to offer better salaries, flexible working hours or benefit packages, they may even have to consider recruiting from abroad. Organisations may have to employ unskilled candidates and train them and ensure they retain existing staff, putting in a Retention Strategy. Organisations may have to look at re organising the structure of the business and complete a mixed Skills review.
Having both loose and tight markets in France and the UK, I would offer job transfers to my French employees to work for the UK business, either by relocating or with modern technology, working remotely. France has too many candidates and the UK doesn’t have enough, transferring French candidates to the UK would make good business sense, reduce the cost of recruitment and training.
Question 2
The government have been aware of a skills gap for many years and requested some research to be conducted in early 2000, the result was The Leitch report published in 2006 [Leitch 2006]. The recommendations from the report were to improve levels of basic skills and higher-level professional and technical skills. This produced world class skills white paper [White Paper 2020] which had set targets for 2020, some of the targets included 95% of adults to be functionally literate and numerate
Target over 90% of adults to gain 2, level 2’s (GCSE equivalent), achieved, was raising the age of school leavers and the requirement to re sit maths and English until a grade c or above can be reached. A target was set for 500,000 people to be enrolled in an apprentice scheme. The Apprentice Levy Scheme [See Apprentix 1] was introduced in 2017 where employers fund new apprenticeships. Each employer will receive an allowance of £15,000 to offset against their levy payment.
In 2018, the Government completed another report on ensuring future skills called ‘Growth through people: a statement on skills in the UK’ [Gov Report 2018].The report identifies three skills and employment challenges companies face, the first is young people getting there foot on the employment and career ladder, it’s a lot harder to combine study and work at the same time, the second challenge is those currently working and stuck in unskilled, low paid positions, with no opportunity to gain new skills, progress and earn more, the third challenge is the ongoing skills shortages, they obstruct growth and competitiveness but at the same time a huge amount of skills within the workforce are not being utilised , the Department for business, innovation and Skills (BIS) [SFSG, 2010] wrote a report entitled; Skills for sustainable growth which concentrated on the higher level skills were needed to sustain economic growth within this country.
In 2014, Matthew Hancock spoke at the Voice of Apprenticeships Conference, outlining a new round of apprenticeship trailblazers and updated guidance. [Trailblazer, 2014] he spoke about the development of employer lead professional standards completed by Trail blazers, explaining the organisations need to take responsibility for training their employees.
Mr Hancock reported that there were a record 868,700 people in apprenticeships and employers were now taking the lead to lift standards and transform apprenticeships raising the bar on quality, competing globally. Organisations were now in charge of funding and the government supporting changes recommended by organisations to improve apprenticeships
The Trailblazers are assisting the government to re write and improve the apprentice schemes across most sectors, these trail blazers are some of the UK’s best and profitable business’s such as; BAE, Jaguar Land Rover, Cisco and Santander. Trail blazers are ensuring education is responsive and work with the government to decide the best training to meet the needs and standards of that industry.
Union learning representatives (ULR’s ) [ULR] have been instrumental in championing the importance of training and development within organisations and being influential in developing, improving and supporting the learning culture within the workplace, this comprises of raising awareness about the value of learning, helping organise courses in the workplace and supporting and encouraging members to take part in learning.
ULR’s can build a bridge for external learning providers to connect with employees otherwise hard to reach, these include minority community or people on low incomes who may feel they don’t have any prospect or opportunities to progress.
The role of the ULR’s not only raising awareness of the value of learning, but they help to organise courses and the support is always ongoing contributing to closing the skills gap
Question 3
Workforce planning is based on or determined by the organisation’s strategy, Workforce planning enables HR to ensure the business has the right people in the right job with the right skills to help fulfil the organisations short and long term goals.
Once the strategy has been determined, different elements of the business strategy will need to be confirmed such as, the operational plans, where, why and when the business moves forward, people strategy, what will the workforce look like. Once these are in place, an analyse and discussion of relevant data would need to be collated.
There are many online tools and programs that will allow a business to collect data giving you numerical and quantitative data, however, to gain a full picture speaking to HRM and Business Managers for resource information will give you qualitative information. Together both reports show what is needed to be in line with the strategy.
Workforce planning links with other HR practices such as Resource and Talent management, Organisational Design and Development, Employee engagement and Learning and Development
Resource and Talent management helps with an expansion strategy. HR can look at recruiting internally to see if there are employees who already have the skills needed or could be upskilled business as well as look externally or maybe a mixture of both.
Organisation design and development will encompass both location of work and the job descriptions and roles undertook, depending on structure of the organisation there will be an impact on skills required and number of people who can fulfil these roles.
Throughout the process, Employee engagement will ensure they retain existing employees and they are happy but also ensure new employees are engaged and that the role is what it is said to be.
Learning Talent and Development will conduct a skills analysis, to see what current employees may need to develop and progress, this may involve designing training programs, arranging mentoring or bringing in external training.
When workforce planning there are many tools you can use, one tool is a Span and Gap analysis [See Appendix 2] This tool looks at the capability of the current workforce and compares it to where the organisation predicts it will be and what is needed to plug any gaps, this could be anything from extra training to recruitment. To find out what is required to fill the gap, HR can perform a SWOT analysis, which would analyse the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of the business this will also help predict future recruitment needs. The downside to this tool is the time and cost to complete and current employee’s morale maybe affected when their skills are being evaluated.
Another tool that could be used in Organisational benchmarking,[See Appendix 3] This would involve looking into competitors in terms or work force, they may be increasing head count, improving customer service or decreasing head count as their becoming more automated, they may even have a better rate of pay than your organisation, using this tool allows the organisation to set realistic targets and focus on change, it improves performance and can provide HR with a benchmark for training and best practice, all of this with no real cost. Benchmarking could give wrong information if the wrong type of benchmark was used and if the Benchmarks weren’t regularly checked.
Questions 4
CIPD [Plan CIPD] explains that succession planning focuses on identifying and growing talent to fill leadership and business-critical positions in the future. In the face of skills shortages, succession planning has gained popularity, and is now carried out in both large and smaller organisations. –
The organisation ensures it has got sufficient numbers of people with the ability, knowledge the personal attributes and experience to be able to step up the next level when a position becomes available, in the past this was reserved for leaders or people at a higher level and was referred to as the exclusive approach however this is starting to change.
More recently the focus has been to cover the whole workforce called the Inclusive approach which rather than targeting specific individuals for specific roles the object is to develop ‘talent pools’ from which a replacement can be found should a vacancy develop.
We were given a Succession & Career case study to develop and provide a basic succession and career development plan. [Case Study], The case was based around a CIPD Tutor who had indicated they may be leaving and a new course would be running in the next school year.
As a group we developed a Succession & Career plan [Appendix 4] for the recruitment of a new Tutor and any upskilling or training required for the existing tutors.
My fellow students and I were asked to develop a workable plan for Downsizing, after researching the CIPD fact sheet on redundancy – [Redundancy, CIPD] I researched dealing with appeals and this was the advice from The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) [Redundancy, ACAS]
An employee can appeal against being made redundant if they believe they were unfairly selected or the employer did not follow a fair redundancy process.
The employer must have an appeals process. An employee can write to them explaining why they think the redundancy is unfair. The employee can get help from staff representatives such as trade unions who can attend any meetings set up. An employee can also ask for a senior member of staff who was not involved in the selection process to come to meetings.
Your employer needs to tell employee if they accept or reject the appeal. This needs to be confirm in writing.
If employer accept appeal and employee is still on notice period employer can offer employee job back. The employment contract will be the same as before selected for redundancy.
If employee has finished notice period employer can put employee back on previous employment contract. Employer should consider employee as having worked continuously from the date originally and employee must be paid for the time not at work.
If employer rejects appeal, employee is due redundancy notice and pay.
If employee still believes redundancy is unfair they can make a claim to an employment tribunal.
Our College group were asked to develop a job description, a person specification and a competency framework.
The job description explains the job to candidates and helps the recruitment process by providing a clear guide to all involved about the requirements of the job. The person specification states the necessary and desirable criteria for the selection and a competency framework sets out and defines each individual competency required by individuals working within the organisation.
In a small group we interviewed the Tutor who’s position we were recruiting for to gain a job analysis. We planned what questions we wanted to ask then developed a Job Description [Please see appendix 5], Person Specification [Please see appendix 6] and a competency framework. my contribution was the Job Description, although I helped with Person Specification as the two tend to overlap.
When recruiting HR are there to Advise and support managers, ensure compliance with law and provide appropriate frameworks
Question 5
When Selecting and Recruiting there are some legal requirement, The Equality Act 2010 being one of them, this Act came into force on 1st October 2010, the aim was to prevent discrimination, to reform and harmonise the discrimination law and to support equality. The Equality Act 2010 replaced some equality legislations: [Please see appendix 7}
Although there is no specific legal requirement to advertise every job vacancy, an Organisation may be accused of unlawful discrimination if the they don’t.
As confirmed with HRXpert [Vacancy] If an organisation advertises through an informal route such as recommend a friend or personal recommendations, it can be seen as indirect discrimination, if candidates hear about a vacancy through an informal route, the candidate may be able to claim discrimination on the basis the recruitment method was a discriminatory arrangement.
When writing a job advert you cannot discriminate against anyone this includes applicants because of their disability, race, age or gender.
In 2016, the Data Protection Act 1998 was superseded by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The Act states any personal data collected by an organisation throughout the recruitment process either form the applicant or anywhere else, the organisation has to give notice to the applicant explaining how their information will be used, processed and stored and for how long.
All information including Interview notes, CV’s and application forms need to be stored for 6 months in case any applicant wishes to take the organisation to an employment tribunal. After 6 months, any unsuccessful candidates’ information should be destroyed, Should the organisation wish to keep any applicants data on file for future recruitment, consent from the applicant needs to be given or organisation has to notify them of their right to object to the organisation keeping their details on file.
If using an agency for recruitment and selection, the organisation must ensure that the agency adheres to the GDPR legislation. Using an agency to find a candidate, will reduce your time and cost. They get preferential rates on job boards as opposed to businesses and usually have a huge database already.
Agencies will sift through 100’s of CV’s ensuring candidates have right to work in the UK, relevant qualifications and skills and can gain references from previous employers.
However, there can de disadvantages with working with an agency, the cost of recruiting could supersede the cost of advertising yourself. You have a lack of control, so have to trust your agency and you have no indirect access to candidates, there can also be communication issues.
Assessment Centres are another way to recruit, they allow a wide range of selection methods from role playing, Group exercises, verbal, numerical and psychometric testing to some behavioural exercises.
If the exercises are set up correctly and designed around the job vacancy, it will give the organisation a glimpse into how a candidate performs currently and how they will in the role in the future.
Assessment can also promote the organisations brand and candidates are not judged by one person, However, Assessment centres can be costly and time consuming, they can also take management away from the business to facilitate and sometimes.
Assessors can be biased for example an Assessor may choose an applicant because of their personality or looks over someone with the skills to do the role but may be shy. Most of all some applicants may feel pressured, affecting performance
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