Gap Analysis in Strategic Human Resource Planning Process

Discuss about the Work Design Pilot at CERA.

In the contemporary economy, business organizations rely on the human resources to introduce and execute new products or services or to improve business processes and implementing innovative working methods. The work type has changed to more knowledge based and less rigidly explained, as a result the human resource of an organization can facilitate in business development by generating new innovative ideas and utilizing this ideas as building blocks to develop new product and services and employ new work process for brining effectiveness in the system. In the following scenario, Israel Tobin is the new Human Resource Manager of CERA (Civil Engineering & Research Associates) and Mark French is the CEO of the organization. As the new hr manager in the organization Mr. Tobin is facing challenges on human resource planning to support the organization’s business goals. The CERA is a traditional organization where the concept of human resource planning and development are not given utter importance. The primary aim of this report is to evaluate the different methods of human resource planning methods and evaluate the strategically planned job design for Rachel Amaaro’s department for development of work force and bring most effective outcome from them. The author has critically discussed about the gap analysis in the gap analysis and what are the steps to overcome gap in human resource planning.

In the present scenario, the major role of the hr manager is to develop an effective human resource planning method and then successfully evaluate the planning process to meet the desired labour demand of CERA. A human resource manager plans for organization’s sustainability and growth by examining the organization’s workforce or human resource (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014). Performing a gap analysis for workforce enables hr managers to predict future labour demand and requirements by identifying the skills and abilities that are needed and comparing them to the available human resources. For this Israel Tobin needs to conduct a strategically employee gap analysis. To begin the hr manager has to identify the engineering and planning department of CERA. Then he should set some sort of system for measuring the performances such as subject knowledge, ability to executive the skills, innovativeness, etc.  Then the performance of the employees should be measured i.e. the difference between the actual performance and desired performance. For instance, the organization wants to produce 1000 number of units in a day, but actually it has produced 600 numbers of units. So, there is a clear gap of 400 units. Now the manager should evaluate and decide how to increase efficiency or bring new work force in the system to gap the desired performance. The hr manager has already measured by developing a transitional matrix analysis and measured the employee gap. Proper strategically human resource gap analysis assists hr managers and management for employee strategy and effective job designs (Ulrich, 2013). The hr department should determine and priories the organization’s objectives to develop job designs for its employees to meet both employees and organization’s aim.   

Job Design and Its Significance

In the given scenario, there is a gap between the actual demand in workforce and available workforce. So gap the deficit, after analysing table 7.2 Israel Tobin has identified that the employee shortage can be temporarily solved by out sourcing or by overtiming by existing employs and lastly by hiring temporary workers. But that is not a long term solution. The organization is planning for long term solution for labour shortage in the organization. For that the management has to recruit new employees and train them. Lastly, they should create innovative work environment so that employee job satisfaction increases and they retain in the organization. In this age of globalization no organization can remain technologically isolated. Technology reduces the work load from work forces. The CERA management should start investing in innovative technological improvement in the organization for long-term development. If the organization adopts new technological advance system in their production process then it will lower the labour involvement in the process. So the problem of labour shortage will be solved. Also, the organization will only need highly skilled employees for their organizational processes. As a result it can increase the training and development cost of skilled labour.

In order to bring effectives in employee performance and individual innovativeness, a business organization should promote suitable working conditions and work design for the employees. Job design can be explained as a useful human resource management process that can considerably modify the daily working practices in an organization. It explains the objective of the organization and individual’s responsibilities within an organization (Parker, 2014). One of the primary roles of human resource department in any organization is to determine job design for its employees. The process of work design is to reduce or decrease the dissatisfaction among employees and managing employee hostility arising from monotonous and routine job responsibilities. In a recent meta-analytical research study it is shown that job design and associated job characteristics are crucial factors of individual innovation (Hammond et al., 2011). It was observed that employees are more trend to show innovativeness in their job roles when they are provided with intrinsic-driven motivators as better job roles and challenges than extrinsic-driven motivators like incentives and other compensations. The most common steps of job designs are job simplification, job rotation, job enrichment and job enlargement (Bamberger, et al., 2014). To discuss the work load of employees are checked then reshaping the job design with individual work under load ability. Increasing employee coordination and avoiding monotonous work by bringing new challenges and needs. Lastly, the management clearly defines the work process and working hours within the organization.

Job Design for Employee Innovation

According to Parker et al., 2006, employees who are innovative and pioneering often widen their job responsibilities and create new and innovative ideas and techniques to achieve the target. Thus, job responsibilities should be designed to promote individual innovativeness and creativity. It is noted that this kind of “innovative” work designs are usually consists of non- monotonous tasks and challenging in nature. Moreover, they are generally having autonomy and job control, needs skill variety and opinion, and problem solving. The major aim of work design is to provide the human resource with the autonomy and database to identify divergent requirements and pursue innovative techniques for problem solving which will ultimately benefit the business organization.

Job Designing is the process where the management after analysing the job responsibilities and skills required identifying the actual candidate for the actual job to bring effectiveness in the workflow process (de Jong & Den, 2010). There are several approaches that are used in job designs. The author has recommended the bellow after analysing the situation.

The Human Approach: In this process the work design is created by emphasising on employees or the human resource of the organization and not on organization’s work flow process (Hill, et al., 2014). It is the design which are rewarding as well as understands the needs and demands of the employees. According to this approach jobs should satisfy an employee’s need for recognition, and desires. Job enrichment by Herzberg’s research is one the popular methods in human approach. The two important factors according to Herzberg are motivators and hygiene factors. Motivators are those which motivate and inspires employee to perform (Herzberg, et al., 2011). Factors like achievement, work nature, responsibility, learning and growth etc are important motivators. Whereas there are factors which can decrease motivation in employees if not present in work place, like, proper working conditions and safety in workplace, lower wages, organizational policies, etc. (Yusoff, et al., 2013). These factors are known as hygiene factors. If CERA adopts humanistic approach then it will increase employee satisfaction and employee loyalty towards the organization. According to scholars, employees are tending to perform more if they feel that they are part of the organization and the management values them.

Job Enlargement Approach: In this approach, the organization should emphasize on employee motivation and satisfaction. The idea is to naturally allocating additional responsibilities to the employees that are logical addition of job responsibilities and skills of their present job (Stone, 2013). The process evolves as an employee masters one tasks, then he can take extra responsibilities performing the first task as well. This way the existing employee become skilled in different job responsibilities as the times goes on. As a result the employees are also getting new challenges and learning new thinks. So, the process will not be monotonous and routine tasks which often bring boredom in employees decreasing their performance.

Job Design Approaches

Job Enriching Approach: This is one of the most effective approaches when it comes to increase in employee satisfaction and performance. Thus, job enriching approach can be described as the work design to reconstruction of jobs with the purpose of creating more challenging and motivating work environment for the employees. This theory was first proposed by Hackman and Oldham in 1980, which explained the relationship among the job characteristics and employee responses to his duties and responsibilities in workplace (Ali, et al., 2014). The five job characteristics by Hackman and Oldham are skill variety, task identity, task significance, and autonomy and job feedback. The above characteristics are important factors when creating job designs which are more employees oriented.

The hr department of CERA should involve all the above approaches to create a perfect work design a job design for its employee force. Not all the factors are effect in all cases as every individual and with diverse needs and motivational factors. So, the management should adopt a flexible approach while designing work design. It should focus on employee needs and satisfaction.

With the innovation and development of new technological advancement, it is not difficult to attract best talents for an organization but tracking and measuring employee performance is one of the most important tasks of human resource department in any organization. The value of employee performance is significant to any organization’s success (Alfes, et al., 2013). The sustainability and development of any business organization largely depends on employee satisfaction and employee performance. The strength of the company depends on understanding and creating up to date decisions based on employee performance data (Kooij et al., 2013).

In the growing contemporary business world, the human resource department has become the interacting face of the organization. It is a very difficult task to track and monitor all hr processes so; the modern hr managers are adopting hr information system within the business organization to ease the task of managing workforce. Human resource information system can simply be explained as a software program that enables human resource managers to accumulate and organize large amount of human resource data and information in one place, which is portable and easily accessible. The main job of the software is to help human resource managers to access data at any point which will help in enhanced decision making (Nagendra, & Deshpande, 2014). HR information system is a combination of modules, with each module dedicated to a specific task of the hr manager. For instance, one module dedicated in receiving, scanning, and email and organizes and scrutinize resume for a certain post within the organization. Human resource information system is a tool which effectively reduces the managerial decision making process. It’s simply a process which helps hr process occur electronically. In the present scenario, after implementing innovating behavioural job design in CERA, the management needs to monitor the performance of Rachel Amaaro’s department. Human resource is incomplete without proper monitoring of employee performance and feedback about the implemented plan within the organization. Thus, introducing employee performance dashboard is one of the practical recommendations that should be implemented within the organizational process.

Employee Performance Dashboard: In the era of digital technology, it is most feasible to develop innovative dashboard solutions to ease the burden of employee performance track record and understand employee performance data. The idea is to have the display of performance meters that are identified by the management as the lead performance parameters which will assists the mangers to identify the quality or level of performance any individual employee is performing (Davenport, 2013). This will ease and assists the managers to determine the real performance evaluation as the performance dashboard will bring all relevant information in a spot. To rectify the gaps and problems in the implemented strategies and guide employees to reach their targets successfully is significant for an organization. Employee performance is the most practical solution for monitoring individual performance. This will not only help to rectify the gap or problem but also ease the process of promotion, increment and transfers. With the help of this hr information system, human resource manger can tack individual employees and can shift employees inter department according to their skills and ability which will result in effective utilization of resource in the organization.

After critically analysing the present scenario, author suggests some recommendations for CERA’s implementation in its workforce for brining effectiveness. Firstly the management should build effective teams who would agree on a common goal which would assist CERA to maintain standards and receive high performance. To build that the human resource manager, Israel Tobin should analyse and evaluate a gap analysis to estimate the actual labour demand and the present labour resource in the organization. Analysing the current scenario, the author recommends that CERA should take long term human resource reforms like developing and upgrading existing workforce and recurring fresh talent from the market. The organization should adopt a job enlargement and enrichment and human approach in their work design which will not only develop the human resource as highly skilled and independent but also will project the organization as employee friendly and responsible which will help to keep long term brand image of the organization.

Conclusion:

In conclusion the management of CERA needs to promote innovative job designs in its work process to increase the effective outcome of the workforce. As, employee performance and employee satisfaction are very important for the contemporary business sustainability and success, so it is important that business organization should adopt human resource approach for the business work processes. In the above report, the author has critically discussed the significance of strategic human resource planning and how CERA can adopt a job design which allows innovative behaviour in work process. Also, how recent developments and changes within the organization can affect the job design is also discussed in the report. Unlike job designs, employee monitoring is also important for organization’s performance. The purpose of the hr information system is to monitor, analyse and mange people within an organization. As a result, the author has also discussed the effective methods of employee monitor tools.  

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