Human resource planning in your organisation
Bratton and Gold (2012a) point out some of the ways in which work has changed and, in particular, how
employees� demands for increased flexibility, teleworking, off-site working and outsourcing have
impacted the way organisations develop and implement their workforce plans.
1 Review the attached files.
2 Discuss in the essay the concepts of talent management, employee engagement, and flexible firm.
3 Focus on your organisation and how it works in terms of its talent management strategy and employee
engagement.((Note: I work in an airline as a ground staff))
4 Consider the concept of the flexible firm and how this affects employees� work experience.
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Human Resource Planning
Introduction
The economic crisis and the recession later that hit the world economies in the late 2000s
necessitated the need for adequate planning when recruiting and deploying the employees. There
were plans to make available data that could be used to foresee the days ahead. The plans
focused on the employee demands and their supply. However, there was a limitation, in that; the
data from the past could not provide insight into the future. This situation caused the recruiters to
become creative in how they recruit, place and manage their workforce. Visible consequences
are the emergence of human resource trend that focus mainly on talent management of their staff,
employee engagement and the concept of a flexible firm.
According to CIPD (2014), the concept of a flexible firm focuses on classifying staff as
peripheral or core employees. These employees could provide the firm with flexibility in terms
of finances, function and numbers. Core employees should be those considered as important
functionally. These are the employees with multiple skills in an organization. Peripheral
employees are the workers who are availed only when required. They provide numbers and
additional skills to the core employees. They are usually in short-term basis or on contracts.
Others may be outsourced when necessary. The human resource could, in this way, become very
productive and functional when they organize their workforce to be efficient on costs and skills.
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However, this concept has some challenges. The peripheral employees who work at odd hours
and on temporary basis face job dissatisfaction. This phenomenon of irregular and unpredictable
availability of work has severe consequences on the organizations’ structure in both a domestic
and social setting. These employees do not choose the working environment but rather accept as
a way to get a more stable employment plan. Putting a large number of employees in temporary
positions could be detrimental in the fields of customer service as employees are not satisfied
with their jobs (CIPD, 2014)
Organizations including airlines have realized that employees are not just workers but are
people who have aspirations at personal levels (CIPD, 2013). This realization has led many
human resource managers to welcome the notion of developing and nurturing these talents
possessed by their staff. To increase productivity, it has become increasingly important to retain
core employees rather than increase their turnover. Airlines make decisions to invest in
improving the talents of both their ground and above ground employees. The ground members of
staff, with rare and excellent talents, are given priorities in all matters. There is a growing effort
to retain these employees as they have the required skills that cannot be easily replaced. A
majority of employees working in airlines expect their employer to develop their talents and
skills to some level. They also expect to replace their seniors who leave the airline as they
believe they have the required skills and talents to take over (Caplan, 2011).
Employee engagement is a concept that employers have adopted to tap more than the
physical presence of their employees (Valentin, 2014). This move is necessarily so when
employees who offer more numerical and planning for the organization. In an airline, this
employment strategy has gained more profits and higher productivity. If airline employees are
physically present in a positive manner, they will contribute on intellectual matters concerning
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the airline. They also connect with their colleagues and have positive emotions. Employee
engagement is in three ways where the intellectual engagement involves hard positive thoughts
on their work and how to perform tasks better. Effective engagement involves feeling good when
performing the required work tasks while social engagement involves being actively involved in
discussions that are related to the work the employee does. Airline employees with these
different engagements are more productive and are satisfied with their jobs (Valentin, 2014).
In conclusion, it is important for most organizations to embrace these emerging trends in
their human resource departments. Whenever an airline company develops such strategies, in
talent management, employee engagement and flexibility of their recruitment strategy, their
employees are more motivated and thus become more productive.
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References
CAPLAN, J. (2011). The value of talent: promoting talent management across the organization.
London, Kogan Page.
CIPD (2013) Employee engagement [
