The contemporary and emerging practice of talent planning

This discussion paper touches base on talent planning, recruitment activities, managing dismissal, redundancy, and retirement effectively and lawfully.

Workforce planning

Is the process of estimating the required number of human resources within a given period of time to fulfill the organization’s strategic objectives by having the right people with the right skills in the right place at the right time. This estimation shall cover replacing employees due to death, resignation, retirement, termination, turnover, productivity ratio, and organization expansion plans. The workforce plan should be derived from the organization’s strategy for the next years; the longer the period the harder to forecast. Business strategies and plans will answer the vital question, what do we want to achieve? What role(s) is critical to executing the business plan? What are the skill sets required to perform these jobs? Supply and demand analysis shall run to identify where can we find those resources, do we have them internally or we need to look at them in the market?

Principles of effective workforce planning and tools

there are several ways to forecast human resources such as:

• Managerial judgment: based on Executive Management knowledge and experience to forecast the needed human resources related to future projects and needs.
• Systematic technique: checking past trends and predicting future needs.
• Cost technique: checking the budget and determining the number of staff the company can afford.
• Econometric technique: mathematically calculating the relationship between the sales volume of production and the human resources needed.
• Delphi method: structuring a group communication process so that the process is effective in allowing a group of individuals, as a whole, to deal with a complex problem.

Key considerations of downsizing

It’s a reduction of organization human capital number by eliminating positions or cutting costs due to an economic situation, uniting productivity, or introducing a new structure (www.chron.com). This is a natural practice in response to economic fluctuation in organizations to maintain sustainability. There are vital key elements to consider and plan before downsizing takes place. Although downsizing is an important strategic activity, management being forced to use it increases competitiveness and eliminates redundant capacity, however, mishandling this process may cause long-term damage as a result. Management should prepare a complete plan to save the organization’s reputation and manage the relationship with customers, suppliers, and neighborhood working as well as the employees by informing them of the real reasons openly. Moreover, employees should be informed about the organization’s business intentions directly from the management not from the media to eliminate negative reactions. Management should decide whom to keep and whom to let go based on objective decisions and away from biased opinions. They need to think about the type of people and needed skills for the current and future challenges to cope with related industries. A robust competency analysis would serve the purpose. Management should support so-called “victims”; people who lose their jobs due to organizational downsizing by either providing a decent package and compensating them fairly or trying to find them another job opportunity. Yet, managing the “survivors”; employees who remain after organization’s downsizing takes place, by providing training and up-skilling for the new role they are expected to perform due to change in task design or responsibilities. Leadership should listen to employees to keep the high morale and measure the inputs against the output to stay on track. One of my ex-employers decided out of blue to do downsizing and laid off a huge number of people overnight, without a proper plan, communication, or even support. This ended by him losing credibility as an employer and suffered for many years in attempt to correct the action and gain community trust back. The bottom line is, if you don’t manage to downsize properly and honestly, essentially it will cost the organization more.

Guidance on competency framework

Part of talent planning and recruitment activities is to create a job description, person specification, and competency frameworks related to a specific position. However, before starting to describing the job, a job analysis should take place to define the nature of activities, responsibilities, knowledge required, and job level to understand the need for the job and its cost. There are several ways to conduct a job analysis like interviewing the direct supervisor or unit manager to have a complete understanding of their requirements, obtain competitor information related to the same industry, and conduct workplace observation.

Developing job description

It’s the output document of job analysis containing a brief introduction of the job nature as well as:

• Job title, Grade, reporting line and number of subordinates; if any
• List of job tasks and responsibilities. This might be an exhibition of the needed tasks but not limited to future expectations. (www.acas.org.uk)

Developing person specification

Is the attributes the employer is looking for and whether they should be essential or desirable. The outcome paper briefs the qualification, skill sets, areas of knowledge, history of previous experience, areas of experience needed, and special attributes if any. (www.acas.org.uk)

Competency framework

Competencies are the behavior and technical attributes of an individual to perform effectively at work. The competency framework is the structure that defines each competency required by individuals working in an organization (CIPD factsheet competency framework 2015). Defining job competencies and having the overall competency framework is the cornerstone of talent management and planning. Individuals should exhibit the job-required competencies as per their level in the organization hierarchy, and management should measure its effectiveness to perform the job by the individual. Part of the employee performance management system appraisal is when the line manager usually measures the competencies and either recommends a development program to enhance it or puts a recommendation that the individual is ready for the next level up. Competencies are used from selection to succession planning as an objective element to perform a job; it’s crucial to have the framework updated annually or every two years ,depending on the industry’s speed.

Legal requirements related to recruitment and selection

Every organization should have policies and procedures derived from the country labor law to ensure fairness in the business relationship between the employer and employee. Equal job opportunities and discrimination are an example of a lawful acts. On another hand, the employee should know their rights and responsibilities working for an organization to avoid being sued. Organizations tend to use tools to shortlist and select the best candidate; psychometric assessment and in-basket to name a few. Despite the employer’s obligation to act with all candidates equally and fairly; not to discriminate based on age, gender, religion, disability, marriage, pregnancy, or race, a psychometric assessment would be a good objective tool used to predict the individual’s job fit based on job required competencies. Legal boundaries are applying the assessment as well; an assessor should be a certified practitioner from an authentic assessment provider. Moreover, the assessment itself should be reliable – measure what says it measures all the time (coefficient alpha above 0.4) and valid – measure what says it measures and fit the culture working at. British Psychological Society is the nationwide reference for attested and authenticated psychometric tools and acts as a certification body to certify individuals using psychometric and psychological testing in the occupational and educational context. Over and above, assessment results should not represent more than one third of the employer’s decision at best cases. The individual has the right, if rejected, to obtain a copy of the assessment result to assure fairness and equal job opportunity without being discriminated against.

Recruitment and selection methods

There are a lot of methods recruiters prefer to use to attract talents and select the best among shortlisted. Here below is a comparison between different tools with advantages and disadvantages:

Managing dismissal

Although employees can request to stop the employment contract and resign for different reasons, the employer should think and plan very well how to manage dismissal, retirement, and redundancies. As per the ACAS code of practice, the below are enough reasons to dismiss an employee:

• Breaking organization rules and code of conduct
• Inability to perform a job due to lack of competency or health issues
• Restriction prohibited the employment being continued
• Job redundancy
• Any substantial reason of a kind, which justifies the dismissal.

In Kuwait labor law, the employer should pay the dismissed employee three months’ notice period salary with benefits whether employee worked for that period or was released with immediate effect. End of service or indemnity amount is over and above the three months’ notice period payment. Some employers tend to delay the notice period salaries and indemnity release until employees find another sponsor; which is illegal but culturally acceptable among business owners. On another hand, the employer can dismiss the employee for any reason without providing solid or reasonable justification with immediate effect. Local legislation didn’t touch the fair dismissal issue when reviewing and releasing new labor law back in 2010.

Managing retirement

Local authorities deal with retirement differently. Citizens can voluntarily request to retire after serving twenty-five years in service to guarantee lifetime retirement salary form the government. However, expats can’t continue working after reaching the age of sixty-five thus, local authorities won’t renew their residency in the country; the exception is granted for judges and state high ranks only. Nevertheless, managing retirement should follow the best practice of reducing working hours, handing over some responsibilities to a successor, transferring to do consultancy job for the organization, not as a permanent employee, or changing the contract from a full to a part-time job with more leaves entitlement.

Managing redundancy

It’s the involuntary dismissal act organizations tend to perform to reduce headcount and ensure business suitability. During the recession back in 2008, lots of organizations dismissed a huge part of their workforce to cope with the pressing worldwide economic factors, yet sustaining the business or part of the business. Some organizations chose business closure of some units inside or outside Kuwait, others couldn’t survive and went for complete closure. Despite the reason for dismissal, retirement, or redundancy, employers should manage and plan for those acts for enough time to ensure replacement, business continuity, protection of the organization’s brand, and keep high morale among survivals. Needless to mention, the employer should treat leavers with fairness and honesty.