Human resource issuel;

HR ISSUES ASSIGNMENT 2 – Individual Report

You are required to choose a topic from one of the student-led sessions presented during weeks 9-12. THIS MUST NOT BE YOUR OWN SESSION.

Identify the determinants of Demand and Supply
What does it mean to manage a diverse workforce
Flexibility as a key concept in managing the workforce
Define and explain the concept of talent management

Market
Perfect market (Perfect competition)
Among these conditions are
Perfect market information
No participant with market power to set prices
No barriers to entry or exit
Equal access to production technology

The Imperfect market is the only kind that really exists.

Supply and Demand is an economic model of price determination in a market.

Changes in the number of people in labour force caused by
Population effect, demographic changes
Economic activity
Demographic shift
Internal and external labour markets are becoming increasingly diverse
Skills needs of immigrant workers,
Rising number of female workers
Employees working beyond the traditional retirement age

The CIPD defines managing diversity as valuing everyone as an individual, valuing people as employees, customers and client (CIPD, 2013)
According to CIPD (2013) just over half of organisations have a diversity strategy.
Diversity strategies:
Diversity education and training schemes to help to remove the barriers such as employers not understanding the value of diversity,
Designing appropriate recruitment and selection practices (equal opportunities)
Developing cross-cultural team working and communication skills
Training schemes for immigrants
Demonstrate how performance management is impacted by different cultural contexts
Diversity strategies need to embrace greater flexibility

Changes in the number of people in labour force caused by
Population effect, demographic changes
Economic activity
Demographic shift
Internal and external labour markets are becoming increasingly diverse
Skills needs of immigrant workers,
Rising number of female workers
Employees working beyond the traditional retirement age

The CIPD defines managing diversity as valuing everyone as an individual, valuing people as employees, customers and client (CIPD, 2013)
According to CIPD (2013) just over half of organisations have a diversity strategy.
Diversity strategies:
Diversity education and training schemes to help to remove the barriers such as employers not understanding the value of diversity,
Designing appropriate recruitment and selection practices (equal opportunities)
Developing cross-cultural team working and communication skills
Training schemes for immigrants
Demonstrate how performance management is impacted by different cultural contexts
Diversity strategies need to embrace greater flexibility

Growing proportion of women in work
Availability of part- time jobs
Social acceptability of women in employment
In 2013 women are 53.1% of the labour force up from 44.2% in 1997
By the start of 2013 there were 387,000 fewer men in work (a net fall of 2.4%) than in the first quarter of 2008. By contrast the number of women in work was only

8,000 (0.05%) lower.

A quarter of organisations report they are employing more 16–24-year-olds compared with one year ago.
• Nearly one-third of organisations operate a structured graduate recruitment programme. Their use has increased in larger organisations compared with previous years

as well as in the manufacturing and production sector generally.
• Two-fifths of organisations are concerned that the increase in university tuition fees will make it harder to get the skills they need (rising to half of those with

graduate recruitment schemes).
• Apprenticeships are offered by two-fifths of organisations overall, with a further 14% planning to introduce them in the next 12 months. Twenty-eight per cent offer

intern schemes and 15% sponsor students through university.
Government youth training schemes
Critics claimed that the scheme enabled employers to exploit school leavers for cheap labour, and provided little substance in the way of genuine education. The

government’s response was that the scheme was an effective counter to the drop in apprenticeship and marked rise in youth unemployment seen in the early 1980s.

The prospect of the lack of real economic growth is expected to continue for many generations. Comparisons have been made to Japan’s “lost decade”.
The CIPD (2013) advises people are living and keeping fit for longer with most of today’s 65 year olds will live beyond 80 and some will live beyond 110. The number of

older workers working beyond State Pension Age has almost doubled from 753.000 in 1993 to 1,4 mill in 2011
The number of 25–34-year-olds in employment has increased by 249,000 (4%) and the number of people aged 50 and over by 392,000 (4.9%). Both these age groups have seen

an increase in the number of people participating in the labour market. In the case of 25–34-year-olds this is likely to have been driven by inward migration, while

for the over 50s the driving force is a combination of population ageing and fewer workers wanting to retire early, either for financial reasons or because of a

broader desire to prolong their working lives.

The BBC.co.uk (2011) reported the phasing out the default retirement age from April 2011.
Some employers feel there will be limited ability to take on younger workers as a result of the DRA being removed.
“Demographic time bomb” which will see a shortfall of people of 250,000 jobs by 2020 that will have to be filled by older workers. The demographic time bomb over the

next decade will result in an increase of workers in their 50’s and fewer in their 40’s.
The argument – retaining senior workers stops employers from injecting “new blood” into the business. The counter argument is government in the past in setting a

national retirement age in the belief that employers will recruit new staff to ease unemployment has not been the case, rather businesses are seen to be using this as

a cost cutting exercise to reduce the size of their workforce and therefore worsening the cycle of unemployment.
Myth – what senior workers are able and unable to do.

Migration will not be an answer, especially in view of the Government’s commitment to reduce the current net migration of 200,000 per year (CIPD, 2013).
Is China becoming “too old to get reach?”. BBC.co.uk (2012) reported about the unusual situation developing in China where it has taken just 20 years to reach an age

profile that took Britain or France 60 or 70 years. China now fears the ageing population will affect its economic prosperity.

Entailed ease of labour market institutions in enabling labour markets to reach equilibrium determined by intersection the demand and supply curve (Gilmore& Williams,

2013)
“A key concept in managing people in a dynamic business environment” – Armstrong (1996)

Reasons for the need for flexibility (Guest 1989)

–    Competitiveness – increased competitive intensity requires organisations to become more flexible (increase productivity, efficiency and respond more

quickly to change).

–    Ability to adapt

–    Technological impact

The term flexible working encompasses a wide variety of different types of initiative:
Part-time working
Job-sharing
Term-time working
Compressed hours (full time hours compressed over fewer days)
Agency working
Homeworking
Zero hours (casual working)
Flexitime (flexibility over when work is carried out across the working week)
Outsourcing

They increase efficiency, and hence competitiveness, by allowing managers to deploy staff where they are most needed
They reduce the total amount of time that people are being paid to work during slack periods
They provide a close link between total wage costs and the quantity and quality of the work performed.
They reduce the extent to which overtime needs to be paid
Some, but not all, are liked by employees and thus help employers to recruit and retain able performers.

The flexible use of labour can take a number of forms.
Numerical – allows to adjust the number of workers with demand, widely used in a service industries – part-time jobs, temps.
Temporal flexibility allows the employer to vary the time at which work is done and might take the form of annual hours contracts.
Functional flexibility occurs where the employer is able to redeploy employees across a range of different tasks in line with demand. This type of flexibility requires

an investment in training.

The Flexible Firm developed by Atkinson (1984) is the management technique for organising the workplace using various forms of flexibility in order to improve the use

of HR. The workforce is segmented into core and peripheral groups.
The core group is vital for the organisation (greater job security) – people employed on traditional permanent, full-time basis. Their contribution to increased

flexibility is entirely focused on the area of functional flexibility.
There are two separate groups of peripheral staff represented by inner and outer rings. Inner ring is employed directly by the organisation on some form of atypical

contract (part-time, fixed term. Outer ring are people whose skills the organisation draws on, but who are not employees (self-employed). Peripheral is easy replaced,

need at the peak times.

–    reduced core group

–    increasing peripheral group

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