The number of employees in particular job categories This figure will give a broad overview of the numbers in Marks and Spencer who already possess certain broad category skills – e. g. in a Premier division football team this could be the number of strikers, midfielders, defenders goalkeepers etc. Or it could identify those who already have Premier division experience and those who are novices at that level. The skills available It may be helpful to identify the current skills held by the labour force and see how many of these are transferable (a skill used in one particular job may be transferable to another job).
Skills analysis Marks and Spencer needs to be sure it has the right number of people available at the right time but also with the right skills. The company, therefore, needs to assess its present supply of skills across the company’s workforces and to identify the sorts of skills it will require in the future. A skills inventory of current employees will indicate those who have received recent training and those who will require training. It may be possible to meet the human resource requirements of the organisation by training and developing current staff rather than recruiting externally.
(This is often a cheaper option and also helps to motivate people who are already working for the company). Performance results Marks and Spencer will want to gather information about the level of performance of various categories of current employees. This sort of information may be collected in a quantitative form (e. g. numbers of items produced of acceptable quality, number of rejected items because of poor quality etc). In addition information may be collected that is of qualitative nature (e. g. information from appraisal interviews).
Promotion potential Internal promotions will change the availability of existing resources. It is useful to know how many employees have the skills and aptitude for promotion to more demanding roles. In addition, it is useful to know how many employees have the potential, with suitable training, for promotion. Age distribution and length of service This is a very important factor to any large or medium sized business because it is possible to have too many experienced workers and too many inexperienced workers within an organisation.
If Marks and Spencer has too many experienced workers there is a danger that they will retire at similar times leaving the organisation in a mess to sort out by recruiting more staff with no experience. It is therefore important for Marks and Spencer to have a workforce of mixed ages so that the danger of experienced workers retiring at the same time is avoided. If the organisation has too many inexperienced workers it may show a slow progress of advancement in the business objectives which may influence employees to quit their job and look somewhere else offering them more job satisfaction.
Staff turnover. Staff turnover should be analysed in order to identify the reasons people leave Marks and Spencer and to help it forecast future losses. A degree of staff turnover may be beneficial to the organsation, as fresh staff can be recruited, promotion channels may be opened up and it may allow for natural wastage when Marks and Spencer is trying to reduce its workforce. Too high a level of staff turnover will mean that there will be high additional costs of staff replacement and recruitment, additional training costs and disruption to the quality of service or to production.
If Marks and Spencer found that there was nobody suitable for the job of an Office supervisor within the organisation then it would need to consider the possibility of finding one within its locality. Techniques for forecasting internal employee supply: labour turnover There are two simple methods of measuring the rate at which employees leave or stay with an organisation, which are: * Employee wastage rate * Labour stability rate
Employee wastage rate – Below shows a simple diagram indicating how it is possible to calculate the number of staff leaving a business as a percentage of those who could have left: Number of staff leaving in time period Wastage rate = X 100 Average number of staff employed in time period Unfortunately, information was unable to be found for a realistic wastage rate in Marks and Spencer so an example is shown below:
If Boots were to employ a photo-developing workforce of 400 in the North of England but found that 100 of them left during the year, the wastage rate would be: 100 X 100 = 25% 400 Such information is used to predict likely turnover in the future, to see if there is a need to examine in detail the reasons for the high turnover and to find out if there is need to recruit new staff to replace those leaving.
Even though the labour turnover index is very useful to the organisation it also (as with most statistics) needs to be considered alongside other factors such as whether employees are leaving one particular department of the organisation. Labour stability rate – Some organisations make good use of the labour stability index as well as the wastage rate.
This indicates to the organisation the tendency for employees with long service to stay with the company therefore linking the leaving rate with the length of service. Number of staff leaving with more than 1 year’s service Stability index = x 100 Number employed 1 year ago The advantage of knowing about the current labour force of an organisation enables it to make the most of the skill and potential present within. But on the other hand, the availability of those from the local and national labour market statistics also has to be taken into consideration. The effectiveness of employee organisation
The effectiveness with which Marks and Spencer or any other organisation runs its human resource policies can be measured by the level of employee satisfaction, and this is where stability indexes and, again, wastage rates are so important. If employees of Marks and Spencer are content with their work, they are most likely to turn up for work. Levels of stress and stress related absenteeism increase when there is poor human relations atmosphere. Sickness and accident rates It is most likely that Marks and Spencer keep a record of the following: * Notified absences.
When employers are going to be absent from work (e. g. to attend a funeral, a hospital appointment, a wedding etc). Absences due to sickness. Employees will need to produce a doctor’s note so that they are entitled to sickness benefits, etc. Unauthorised absences. When employees simply do not turn up for work, without telling anyone. As a result of these records, Marks and Spencer can record absences as a percentage of the hours/days etc, that could possibly have been worked. Absence records can be kept for individual employees, groups of employees and the workforce as a whole at Marks and Spencer.
Such detailed statistical analysis enables Marks and Spencer to keep an eye on where problems lie – with an individual, with a particular section of workers or with Marks and Spencer as a whole. Comparisons can then be made with other workers and past records (for the individual employee), with other teams/sections (for teams/sections) in the workplace and with comparable organisations. Breaking down the statistics further highlights whether the problem lies with sickness or with unauthorised absence. And by keeping these records for a number of years, it is possible to establish trends.
