Table of Contents

Workforce Action Plan .

Inclusion and Diversity .

Current State of the Workforce .

Future State of the Workforce .

Abstract

Today, like many companies, Mi-ORG, a successful, customer-centered consultancy, is faced with a wide array of challenges, including reducing unplanned turnover, ensuring a smooth succession of a significant number of retirees and expected departures as well as developing and sustaining a diverse workforce that promotes employee morale and organizational loyalty and places a high priority on innovative practices. In addition, Mi-ORG tries to maintain a laser-sharp focus on its clients, but all of these trends have created a critical juncture in the companys path moving forward. Indeed, Mi-ORGs current human resource management practices, especially its web task management application, are adversely affecting employee morale and productivity, and timely interventions are clearly needed to avoid even higher levels of unplanned turnover in the future. Using a systematic review of the literature, this project focuses on identifying current constraints to workforce development in general and at Mi-ORG in particular to identify opportunities for improvement. The findings that emerged from this project reinforce the need to provide employees at all levels with appropriate incentives to promote morale and loyalty as well as the need to think ahead in terms of planning for workforce development needs in the future.

Workforce Action Plan: Mi-ORG

Today, the American workforce is faced with multiple challenges, including most especially identifying viable strategies for maintaining normal business operations during an ongoing global Covid-19 pandemic and its economic impact. Other trends, however, are also already having a significant effect on businesses of all sizes and types, including fundamental shifts in the demographic composition of the workforce as well as a wide array of technological innovations that are changing the way enterprises operate. Against this backdrop, it is clear that human resource managers must develop timely workforce action plans to help guide their organizations moving forward. Located in Boston, Massachusetts, Mi-ORG is a management consulting firm that uses innovative solutions to assist their client organizations in becoming more efficient and effective in achieving their objectives (Mi-ORG company overview, 2021). The purpose of this project is to use a systematic review of the relevant, peer-reviewed and scholarly literature to identify existing constraints to workforce development in general and at Mi-ORG in particular. As the research that follows will show, this project determined that Mi-ORG needs to provide employees at all levels with appropriate incentives that will promote improved employee morale and heightened loyalty as well as what steps are needed at present to plan for the companys workforce development needs in the future.

WORKFORCE ACTION PLAN

a. Employee Retention Plan: The high costs of recruiting new employees is well documented, and it is clearly in the companys best interests to use the most cost-effective retention strategies possible. To its credit, Mi-ORG (hereinafter alternatively the company) recognizes this need and currently provides its employees with a number of valuable perquisites for this purpose, including (a) long-term employment arrangements, (b) internal promotions, (c) tuition reimbursement programs, and (d) flexible work schedule options (Mi-ORG company overview, 2021). Despite these generous offerings, the company has still experienced an inordinate amount of turnover in recent months due in large part to increases in the number of retirees, the increased demand for consultants elsewhere and a shaky economy.

Taken together, these trends underscore the need for the company to systematically reevaluate its current workforce action plan in order to identify new strategies that can reduce their adverse impact. The recommendations provided by Duboff and Heaton (2009) are appropriate for this purpose: The first step to creating an integrated employee retention plan is to establish principles for the analysis and implementation (p. 10). The principles that are outlined below provide a useful framework in which to manage the development, implementation and administration of an employee retention plan for Mi-ORG:

Focus on specific segments: In many cases, organizations implement money-based solutions that are intended to reduce unplanned turnover in a wholesale fashion without regard to where the majority of turnover is actually occurring. While it is essential to ensure that any incentive program is applied equitably across the board throughout the organization, it is also important to target those business units where recruitment and retention efforts have been unable to satisfy the organizations workforce needs by offering specific non-monetary incentives for these positions.

Money alone is not effective: Although studies consistently report that money remains at the top of employee incentives, higher pay or bonuses are no longer sufficient in and of themselves. Some sage advice provided by Duboff and Heaton (2009) notes that, Over the long haul, bonuses unaccompanied by changes in the fundamentals of the relationship dont work. Emphasize building loyalty, not reducing churn or turnover (p. 10).

Systematically prioritize efforts based on return on investment: No matter how generous or broad-based incentive programs may be, they tend to diminish in effectiveness over time. This means that it is vitally important to review existing incentive initiatives to ensure they are providing the expected return on investment and whether revised strategies are required.

b....

Succession Planning: As noted above, a significant number of experienced employees have retired recently and many more or expected to retire in the foreseeable future, representing a loss of invaluable tacit organiational knowledge as well as the long-term relationships these retirees have built with clientele and other employees. Fortunately for the company, many of the recent retirements have been known well in advance, allowing time for Mi-ORG to conduct the requisite selection interviews. Nevertheless, it is essential for the company to conduct ongoing succession planning to ensure that the best candidates that are available are identified and recruited in time to allow for some overlap with the departing incumbent.

An important point regarding succession planning, though, concerns the need to look ahead at least one year and even more in some cases. For example, the Society for Human Resource Management advises that, Succession planning is a focused process for keeping talent in the pipeline. It is generally a 12- to 36-month process of preparation, not pre-selection (Engaging in succession planning, 2021, para. 3). Moreover, even though all organizations are unique in some ways, virtually all of them can benefit from thoughtful succession planning by providing the talent and expertise that will be required for success in the future. Although there is a widely held perception among many business practitioners that succession planning is a dauntingly complex enterprise that is most appropriate for larger organizations, the Society for Human Resource Management also emphasizes that the process is essential for companies of all sizes and types. In this regard, the Society for Human Resource Management also notes that, Succession planning can be of great value to smaller organizations that have fewer resources available for knowledge management programs and the formal, structured development of employees (Engaging in succession planning, 2021, para. 5).

Some of the more compelling reasons for Mi-ORGs performing timely succession planning include the following:

Adapting to demographic changes and talent scarcity.

Identifying skill gaps and training needs.

Retaining institutional knowledge in a knowledge economy.

Boosting morale and retention by investing in employees.

Replacing unique or highly specialized competencies (Engaging in succession planning, 2021, para. 5).

c. Strategic Relationships.

At the risk of saying the quiet part out loud, the top management at Mi-ORG must face the harsh reality that they have created some level of institutional gender-based racism that has inhibited the companys commitment to inclusive practices. A good example of this can be found in one senior white male, representative of the other members of the selection committee for a new candidate, insisted on more interviews, complaining that All weve seen thus far are women (An average day at Mi-ORG, 2021, p. 4). This is not to say, of course, that the companys recruitment processes are inherently biased, but it is to say that there appears to be a general consensus among Mi-ORGs top leadership that there is at least some benefit to perpetuating their good old boy network. Consequently, Mi-ORG needs support from its human resource services in order to ensure that the companys top leadership team is truly representative of its workforce.

While the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic continues to have a profound impact on American businesses in unexpected ways, there are some demographic trends that will invariably affect the manner in which employees interact with their organizations and the way they go about accomplishing their daily routines. Although every organizations workforce development situation is unique in some fashion, these following demographic forces are projected to have the most impact on organizations recently and in the foreseeable future:

Millennials will be the largest adult generation by 2019;

Marriage in the US is on the decline;

Women are getting closer to making up half of the workforce;

Immigrants will drive overall workforce growth;

Births outside of marriage hold steady for US-born women;

There is a decline in adults living in middle-income households in key European countries;

There is a record increase in first-time asylum applications; and,

There is a record admittance of refugees to the United States (Trends that impact the workforce, 2021, p. 3).

In addition, as the turmoil that has characterized the nations political process over the past several years has made clear, politically based priorities can also have a significant impact on what types of strategic relationships are most important at any given point in time as well as what these priorities hold for the future (Trends that impact the workforce, 2021, p. 3).

Furthermore, Mi-ORG's web task management system appears to be creating far more problems than it can reasonably solve. For example, one manager observed that, You take a few more minutes to clear your inbox of the deluge of daily messages generated by Mi-ORG's web task management system. Unfortunately, you have been subscribed to notifications for several projects outside of your direct supervision, so you often miss important emails that get mixed in (An average day at Mi-ORG, 2021, p. 3).

INCLUSION AND DIVERSITY

a. How might the organization encourage employees to use elements of diversity and inclusion to develop or enhance products and services?

As noted above, although the companys top leadership team is not exclusively comprised of older white males, they appear to account for a majority of Mi-ORGs executives at present. A number of these senior executives, however, are scheduled for retirement in the foreseeable future and this situation may change thereafter. At present, though, there appears to be a glaring need for some level of formal encouragement to use elements of diversity to develop and enhance Mi-ORGs products and services (Larcker & Tayan, 2020). In fact, the current diversity that is present in the companys workforce as reflected in its job profiles may therefore have been the result of Mi-ORGs responses to legal mandates rather than enlightened leadership that fully embraces an inclusive corporate culture (Dobbin & Kaley, 2018). In this regard, one practitioner advises that, Inclusion is a concept that is closely related to diversity, however some researchers believe a key distinction to be that management of diversity can be legally mandated, whereas inclusion is the result of purposeful planning and action on the part of an organization (Diversity and inclusion, 2021, p. 5).

One viable and cost-effective solution to encouraging the companys employees to use elements of diversity and inclusion to develop or enhance its existing products and services would be to include these as performance goals that are included in Mi-ORGs existing…