Tanglewood Casebook Case Study
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CASE TWO:
PLANNING
Case requirements:
Conduct an analysis of Tanglewoods staffing data and determine if their current staffing practices are sufficient to meet their ongoing needs, or if there will be problems in adequately staffing the organization in the near future.
Recommend how Tanglewood should design its overall staffing mission and strategy based on their upcoming needs.
Calculate representation statistics for various jobs within a single Tanglewood department store to determine where the most critical problems exist.
Recommend what you would do in light of the information you obtain in the calculation of various demographic statistics both for this specific store and for the chain as a whole.
Section Objectives
The planning process in staffing involves making forecasts of an organizations future hiring needs and developing methods the organization can use to meet these needs. The process of planning involves a combination of forecasting labor needs, comparing these needs to the labor availabilities, and determining where gaps exist. After these gaps are identified, general plans for filling these gaps are enacted.
Beyond the process of developing objectives for the number of individuals to be hired, planning activities often take the demographic composition of the workforce into consideration. Attending to the demographic breakdown of the workforce is important for a number of reasons. One is to ensure that the company has employees who can understand the perspective of the populations the company serves. The second reason is to minimize concerns about Equal Employment Opportunity violations . For both purposes, the current workforce can be compared to the demographic characteristics of other individuals who work in similar jobs.
Planning for the State of Washington: Forecasting Requirements and Availabilities
The Staffing Services Director, Donald Penchiala, has requested your assistance in the completion of an HR planning analysis for the 50 stores in two regional divisions in the state of Washington. After these overall goals are developed for the state, the policy will be disseminated across all 50 individual stores. Data from the individual stores will then be sent to the corporate offices for analysis and re-evaluation.
The basic model for planning includes (1) forecasting labor requirements, (2) forecasting labor availabilities, (3) conducting environmental scans, (4) determining gaps, and (5) developing action plans. These steps are described in your textbook. Conducting an adequate human resources selection plan will require you to take all of these steps.
Historical data from these two divisions have been presented in the transition probability matrix. Information on how to read transition matrices is provided in your textbook. The transition probability matrix was developed based on the historical staffing pattern for Washington over the past five years. A first stage of investigating staffing is to use the previous years staffing patterns as a preliminary forecast of labor requirements, the internal availability based on retention, internal promotions, transfers and demotions, and a determination of gaps by subtracting forecasted availabilities from future requirements.
Table 1.1 Markov Analysis Information
Transition probability matrix
Current year
Previous year
(1) Store associate
(2) Shift leader
(3) Department manager
(4) Assistant store manager
(5) Store manager
Forecast of availabilities
Next year (projected)
Current Workforce
Previous year
(1) Store associate
8,500
(2) Shift leader
1,200
(3) Department manager
(4) Assistant store manager
(5) Store manager
Gap analysis
Next year (projected)
Year end total
(column sum)
External hires needed
(current workforce-total)
Forecasting Labor Requirements
The Washington market is very stable for Tanglewood. Most stores have been in existence for 10 or more years, and were indirectly managed by either Emerson or Wood when they were first established. Because of this stability, the estimate for the coming years labor requirements is identical to the current year. So, for example, they currently have 1,200 individuals working as shift leader, and expect to need 1,200 individuals to work as shift leaders for the coming year as well.
Forecasting Labor Availabilities
One primary source of information for immediate labor availability at Tanglewood is their internal labor market. Table 1.1 shows that Tanglewood has used internal promotions to fill many openings for the department manager, assistant store manager, and store manager positions. For example, it is projected that 16% of shift leaders will be promoted to the rank of department manager, 6% of department managers will be promoted to be assistant store managers, and 8% of assistant store managers will be promoted to be store managers. However, it also appears that there will need to be considerable external hiring as well, since only 52%-66% of employees stay in the same position over a one year period.
To estimate a labor forecast, the proportion (percentage) of individuals