Comparative Performance Based Upon Respond To The
“Obstacles and Opportunities due to Retirement of Employees”
From
the eActivity, discuss at least two of the eight obstacles and
opportunities that best address an agency’s challenge of 45% of its
workforce retiring in the next 36 months. Provide a rationale for your
views.
The eight obstacles and opportunities identified in this post is from
the Wiley Online Library on Human Resource Management (Nahrgang, 2005).
Each obstacle can be reversed into an opportunity for the HR manager if
the appropriate strategy is applied. The eight components are: (1)
influences on multiple outcomes; (2) trade-offs between different
approaches; (3) difficulty in choosing appropriate units of analysis;
(4) difficulty in predicting the nature of the job; (5) complications
from individual differences; (6) job enlargement occurring without job
enrichment; (7) creating new jobs as part of growth or downsizing; and
(8) differences between long-term and short-term effects.
The two components selected for discussion are: #3 – the difficulty in
choosing appropriate units of analysis; and #5 – complications from
individual differences. Succession planning comes to mind for these two
components because the agency is challenged to make sure these
vacancies are filled with the same degree of expertise for nearly half
of it workforce who will be leaving in three years. According to Week 9
Lecture in Blackboard, the skills of critical thinking and creativity
is highly needed for succession planning to anticipate, influence, and
manage the impact on organizational effectiveness when vacancies are
created due to retirement (or turnover).
So,
an on-point analysis of the units of work is needed to have a smooth
transition of the employees who are leaving. The unit(s) of work should
not be based on an individual’s work habits and personal technique, but
on that skill and competence needed for the unit(s) of work to meet the
goals and objectives of the agency (Riccucci, 2012). It is not wise to
use only quantitative metrics – and not also qualitative metrics – for
the units of analysis because numbers alone don’t give a full picture.
According to Muller (2018), it is a questionable practice to
replace professional judgment (acquired through personal experience and
talent) with numerical indicators of comparative performance based upon
standardized data (metrics).
Complications from individual differences may occur because those who
are retiring may not want to transfer their knowledge, especially if the
agency didn’t facilitate the gaining of the knowledge. However, it
there is a strategy that can be implemented over the three-year period
leading up to the time of the vacancy, and with being creative, the
agency can find ways to compensate those who are planning to leaving to
help restructure the workforce.
References:
Muller, J. (2018, May 6). Against Metrics.
Retrieved from Government Executive:
https://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matt…
Nahrgang, M. A. (2005, November 18). Work redesign: Eight obstacles and opportunities. Retrieved from Wiley Online Library- Human Resource Management : https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/hr…
Riccucci, N. M. (2012). Public Personnel Management-Current Concerns, Future Challenges, Edition No. 5. . London and New York: Routledge – Taylor & Francis Group .