Chat with AIExam 5: Forecasting and Planning
Anna is the manager of human resources at Alcatec Inc.She is comparing the number of employees required over the next six months versus the capabilities of her existing workforce adjusted for attrition.She is trying to identify any gaps between the two.Which step of the workforce planning process is discussed here?
(34) 
VerifiedD
Discuss the different ways in which a firm can deal with temporary employee surpluses.
(41) VerifiedWhen a firm expects a business slowdown to be temporary,it has several options.If slowdowns are cyclical or happen frequently,using temporary or contingent workers who are the first to be let go when business slows can help buffer key permanent workers and provide them greater employment security.Temporary layoffs are another option to deal with a short-term employee surplus,but they sometimes need to last more than six months to be cost-effective due to severance costs,greater unemployment insurance premiums the firms must pay,temporary productivity declines in the firm's remaining workforce,and the rehiring and retraining process.Losing the investments the organization previously made to hire and train the laid off workers can also be costly.Alternatives to layoffs include across-the-board salary cuts or a reduction in work hours,or reallocating workers to expanding areas of the business.Some firms offer unpaid vacations,sabbaticals,job sharing,and other creative solutions to temporary surpluses.
Compare and contrast workload-driven forecasting and staffing efficiency-driven forecasting.
(31) VerifiedWorkload-driven forecasting uses historical data on the aver-age number of hires typically made per recruiter or the average number of recruits processed per recruiter over a given period of time,say,a week,month,or year.For example,if an organization's average recruiter can process 100 applicants during a recruiting drive,the company will need a staff of 20 recruiters to process 2,000 applicants.Similar procedures can be used to estimate the amount of additional resources the telephone costs,advertising costs,photocopying,background checks,medical tests,and so forth needed for the staffing effort.The amount of money that needs to be budgeted for the staffing effort depends not only on the number of people to be hired but whether applicants are local or from far away,the recruiting sources used,the selection methods employed,and the tightness of the labor market.
Staffing efficiency-driven forecasting is another method of forecasting how many recruiters are needed.Staffing efficiency is the total cost associated with the compensation of the newly hired employees that is,the total starting base pay of all new employees.For example,if a firm's internal and external staffing costs were $100,000,and 10 people were hired,each with a starting base salary of $60,000,the firm's staffing efficiency would be 100,000/600,000 or 16.67 percent.Lower staffing efficiency percentages reflect greater staffing efficiency.Because the staffing efficiency approach is financially and efficiency driven rather than workload driven,it can be a useful metric for evaluating how well a firm's staffing plans are working.The method can also be used to set a budget for an upcoming hiring effort.
Which of the following is more likely to warrant changes in an organization's compensation policy to offer above-market wages?
(36) New salespeople at a retail store generate an average of $50,000 in profit their first year.In addition,the reduced workload on the rest of the sales staff improves their efficiency and ability to provide high-quality customer service by 10 percent.This is worth an additional $20,000 to the company.The cost of hiring and training a new salesperson are expected to be $3,000 and $8,000 respectively.The salary for this position is $35,000.What is the return on investment of hiring an additional salesperson?
(34) Which of the following is a way in which many organizations try to reduce their need for skills that will be in short supply for a number of years?
(41) If managers are asked to estimate their optimal headcount for the following year for staffing planning purposes,which of the following has been used?
(27) If a company employs two office assistants for every nine architects (a staffing ratio of 2:9)and it plans to expand and hire eighteen new architects,how many new office assistants will it need to hire?
(32) Which of the following forecasting methods relies on the experience and insights of people in the organization to predict a firm's future employment needs?
(39) A ratio analysis assumes that the ratio between the number of employees needed and certain business metrics is highly variable.
(25) Bottom-up judgmental forecasting uses the input of lower-level managers to estimate the firm's total staffing requirements.
(32) A Japanese company that makes electronic watches exports 90 percent of its products to the United States.Which of the following will happen if the dollar strengthens against the Japanese Yen?
(38) Which of the following would be most useful for a firm needing to quickly reassign employees to an important new project?
(36) ________ is a quantitative technique that can be used to analyze a firm's internal labor markets and forecast its internal labor supply.
(31) Which of the following,if true,would require a company to make adjustments to its historical employee-productivity ratios?
(35) ________ forecasting uses historical data on the average number of hires typically made per recruiter or the average number of recruits processed per recruiter over a given period of time,say,a week,month,or year.
(32) A firm's internal and external staffing costs were $50,000,and 5 people were hired,each with a starting base salary of $40,000.What would be the firm's staffing efficiency?
(33) Forecasting is not an exact science,and it is rare for a forecast to be exactly right.Given this uncertainty,it is usually best to use the previous period's data and add/reduce some percentage value based on managerial intuition.
(41) Which of the following are detailed records or databases that summarize each employee's skills,competencies,education,training,languages spoken,and chances of being promoted?
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