Workforce Planning and Talent Management Analysis at Argos Ltd

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of resource and talent planning within Argos Ltd, a British catalogue retailer. It examines the significance of these practices in modern management, focusing on labor market trends, legal requirements, and their influence on workforce planning. The report delves into the HR strategy of Argos, defining talent and talent management while exploring the impact of demographic shifts, economic conditions, and social trends on the firm's workforce. It outlines relevant HR legislation constraints, including anti-discrimination acts and equal opportunity laws, emphasizing their implications for recruitment and selection. Furthermore, the report identifies current and anticipated skill requirements, such as communication, competitiveness, and the need for creative solutions, based on job analysis and evolving market demands. The report emphasizes the importance of aligning current skills with future needs to ensure organizational success, along with the need for encouraging human interaction and using advanced techniques. Finally, the report explores the documents and processes that contribute to effective recruitment and selection while assessing the management of the HR lifecycle within the context of Argos's organizational strategy.

RESOURCE AND
TALENT PLANNING

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
ACTIVITY 1....................................................................................................................................3
P1. ...............................................................................................................................................3
P2. ...............................................................................................................................................4
ACTIVITY 2....................................................................................................................................4
P3.................................................................................................................................................4
ACTIVITY 3....................................................................................................................................6
P4. ...............................................................................................................................................6
P5. ...............................................................................................................................................8
ACTIVITY 4....................................................................................................................................9
P6. ...............................................................................................................................................9
P7. .............................................................................................................................................12
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................12
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................13

INTRODUCTION
In today’s era, resourcing and talent planning are considered to be one of the essential
management practices. These play a significant role in providing HR professionals and their
organisations with benchmarking data in against the costs related to recruitment and selection,
rate of employee turnover, etc. (Taylor, 2018). Present study is based on Argos Ltd. as per the
given scenario which is a British Catalogue retailer based in the UK and Ireland. Here, with
reference to the selected firm, discussion will be made on analysing the labour market trends
with appropriate legal requirements that influence workforce planning. Also, there will be study
on anticipated skills requirements in different HR contexts. Further, appropriate documents and
processes which contribute to effective recruitment and selection will be applied along with
assessing the way to manage HR lifecycle with organisational HR strategy.
ACTIVITY 1
P1.
HR strategy – It can be termed as a long term plan which is made with an aim to attain the set
objectives of organisation related to human resources, their development and human capital
management.
Talent and talent management – Talent refers to the skills, competencies and potential of people
working in a firm with high performance and moving the organisation up in managerial
positions. Talent management is a practice performed by HR department to anticipate the
required human capital for an organisation that helps in planning of meeting the future needs
related to attracting, identifying, developing, engaging, retaining and deploying of suitable
candidates (Siddiqui, 2018).
Workforce planning – It can be referred as a continuous process that helps in aligning of needs
and priorities of firm in relation with the workforce required to ensure that all legislative,
regulatory and organisational goals will be met.
Labour market trends
Demographics – In the present scenario, there is shift in trends like reduction in the birth rates as
well as in ageing which shows that number of labour across the world are decreasing and so as in
UK too. Thus, Argos might have to face the situation of shortage of labour. Thus, for them, to
think differently about talent sourcing is required through forcing employers and policymakers
(Prising, 2016).
Changing economic situation – This labour market trend refers that if in the UK, economy is
sound, companies like Argos will be able to offer attractive pays to the workforce and so,
retaining them will become easy. However, if economic condition gets disturbed due to any
factor, company might have to pay less to even skilled workforce also due to decreased flow of
money in the market. This may lead firm to face high rate of employee turnover and thus, talent
management and workforce planning will get directly influenced through same (Walford-Wright
and Scott-Jackson, 2018). Presently, European economy is growing at a very fast rate which is
helping the labour to gain high employment opportunities and so, Argos can easily take
advantage of that and in advance, it can prepare pool of talent for the future.
Social trends – In the UK, social situation is getting improved to a high extent and so, there is a
positive labour trend. The level of employment in this nation has reached to new record as in
2017, more than three and a half million people were employed. However, the present labour
market trend is that number of working hours of per person employed has increased with rising
disposable income and reduction in the level of poverty. With technological change, growth of
firms and number of jobs have increased as in Europe, there are people equipped with better
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education and so, it helps in talent management of Argos (Sparrow, 2018). Thus, workforce
planning gets highly influenced as with better people in terms of skills, knowledge and
competencies, company can hire best suitable candidates for their vacant positions.
P2.
HR legislation constraints and requirements
In any firm operating in the UK like Argos Ltd., to comply with employment laws in a
fair manner is highly important to save itself against any kind of penalty or obligation from the
side of regulatory authorities of nation. There are different legal requirements that Argos have to
consider at the time of workforce planning. Some of the HR legislation constraints and
requirements in Argos are discussed as below:
Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 – The anti-discrimination act refers that any organisation
and so as Argos cannot discriminate its working people on the basis of their colour, religion,
race, sex or national origin and need to consider them equally. Therefore, at the time of
workforce planning, company needs to consider people of all nations equally and they cannot
refuse to hire an employee or dismiss him because of the any of the reasons like their colour or
national origin (Employment Law and Compliance, 2019).
Wage and Hour – According to The Fair Labour Standards Act (FLSA), it is mandatory
for Argos to provide federal minimum wages to the workers that is to be revised on a periodic
basis. HR professionals in company are required verify the accuracy of payment made to
employees on continuous basis. Further, if employees are doing overtime, they have to be paid
extra for respective hours. Thus, workforce planning in Argos gets impacted as keeping in
consideration the same, HR manager needs to ensure about proper classification of employees
based on their job duties (Malik, 2018).
Equal Employment Opportunity Act 1972 – As per this act, Argos is not allowed to
make any kind of illegal discrimination with its workforce on the basis of age, gender or race and
need to provide equal employment opportunities to all. Thus, while workforce planning,
vacancies of company should be open for all and they have to consider them on equal grounds
irrespective of their race, age or gender.
Rise in Ethical Awareness – One of the major legal requirements of Argos to be
considered during workforce planning is rise in the ethical awareness. In the current era,
employees are well aware with all laws which protect them against any kind of injustice (Li and
et.al., 2018). Therefore, at the time of workforce planning, it is important for Argos to do
recruitment and selection keeping in mind all legislations so that risk of any penalty or obligation
can be reduced and process can be done in a fair manner.
Increased Competitive Intensity and Globalisation – There is one more requirement
which is to be considered by Argos while workforce planning i.e. rise in the competition as well
as globalisation. As today’s business environment is highly dynamic and there are number of
competitors available to the firm due to globalisation, so, it is crucial that people who will be
selected by the organisation must be highly skilled and proficient enough to lead organisation to
gain a competitive edge over others (Wójcik, 2018).
ACTIVITY 2
P3.
On the basis of current labour market trends and legal requirements identified, Argos
have to do their workforce planning where current and anticipated skills requirements are to be
determined which can be done through job analysis.
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Job analysis – On the basis of vacant positions in organisation, particular duties and
requirements for a specific job are identified as well as determined in detail along with stating
their importance for the respective position. It includes methods like direct observation, critical
incident technique, work methods analysis, etc.
On the basis of current labour market trends and legal requirements, identified current
skills in Argos are:
 Communication – Currently, being operating in the retail industry of UK, Argos is
having the workforce that is effective enough in communicating with clients and
customers which is important to retain them as there are high chances of them to switch
over on other competitor firms if not satisfied (Cooke and Wang, 2018).
 Competitiveness – Also, people working in Argos have high competitive spirit as
company provides on the job and off the job training with career development
opportunities and appropriate rewards if employees perform well. This is the reason; they
compete among team and so, better quality of output is gained by Argos which is
important to gain faith of customers. Company is having numerous recognition schemes
like Simply Thank You and MAD (Made a Difference) in order to make their
performance recognised and also, to motivate them (Gandy, Harrison and Gold, 2018).
 Coordination – As per the new management team, culture of Argos encourages co-
operation and thus, coordination among employees is good which leads to run operations
in a smooth and efficient way with attaining the targets effectually and on time.
According to the current labour market trends and legal requirements, Argos not only
offer rewards in the form of competitive basic pay but also, through bonus and incentive
schemes (Zhu and Honkanen, 2018). This helps in keeping the workers happy and so,
they stay with the firm for longer duration.
 Teamwork: It is another skill which is also needed by the retail industry because it has
been analysed that the work is easily achieved when the workforce do the work in team
such that they generate ideas and it further helps to achieve the defined aim in better way.
 Time Management: It is another skill which is also needed by the person because to
complete the work on time and manages their own work on time is also necessary for
them. Such that it also leads to creates positive impact upon the managers as well.
 For example, when the candidate of the company have all current skills then they will
lead a business such that if the person have good communication skill with time
management and teamwork then it will creates positive outcomes for the business.
Anticipated skills based on current labour market trends and legal requirements are:
 Encouraging more human interaction – This skill is required in the leaders and
managers in Argos. With seeing the today’s environment, there is high risk of switching
of employees from one firm to another. Therefore, it is necessary that there is healthy and
positive interaction in between employer and employee. Workers should be provided
with opportunities to participate in the decision making process and in other
organisational activities too (Hosen and et.al., 2018).
 Developing creative solutions – Considering the level of competition in market, it is
important for Argos to have workforce who can develop creative solutions and provide
differentiation in its products so that customers can be retained for longer span of time.
 Using advanced techniques – In today’s world of technology, it is vital for organisations
to have capable workforce who must be friendly to the latest and advanced techniques so
that operations in Argos can be completed on time with highest efficiency (Grimmer,
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Grimmer and Mortimer, 2018). This will help the firm in gaining higher profits and
competitive edge over others.
 Awareness: It is another anticipated skill that helps to generate new ideas and keep their
peers aware about new things.
 Leadership: To sustain in this competitive world, it is quite necessary to have a
leadership skills and complete the work in a team as well.
 For example, the person should also posses some motivation skills and always adopt new
techniques in order to complete the task in defined time. It will also affect the overall
productivity of the business.
There is a direct relationship in between current and anticipated skills on the basis of
present labour market trends and legal requirements as expected proficiencies in workforce can
only be known after assessing the abilities and knowledge which they are currently having. Thus,
proper evaluation on current skills should be made so that required improvements can be done
accordingly.
ACTIVITY 3
P4.
Job description: this is document that describes the general task and the person some
duties with their responsibilities in their vacant positions. The quoted firm used this skills in
order to lead a business by fulfilling the requirement of vacant seats.
Persona Specification: it describe the skills, qualification and experience or knowledge
which a person needs to be posses in order to perform the job and the quoted firm needs this
skills in order to allow HR to communicate the traits which a person finds with desirable ideal
candidates.
Job Description
Job Title – Marketing Manager
Contract – Permanent
Hours – 35 hours per week
Salary - £37,000 - £42,000 per annum
Department – Marketing
Reporting Authority – Head of Department
Work Location – London
Job Brief
We are looking forward to hire a Marketing Manager who will be handling the promotional
activities of company and its brands. To develop the pricing strategy, identify new prospects,
doing promotion and supporting lead generation efforts are expected from you. Also, you will
have to develop the budgets and expenditures with managing the advertising campaigns.
Responsibilities
 To build awareness of brand and positioning
 To communicate the plan of marketing to team
 Planning, guiding and managing the efforts of team to attain marketing objectives
 Making evaluation of the competitors
 Developing best marketing campaigns from beginning to end
 Doing promotion of company’s brands with advertising managers
 To identify new target market
 To develop pricing strategies with an aim to enhance the profits and market share
 To make strategy to offer the highest level of satisfaction to customers
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Requirements
 Excellent communication (written and verbal both)
 Adapting to changes
 Understanding of public relations
 Multi-tasking and decision making
Person Specification
Knowledge
 Techniques like digital, content and social media marketing
 Organisational strategy, culture, politics and practices
 Advanced and emerging technologies
 Rules and values of brand
Skills
 Customer centred
 Ability to think strategically
 Maintaining standards across team
 Motivating and developing the team
 Ability to work across multiple channels
Behaviours
 Must be inspiring
 Visionary and creative
 Should have challenging and innovative attitude
Qualification
 Bachelor’s degree in marketing or business administration
 Master’s degree is a plus
 Designing interactive applications and networking platforms
Experience
 4-6 years of experience in marketing field
 In creating marketing plan, campaigns and strategies
 Marketing automation and CRM tools
 Online and content marketing with social media strategy
It is quote necessary for Argos to have research and selection process with interview
questionnaire in order to screen up the candidate that they are suitable for the job or not. The
main goal of this process is to hire the candidate who are best suitable for the possible match and
the culture of a company.
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Interview questionnaire:
1 Describe how you have helped launch new product?
2. What are the most powerful advertising tool for the products?
3. Have you ever increased the interest in a product which was struggle?
4. How do you ensure that the departments are run smoothly?
5. What are you looking to make a change?
P5.
In order to have effective talent resourcing and planning in Argos Ltd., firm can use
different recruitment and selection methods which are like:
Online job boards and company website – This is an external method of recruitment and
selection. Argos can use many job boards available today like ‘monster.co.uk.’ for the resourcing
of talented candidates. With this, firm will be able to gain a strong employer brand. On company
website. Thus, this method proves to be highly helpful for talent resourcing as internal vacancies
are easily made known to a large number of sites with the medium of different videos and blogs.
Positive aspect:Argos is having a ‘vacancies’ section where people can give their
application and if company will consider them to be suitable and talented enough for the vacant
position, they will be selected (Taylor, 2016).
Negative aspect: This approach of recruiting and selecting for talent resourcing and
planning is highly cost effective and makes firm able to reach at the global level.
Recruitment agencies – This is also an external method of staffing and hiring the
candidates. For effective talent resourcing and planning, one more method if recruitment and
selection is there i.e. recruitment agencies which is highly common now-a-days (Baron, 2016).
Positive aspect: Argos can come in contact with private sector agencies who provide
firm with best suitable candidates that by making temporary and permanent placements. In this
method, candidates are pre-screened and pre-referenced and this is the reason; there are very less
chances that company will get an unsuitable candidate.
Negative aspect: Further, as most of the tasks related to recruitment and selection are
performed by these agencies, company gets free of same and needs to give minimal
administration (Ayetuoma, Swailes and Handley, 2016).
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Illustration 1: Process of recruitment and selection

Professional referral schemes – This is an internal method of recruiting and selecting
candidates that is also known as internal referrals. Argos can use this method in order to fill the
vacant positions at managerial level through approaching existing employees for the higher
positions. This is basically done on the basis of performance of employees and feedback that
associated staff has given for respective employee.
Positive aspect: Professional referral schemes help management in gaining high quality
candidates as they are already experienced and well known with the work culture of company
(Baporikar, 2017). Further, it is a cost effective approach and highly suitable for talent
resourcing and planning.
Negative aspect: Sometimes, this method is also leads to develop clashes between the
people.
Legal and financial aspects of different R&S methods.
Online job boards and
company website
Did not require any extra cost and helps
to attract wide range of customers.
Recruitment agencies Takes a lot money and even can find
more talented candidate .
Professional referral schemes Internal method and does not require
any extra money to fill the seat.
ACTIVITY 4
Recommendation:
 It can be effectively develop by provide better job advertisement database for a company.
 Setting a time aside in order to review resumes and interview candidates.
 Use a tracking form in order to keep track of a candidates and their progress.
 Build better relationship with the candidates in order to run effectively research and
selection procedure.
P6.
HR life-cycle – It is also known as an employee life-cycle which encompasses various stages
with respect to the career of an employee which actually starts with his recruitment in company
and ends with resignation, termination or retirement. There are mainly five stages of a typical
HR life-cycle model which are recruit, on-board, develop, retain and off-board.
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Application of key stages of HR life-cycle
Stages of employee life-cycle basically refers to the journey of a person with company in
which he is working. Application of these stages is given as below:
1. Recruitment and selection– This is the first stage of HR life-cycle which is all about
hiring of a new employee in organisation.
For example: Argos can use talent acquisition software that will help them to design and
automate the process of recruitment and selection including its all aspects.
Positive impact : This stage allows firm to use an application tracking system, screening before
employment and the scheduling of interviews which in taking follow up of candidates (Employee
life-cycle, 2019). If Argos will use talent acquisition software, it can attract the top talent through
streamlining the process of hiring.
Negative impact: If HR of the company did not find out the best talent then it will affct the
business in negative way and decline in financial position.
Legislation: by using talent acquisition software, the company should make sure that the firm
uses Data protection act in which the firm is actually did not misuse the data of their personal
candidate.
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Illustration 2: 5 Stages of HR
life cycle
(Source: 5 stages of HR Life
cycle, 2018)

2. On-boarding and orientation– This is the next phase where all those candidates who
have accepted the offer given by company become its workforce.
For example: At this stage, Argos needs to provide them with required information and tools by
which they can perform their work with high efficiency and can easily get integrate in the
organisational culture.
Positive impact:company prepares its employees to learn about its policies, processes and duties
which they are expected to perform. For the same, Argos will have to provide suitable trainings
to them.
Negative impact: Personality test also creates a wrong impact upon the employees and it is one
of the most time consuming method.
Legislation: the firm should not discriminate the workforce and they should follow the
Discrimination act.
3. Performance management – In the next step i.e. performance management, employees
are given with feedback against what they have performed by the way of performance
reviews, meeting or one-to-one check-ins (Taylor, 2018).
For example: Further, if Argos will take frequent feedback, it will help in boosting the
employee engagement for which company can use performance management software or
learning management system.
Positive impact: At this stage, regular feedback from respective candidates is taken so that
management will get to know the motivating and de-motivating factors for employees.
Negative impact: It leads to demotivated their employees and as a result, HR may loss some
talented candidate as well.
Legislation: by using the advance technology into the working area, the company should follow
the Data protection act.
4. Succession planning– Next phase is to retain the employee who has integrated into
company and gained a sound understanding of his roles and responsibilities.
For example: Argos at this stage needs to provide recognition, rewards, training and
continuous evaluation to the employees so their engagement with organisational practices
can be increased and they can be retained for longer span of time (Employee life-cycle,
2019). For the same, Argos can use tools like talent management software as well as
succession planning.
Positive impact: Through training, the employees can raise their performance.
Negative impact: This serves as a challenge for the firm which requires to ensure
employee development on continuous basis.
Legislation: The company should follow the employment act.
5. Exit and transition– This is the last stage of HR life-cycle in which an employee
working in organisation leaves his job due to reasons like retirement, termination, layoffs,
if he gets a new job or some other personal causes.
For example: in any case, HR department of Argos has to follow systematic procedures
and documentation for exit and transition of the employee. This is a critical stage for
Argos to maintain a strong corporate brand (Siddiqui, 2018).
Positive impact: However, with taking their feedback on, retaining other employees will
become easy for the organisation with improving the HR processes.
Negative impact: If the candidate is not pass in personality test then they are terminated.
Legislation: the company should follow company act and also employment law.
Recommendation:
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 from the above, it has been recommended to the company that they should follow all the
laws and have to adhere important legislation into the working area.
 The firm should also follow the stages and keep compliance all the laws that are required
to follow in the working area.
P7.
Integration of HR stage:
 Execution: when the management of the quoted firm decides then HR of the firm takes
an initiatives and they also work with the interdepartmental regarding hiring and selection
of the candidate, the strength of this stage is to generate different ideas in order to select
the best candidates. While on the other side, weakness is to not getting best candidate
because of taking a lot views.
 Monitoring: their main duty is to monitoring the performance of their candidates and
when HR monitors any changes to the workforce then they also provide training session o
their candidates in order to raise the company's productivity and further, its strength is to
raise the skills while weaknesses is to creates conflicts between the people.
Recommendation is as follows:
The HR strategies of Argos are like recruitment and selection, providing induction and
making the employee familiar with organisational culture, improving skills and competencies of
staff, making efforts to retain them, etc. With all these organisational HR strategies, stages of
employee life-cycle are directly integrated. Therefore, it is recommended to the firm that the first
stage of HR life-cycle is ‘recruiting’ which plays a significant role in providing the best suitable
candidate to company based on the skills and competencies required (Walford-Wright and Scott-
Jackson, 2018). Next stage is ‘on-boarding’ i.e. making the employees familiar with company’s
culture with providing required information and tools. This helps in the HR strategy of Argos to
maintain a positive working environment at workplace. Further, as per the third stage i.e.
‘developing’, HR strategy of organisation is integrated in a way that to enhance the existing
skills, knowledge and abilities of recruited employees, suitable trainings are provided to them
along with taking their feedback through performance reviews and meetings (Sparrow, 2018).
The fourth stage of employee life-cycle i.e. ‘retaining’ is integrated with organisational
HR strategy in a manner that aim of both is to keep employee stay in organisation for longer span
of time for which methods like succession planning are used. The last stage of HR life-cycle is
‘off-boarding’ which is also integrated with organisational HR strategy as this phase if for
improving the existing HR processes of company through following proper procedures and
documentation for the reasons like retirement, layoffs, termination of an employee or if he leaves
due to a new job (Malik, 2018). In this way, all five stages of employee lie-cycle are integrated
with the HR strategy of Argos.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the above report that resourcing and talent planning are vital as
well as critical functions which consists of various aspects like selection of proper hiring
channel, maintaining pool of talent to meet future need of recruitment, forecasting of required
resources, etc. Also, it involves high coordination from the recruitment team and ensures that
organisation will be able to attain a competitive edge in market over others with meeting all short
and long term goals. Overall, it can be said that with giving due consideration on resourcing and
talent planning, Argos can effectually meet the needs of changing scenario and future demands
along with developing, retaining and deploying human resources who are valuable to the firm.
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