Workforce Planning in the UK Retail Industry: A Comprehensive Report

This report delves into the critical aspects of workforce planning within the UK retail industry, examining key issues such as forecasting challenges, data integrity problems, and employee retention difficulties. It analyzes workforce planning strategies employed by organizations like Tesco, highlighting the importance of long-term goals, skill gap assessments, and adaptation to external market dynamics. The report further explores the learnings from a related module, emphasizing the significance of strategic workforce planning in aligning with organizational objectives and fostering employee development. A performance development plan is presented, outlining strategies to enhance communication, time management, and research skills. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of workforce planning and performance development plans in addressing employee turnover and skill gaps.

Academic Research and
Writing

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
PART 1 REPORT............................................................................................................................4
Main issues of workforce planning........................................................................................4
Organisations are reacting .....................................................................................................5
Conclusion and recommendations..........................................................................................5
PART 2............................................................................................................................................6
Learnings from the module:...................................................................................................6
Importance of learnings:.........................................................................................................6
Application of learnings for future developmental plans: .....................................................7
PART 3............................................................................................................................................7
Performance development plan..............................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCE...................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Workforce planning is the basic process that is related to the process of analysing,
forecasting and further planning of the supply and demand of employees in a organizations.
There are many different functions that are associated with this function that includes assessment
of gaps, determination of the talent management to ensure that there is right individual working
in a right position in every organisation. Present report is based on assessment of the issues of
workforce planning in context with the retail industry of UK by analysis of the planning of
workforce in organisations such as TESCO (Teare and et.al 2017). Based on that there is
formation of reflection follow by a performance development plan that can assist in development
of lacking areas of academic skills with the specified time duration.
PART 1 REPORT
Main issues of workforce planning
According to views of Peter Louch Vemo, 2014 in the present changing talent based
economy workforce is one of the most crucial tangible resources with every organisation. Many
time organisations are not able to carefully plan this resource. For this there has to be focus on
the issues that are commonly faced by retail industry and the way such issues can be responsible.
Some of common issues includes the time frame, in Retail industry Management is generally.
focusing on quick results but workforce planning is a element that generates effective results in
long run. There is issues related to data integrity that is managers in retail segment are not able to
review the future plans as they are not getting the proper head count (Alter, 2017). With instance
to TESCO there is issues if setting the required level of granularity that is part of workforce
planning and job taxonomy. Forecasting is also a identified issues where the traditional methods
of forecasting are not able to generate the required results and sometimes nor actionable by the
human resource managers in TESCO (Sparkman, 2018). Managers sometimes are also dealing
with issues of controlling process in the workforce planning where they are not able to retain the
talented workforce in the gradual process of new hiring that results into double cots that is of
recruiting new individuals and high cost of labour turnover.
Organisations are reacting
According to view points of Neelie, 2019 there are certain effective steps that have to be
undertaken by organisations to ensure successful strategic workforce planning. TESCO is a super

market were there is requirement of large workforce for performing various functions that are
part different organizational levels. There can be use of some strategies such as consideration of
the long run goals that overall mission & vision statement have to be consider by the human
resource department while they are planning to hire talented workforce. There has to be analysis
of the present skill gaps so that this is the main aspect that is considered while planning the
recruitment process (Doumic and et.al 2017). There is effective consideration given to the
external dynamic changing environment so that organisation is able to adapt to the changing
situations and according to expectations of future employees. There are timely opportunities of
growth that have to be offered to already existing capable employees so that they are able to
retain such employees for a longer duration of time period. Lastly there is monitoring of the
overall process of recruitment and hiring in the organisation so that there can be focus on the
way there are deviations in the set standards and the actually achieved level of performance
(Rennie and et.al 2019).
Conclusion and recommendations
It can be summarized from the above discussed points that there are any different issues
that are taking place in the organisation related to the overall process of workforce planning.
Organisations have to ensure that there has to be some effectors strategy formulation in order to
deal with the negative impact of high employee turnover or high cost associated with recruiting
of talented employees. Different strategies can lead towards cost optimization, dealing with all
the workforce changes and demographic changes and having a long term recruitment strategy is
also one such benefit (Fraher and Brandt, 2019). In context with TESCO this strategy can lead to
wide collaboration among different departments that can lead towards proper alignment with the
individual objectives. There has to be focus on use of a approach based of long term planning.
PART 2
Learnings from the module:
From the module my overall basic learnings have been the process of workforce planning and
the way it is relate to the present and future success of various business organisations. Workforce
planning consist of identification of the present and future personnel needs so that there can be
use of mots cost effective methods for the purpose of retaining and recruitment of employees. I
developed insights about the importance of continual analysis in organisations for the purpose of

enhancing the effectiveness of employees and then further implementation of the necessary
measures that are required for increasing the learning & development initiatives in order to
maintain the efficiency of workforce. I developed the way strategic workforce planning has to be
aligned with the overall laid objectives of the organisation along with its associated long term
vision. It is part of the strategic workforce planning that s required to be a aspect of success
planning. I have able to draw relevant insights about the way workforce planning can result into
better efficiency in organisational functioning.
Importance of learnings:
From the module I developed insights of the way workforce planning can result into providing
managers with the strategic basis of different Human resource decisions. From the future
prospective when I will be working in the corporate environment such skills are going to assist
me in managing the change by addressing all the issues in more strategic manner. The learnings
from this module will help me in identification of my organisation needs, necessary skills to
meet the needs of employees, way to attract talented skilled individuals, retaining these
employees and then further focus on succession planning. I have developed knowledge that
workforce planning is a aspect that has also lead to development of strong leadership position
that is leading to more cooperative support for the staff in the process of strategic planning of
workforce. I will be able to focus on the budget process plans and proper funding in order to
identify the required competencies for recruitment, development, training and then further
placing of employees so that there can be no negative impact of the issues related to workforce
planning.
Application of learnings for future developmental plans:
All the learnings from this module will be applied to deal with the challenges that organisation
may be facing regarding retaining of talented workforce so that there are measures to ensure that
there is low turnover in the organisation in which I am working as a part of human resource
manager. There will be utilisation of certain strategies that can help in enhancing the present
level of morale, engagement and satisfaction of employees. The overall strategies of employee
retention have to be in alignment with the vision & mission of the organisation. It is going to
help in management of lay offs and the way dynamic environment is completely changing.

PART 3
Performance development plan
Performance development plan is a identified tool that is used for improving the
performance of employees. It is a process that is assisting ,managers and employees to identify
the specific areas where there is requirement of enchantment so that there can be measurement of
progress according to this plan and evidence of improvement (Yang, Tang and Zhao, 2017).
Performance development plan
There are three key skills that be to be developed as part of this performance development plan:
1) Key skills:
Communication skills:
Time period:
4 weeks
Activities to be done:
Attending of webinars,
focussing on classroom individual presentations,
learning of new words to enhance the vocabulary.
Evidence of achievement:
There will be better presentation and language command that will be developed with each
presentation.
2) Key skills:
Time management skills
Time period:
2 weeks
Activities to be done:
There will be preparation of time table so that specific time is allocated to perform each set of
activity.
Evidence of achievement:
All the tasks and assigned responsibilities will be completed in the specified deadline. There will
be no wastage of time and optimum utilisation of available time period.

3) Key skills:
Researching skills
Evidence of achievement:
Better research outcomes and achievement of the laid objectives.
Time period:
6 weeks
Activities to be done:
Using both online available sources that is journal and articles available on authentic sources.
Focus on books to understand the view points of different authors on respective prevailing
topics.

CONCLUSION
It can be summarized from the above made discussions that workforce planning is a
approach that is very crucial to be understood by every individual. It forms the basic to deal with
the negative impact of high employee turnover. Further the importance of performance
development plan is reflected in a way as it leads to improvement in the present skills and
identification of the skill gaps.

REFERENCE
Books & Journal
Alter, S., 2017. Building a strong bench: your leadership development plan is your" secret
sauce". Journal of Property Management, 82(1), pp.18-23.
Doumic and et.al 2017. Toward an integrated workforce planning framework using structured
equations. European Journal of Operational Research, 262(1), pp.217-230.
Fraher, E. and Brandt, B., 2019. Toward a system where workforce planning and
interprofessional practice and education are designed around patients and populations not
professions. Journal of interprofessional care, 33(4), pp.389-397.
Rennie and et.al 2019. Health workforce planning in Namibia: assessing a pilot workforce
survey of pharmacists. International Journal of Pharmacy Practice, 27(6), pp.565-574.
Sparkman, R., 2018. Strategic Workforce Planning: Developing Optimized Talent Strategies for
Future Growth. Kogan Page Publishers.
Teare and et.al 2017. A comparison of job descriptions for nurse practitioners working in out‐of‐
hours primary care services: implications for workforce planning, patients and
nursing. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 26(5-6), pp.707-716.
Yang, G., Tang, W. and Zhao, R., 2017. An uncertain workforce planning problem with job
satisfaction. International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics, 8(5), pp.1681-
1693.
Online:
Workforce Planning Is Essential to High-Performing Organizations, 2014 [Online], Available
through<https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/technology/pages/louch-workforce-
planning.aspx>