Workforce Planning and Employee Development: A Case Study on Microsoft

This assignment provides a critical analysis of workforce planning and employee development, with a specific focus on Microsoft. The study delves into the factors influencing labor supply and demand within an organizational context, emphasizing the significance of workforce planning in today's competitive business environment. It examines labor demand determinants, such as production factors, technological advancements, and product demand, and explores the impact of wage rates, consumer demand, and governmental subsidies on workforce needs. The assignment also addresses the concept of labor supply, highlighting factors like population, age groups, and working hours. Furthermore, it underscores the importance of human resource management in measuring labor supply and demand, emphasizing the use of both internal and external metrics. The conclusion reiterates the importance of labor dynamics for business progression, productivity, and profitability.

Workforce Planning and Employee Development Case Study:

Introduction
Workforce planning is a process of forecasting, analysing and planning the workforce supply and
demand within an organisational context. More specifically, it can be said that, standing on
today’s stiff competition in business environment, the importance of workforce planning can
never be denied- it helps an organisation to get the right people with right skills for right place at
right time. Supply and demand of labour is common in any organisational context and it mainly
depends on several factors (Henderson & Scott, 2018). The aim of this assignment is to critically
analyse those factors, which trigger the supply and demand rate of labour within workplace
setting for an organisation. And in order to meet the aim of this assignment, Microsoft has been
taken as for instance.
Discussion
Labor demand is defined as the work force needed by the organization to complete their targets
within prescribed timeframe. Usually the decision for labor demand heavily demands on several
factors like factor of production, change in technology, and change in product demand and so on.
According to Verme (2017), “labor market can be defined as factor market” – it provides a
means by which employers of an organisation can make forecast reports regarding the need of
labor within workplace settings. Previously, it has been said that, there are so many factors,
which priorities the fact that how many people an organisation may need to achieve a targeted
objectives. If we start with the wage rates or the salary structure, in this context, it can be said
that, required workforce is simultaneously connected with the position based remuneration. It
means that if the wages rate is high, it will be costly to hire extra workforces and on contrary,
lower the wages rate, labors will be cheaper than the capital inputs (Holford, 2018). By taking
the demand of product in market into context, it can be said that, a rise in level of consumer
demand for products will facilitate an organisation to take up more workers. Similarly, a
governmental employment subsidy can allow a business to uptake more employees. Derived
demand is another factor which indicates to the fact that demand of labor depends on the demand
for the product that an organisation produced. At the time of expansion in economy, a rise in
demand for labor can be experienced in organizational context.

With the context of Microsoft, a high employee demand can be evident as the demand for
product is very high in market and on being one of the globally recognized tech companies;
Microsoft always has the tendency to meet the demand of target market (Giannakos &
Papadopoulos, 2016). By analyzing the rate of product demand and position of Microsoft in
global market, it can be realized that, Microsoft digital marketing content are now on demand
which has the potentiality to connect social media account of any individual and can make an
individual enable to customize and share that content with others. The demand for Microsoft
corp. is also on demand in market, which increase the third-quarters sales and profit, which in
turn has lifted the strong corporate demand for cloud computing services (Denny & Churchill,
2016). The profit at the end of March 31 rose to the $7.42 billion for Microsoft and this can be
considered as the factors, which increases the labor demand in Microsoft largely.
The future of jobs is dependent on the traditional changes and technological advancements. The
models for future jobs will be used for mass recruitment process, where workforce will be
recruited based on their capabilities and efficiency. The models for future jobs are,
Digitized marketing- In case of future traditions, currently, the jobs done manually, will be done
depending on technical advancements.
Machinery monitoring- Moreover, the future traditions of job roles will require knowledge on
machine handling as most of the jobs are going to transformed into digitized technology. In one
hand, it refers to the fact that in near future, people might lose their jobs as majority of the jobs
are being done through machinery equipments. Even sales, marketing, promotions are becoming
online.

Apart from the labor demand, there is another factor “labor supply” which is considered as an
integral part of any business activities. Labour supply, in simple term can be defined as amount
of worker available in workplace setting of an organisation within a given time (Huws, 2016).
By taking the context of labour market into account it can be said that this specific market can be
affected by demand and supply power. The supply of labour within workplace settings depends
heavily on population, age groups, participation of sex ration, education and so on. More
specifically, supply of labour in any organisation is related with quality and the rate at which the
labors are ready to associate with and work for the respective organisation. According to
Henderson & Scott, (2018), there are four factors, which can affect the supply of labour within
workplace settings and those are: participation rate of workforces, speed and/or the intensity of
work, number of hours labour is willing to work and efficacy level and level of knowledge
among the labors, associated with an organisation. Normally in organisational settings, the
number of labors depends on population- how much or what percentage of labor does work for
organisation. The industrialized countries like UK or USA has proven the fact that:
 When there is a progression rate in NI
 High age people stop working, comparatively at low age – these would foster the
participation rate of labour within workplace settings to a greater extent (Holford, 2018).
With the context of Microsoft, it can also be sated that working hours within workplace
settings is another factor, which can influence the supply of labour to a huge extent. In this
context, it can be said that, supply of labor can never be determined without knowing the fact
that how many hours a labour can work for the organisation (Durkheim, 2018).

Microsoft generally offers flexible working hours and arrangements to its employees. The hours
are flexible in Microsoft and this can be one of the factors, which increase the rate of supply of
labor in Microsoft to a greater extent.
Speed and intensity of work controls the quality of labour. Education, health, climate and other
impose several impacts on the tendency of work and quantity of labour. Efficiency or the skill
for work of the employees is related with the kind of work and how much wastage is done
(Green et al., 2016). According to Prof. Wilbut Boor, productivity of labour= N*H*T*S, where
N is number of workers, H is hours of work, T is time taken for work and S is skill of work. With
the context of Microsoft, it can be said that, on being a globally recognized organization, the
company has the tendency to attract skilled and proficient employees so that the productivity of
works cannot be hampered by any ways.
Now it is important to emphasize upon the factor that what kind of data and information an
organisation should need to measure the rate of supply and demand of labour within workplace
settings. And herein is the importance of human resource management and planning (Rubery,
2017). According to Ingold & Stuart, (2015), the human resource department of any organisation
is considered to be responsible to make forecasting report about the product and service demand
of respective organisation in market in accordance to the internal labor fluctuation rate and need
of labor is a crucial requirement for any orgnaisation. The chances of recognition of surplus or
shortage of labour can get higher if there is mismatch between the workforce and the
infrastructural needs of the organisation.

Therefore, it may be seen that majority of the human resource departments rely heavily on the
external metrics for measuring the labor demand accurately. It is recognized by majority of the
organizations in recent times that the ultimate reason for the demand is directed by the
preferences of the consumers (Henderson & Scott, 2018). When there is more demand for a
product or service from the part of consumers, firms generally tend to develop an incentive to
enhance their outputs so that the profits can be significantly maximized. Thus, it may lead to
recruitment of new employees and also engineer innovation for realizing the economies of sales.
Supply and demand of labor in organisation influenced by domestic and international market
dynamics along with the productivity rate, age of population, educational level- at the time to
measuring the supply and demand of labor within workplace setting, this data should be
allocated by human resource department of an organisation to meet the workforce need and meet
the organizational need with proper extent (Verme, 2017).
Conclusion
In order to conclude this assignment, it can be said that, supply and demand of labour is an
important factor for an organisation on which progression rate, productivity and profitability of
business depends to a greater extent. In this assignment, different factors which influence the
supply rate of labour as well as the labour demand in organisation have been discussed with the
context of Microsoft.

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