P1/P2/M1/D1 Workforce Planning/Skills

P1/P2/M1/D1 – Workforce Planning/Skills Spirax Sarco Information

1. How does the business recruit and selection staff? Is there any induction training?  Recruitment Agencies - We have a 'PSL (Preferred Supplier List) were we have just a few agencies that we use and have agreed rates up front. Agencies can be very costly, typically 10-20% of basic appointed salary as a hire cost. However it is easier to use agents and they advertise the role on job boards and screen candidates in advance and it also reduces on admin (i.e. invites to interview etc.)  Spirax Sarco Website - Free for us clearly but you won't necessarily get the volume of applicants.  Local press - Good for semi - skilled/unskilled roles but limited success for professional roles. Cost of a small ad could be £1000 and clearly this doesn't guarantee that you will find the right candidate whereas with an agency you won't pay anything until you offer.  Professional Magazines such as 'People Management' for HR roles, there are other magazines say for Engineering, IT etc. The cost a half page ad could be something in the region of 6-8K and if you have no success then you have just wasted the cash.  Graduate/Apprentice Fairs - Not as expensive as ads and can be an effective way of raising our brand as even through the company is global we are still unheard of unless you are local.  Facebook, Linked In - We have started to use social media with not much success however I feel that is because we are novices in using this method. At Npower they had an internal team of 'recruitment agents' directly employed by Npower who were experts in sourcing candidates from social media. This can be very successful if you know what you are doing and cost effective. In terms of selection, we use the following:

 competency based interview (I will send you an example copy when I get into work tomorrow)  psychometric testing (most common ones are numerical, verbal reasoning and behavioural). The behavioural one depicts how the individual preferences at work i.e do they like to analyse people or numbers, how competitive they are, how they make decisions, how they influence, how socially confident they are etc. Most HR Professionals are trained in how to administer these, interpret the results and give feedback to the candidate. These can also be used a development tool internally for individuals who are looking for progression.  Assessment Centres - We tend to use for volume roles such as Graduate/Apprentices places. They are very time consuming as they require a lot of organization and time. You will need to use assessors from the business and therefore have to make sure that the managers are trained in how assess. The day usually consists of a 1-1 technical interview, 1-1 HR interview, Group Exercise and Presentation. The benefits are that you manage to obtain a lot of information on each candidate and therefore recruit the right people for the business. I can send you some example exercises.

Induction

 We have an e-learning induction which new starters complete in their first week covering topics such as: o Company history/information o Health and Safety o Company rules/disciplinary procedures etc. o Appraisal process o HR Processes, such as pay day etc. o Training within the company o Pension information o Healthcare benefit  We would expect the manager to pull together a 2-4week plan for induction where they would meet various people within the business and ensure that their objectives are set, trained on systems etc.  They would have monthly reviews throughout their 6 month probation.

2. How does the business carry out workforce planning? When? Who?

The business submit their business plans in September of each year. This will include all of the projected forecasts along with the headcount plans for the following year. Each head of each department will need to submit specific information to Finance.

2. What factors do you consider when planning?

The main factors (both internal and external) that we consider are:  Growth alongside budgets/cost  Churn (labour turnover) We would look at the % of staff leaving each year to help predict our churn rate. We would also look at any long term sick cases that we think may result in a dismissal and poor performance cases.  Age Profile of each department. As the retirement age has now been abolished and people can now work forever, it makes it very hard for employers to determine when staff will retire. Therefore you have to just estimate this.  Employee skilling - We do run an Apprentice and Graduate scheme as there is a shortage of professional/semi-professional Engineers in the UK. We do have an aging workforce and therefore need to ensure that we have the right talent working upwards through the company.  Employee Skilling - The other factor on this point in relation to Spirax is technology and legislation. Some of the products that Research and Development design result in new technologies and sometimes we do not have this competence and therefore either have to use contractors (which is very costly) or plan to recruit. In terms of legislation, as legislation changes the Quality team need to ensure that we are compliant. This can be complex as we produce products for various sectors such as Oil and Gas, Food, Health Service etc.  We have a contract with a temp agency to source and manage all of our temp workforce to give us the flexibility needed. As the economy improves this could be harder as more people find perm roles and therefore it could be harder to recruit good temp staff.

Info for P2 3. How skills are identified? In terms of identifying skills, this is not very robust in Spirax as they have only had HR on site for 5 years even though they have been going for about 80! Therefore the bits below are what we will introduce next year:  We use a Succession Planning Matrix which helps identify our high/med/low performers. Any critical roles that could put the business in a risky position if the individual was to move on. This then feeds into our Resource Planning as it helps us to identify roles that we need to recruit for in the future as people develop through the company.  Training Need Analysis - I will send you an example document. Unfortunately we do not have anything sophisticated and really is just an excel spreadsheet which shows the levels of each individual and where they are at. This identifies the training needs for the department and also a Personal Development Plan for each person. ALTERNATIVE WAY TO DO A SKILLS AUDIT  I have seen at other companies a more sophisticated version of the above where each role is mapped out online with all of the relevant technical and behavioural competencies required for the role. Each competence has a description of what a 'developer', 'competent' and 'expert' would be demonstrating at each level. The individual assesses themselves online and the line manager completes the assessment and then a joint discussion takes place to discuss and differences. This then highlights to the individual what their development needs are. However the other main benefit is that you can run reports by department which highlight where the weaker areas are. INFO FOR D2 4. How can they improve the skills of their staff?  We have run some 'Diversity Training' with a consisted of an external company delivering sessions to everyone in the business. The sessions were interactive by using professional actors to act out typical work place scenarios to highlight how sometimes banter can turn into bullying, inappropriate behaviour etc. After each scene the staff would have use an electronic anonymous voting system obtain their views an opinions. The company invested in this training as there are many issues of grievances, disciplinaries etc. and we are trying to change the culture to a more modern manufacturing and that people are more respectful. However it is a journey that we on...!  I think that the business needs to be more strategic in planning what type of new technical skills that we may need considering new technologies/legislation.  Line Manager Training -We are considering as to invest in some 'mental health' training for our line managers to help them spot the early signs of stress in their staff and the best way to manage this. In todays modern world this will only increase...  Continued Line Manager Training..HR Modules such as Managing Absence etc. to upskill our managers.  There is also a need for a consultant to provide some process training as a lot of our processes are either not adhered to and people continue to find manual work arounds and/or the process is not fit for purpose and rather antiquated!  New Machines - some of the machines are very old and the company is investing in new machines as you can imagine one machine could cost half a million therefore it is vital that the staff have the relevant training.