Chapter 5, Planning

1. In Planning and Recruiting, the Human Resource department must be able to see into the future. But, how is this possible? One way is by looking into the past. There are many employment trends in this economy that have repeated themselves. We have had repeated recessions and depressions. We can now tell that some of these were predictable. The same is the case for major companies. When one company foresees that they will have a shortage of work because of a pending completion of a project, they may one to stop hiring, or start redistributing so that when the day comes that the project is completed, they don't have to lay off half their workers. They can do things like originally hire temps or part-time employees, or put an early retirement program in place for workers who are getting close to retirement age.
2. The Utah Census is hiring 1200 Employees for the Sandy call center. Instead of setting up a whole program of benefits, they are simply offering each employee and additional $3 per hour to compensate for this lace of benefits. Does this seem fair? Even though these employees are being hired for a 6 month position, do they deserve to get the opportunity for insurance during this period?
3. There are many elderly workers preparing to retire. Many companies may want to keep them around and have a gradual retirement, or if they need to make layoff, to offer an early retirement.
4. Is early or gradual retirement beneficial for the company, even if you have to offer them more money to do so? Is this worth it to the employees?