Strategic Staffing Plan to Human Resources Today there is a high need for recruitment of staff for nuclear power plants. It is not that new plants are being built, and there are now laws against building new nuclear power plants, but, the nuclear electrical energy is now facing a great challenge for the future. This is further realized from a new survey done by the Nuclear Energy Institute and that reinforces the compulsion for these efforts as there some 26,000 workers in the industry who will leave their jobs and of them 16,000 will leave due to retirement and another 10,000 will be just lost to other industries. (Staffing Up: Industry Addresses Challenges to Build Future WorkForce) The recruitment that we are talking about is a person with knowledge about nuclear engineering is thus a person in demand now.

Thesis: The viewpoint for an organization can be from different angles and two of those are from the investors who would like to protect the value of their money and the other is from the staff of the organization who would like to have a good career. When an industry is on the decline, these two viewpoints may not match.

Analysis:

The department for which we are thinking about staffing is that of the Design Engineering Configuration Management. Comparatively this is a small department with three drafters, one supervisor, one female senior engineer and one senior associated engineer. There are good distributions in terms of African-Americans and White staff with the distribution in favor of African-Americans. The person required is an engineer who is probably in the half way stage of the ages of the departmental staff. The general analysis would also suggest that there are expected vacancies in future also above his/her level as the present tendency is for engineers to retire at around the age of 55. There is also a possibility that staff may be available from others who have retired early from the company, Entergy. All possible candidates have to be looked into and then the decision taken about the best possible individual for the requirement. (Staffing Up: Industry Addresses Challenges to Build Future WorkForce)

Requirements for planning:

Highlights of the study on age groups of employees in the power industry state that Industry retirements generally occur around age 55. The general position is that about half of the industry's workers, are over 48 and less than 7% of workers in the industry are above 57 years of age. The distributions of workers in the above 48 age group are with 17% between 53 to 57 years old and about 26% between 48 and 52. The loss of workers is mainly through retirement and that accounts for over 60% of projected loss of staff in the year 2008, and that is 2.5 times more than the current trend of retirements. At the other end of the age spectrum, only 6.4% of industry's employees are 32 and less. Of them 2.8% are aged below 27, while 3.6% are between 28 to 32 years old. The survey found that nearly two-thirds of the nuclear energy companies have now found the requirement of long-term staffing plans. Of the plans, 16% are for periods of 1-3 years; 58% of the plans are for periods from 3-5 years; and 27% of the plans are for 6 years or above. In addition to this, nearly three-quarters of the companies, who have plans, update their plans annually. (Staffing Up: Industry Addresses Challenges to Build Future WorkForce)

The importance of manpower planning and human resources functions are further understood when we look at a recent research by Watson Wyatt which came to the conclusion that the function of human resources management had a contribution as high as thirty percent to the total annual shareholders' return for any business. The study was done through a multiple regression analysis on 405 publicly traded companies. The different important elements contributing to profits were recruiting excellence at 10.1%, accountability achieved at 9.2%, providing a collegial and flexible workplace at 7.8% and communications integrity at 4.0%. (Maximize Shareholder Returns and Organizational Performance: Challenge and Improve Your HR Function!) Thus even before any recruitment takes place, there should be an analysis of the real requirement of the position that we are talking about.

Company Information:

Entergy Corporation is an integrated energy company which is engaged mainly in electric power production and retail distribution of power. The company has ownership and operation of power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of power generating capacity, and that makes it the second-largest...

It provides electricity to 2.7 million utility customers in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas. Entergy has annual revenues greater than $10 billion and employs about 14,000 individuals. (Entergy Corporation) The section of Entergy for which the staff is being sought for is Entergy Mississippi. This is one of the large units of the organization and serves a total of 420,000 customers in 45 among the 82 counties of Mississippi.
The customers are from different categories.

Residential

351,274

Commercial

60,338

Industrial

3,915

Governmental

4,036

(As of 12/31/04)

Entergy is a company that tries to do its best for the society and keep its promises. A new activity that has started last year was for Entergy to plant trees at its River Bend nuclear plant in Louisiana. The situation has now continued though the mix of trees changed at Grand Gulf, unlike the situation where trees were planted for the first time in several areas at River Bend. Entergy Corp. has decided on 65 acres of its Grand Gulf nuclear power plant site in Mississippi to use for an intensive forest-management program. The process is called carbon sequestration and the program is one among the many sustainable forestry plan projects that the company has taken up during the last few years. The action was consequent to a decision in 2001, when Entergy pledged to take actions voluntarily to stabilize its domestic greenhouse gas emissions at 2000 levels through the year 2005, and also to build a long-term target, inclusive of further reductions of carbon dioxide so as to deal with climate change. Till now, Entergy's carbon dioxide emissions are 12% less than the company's commitment levels. (Thinking Global, Forests at Mississippi Nuclear Plant Site trap Greenhouse gases)

Basic Values in Entergy:

The organization has certain shared values which must form the basic method for the working of employees with all outsiders like investors, customers, contractor, employees, and vendors. A short list of these values are "Create and Sustain a Safe Work Environment, Possess a Winning Spirit, Focus on Our Customers, Grow the Business, Be Active Team Players, Treat People with Respect, Aggressively Look for Better Ways, Take Actions to Achieve Results, and above all, Act with Integrity." (Guiding Principles) Now these will be just words, unless the interpretations by the company are known. The first aim of providing and sustaining a safe environment is a responsibility for the company and what the company means by that is to provide quality service in a way that ensures the full safety of the employees, the general public and the environment around us. It is also not only a responsibility of the company but is a responsibility for all who are connected with it. Some efforts of the company toward this goal have already been seen. (Guiding Principles)

The next question is of having a winning spirit and this again is for the company and the employees and the biggest reason for that is the confidence that they have in their abilities. The result of this is expected to be in the form of one of the highest possible returns, the operating performance to be one of the best and the service provided by the company to be unmatched. In the case of the engineer it will be in the area of the performance of the unit or units that he/she will be connected with. The third point is the focus on the customers and the company thinks that this is the biggest measure of the success of the company. This has to be taken up as the organization is the service provider of choice to the customer and has to listen to the views of the customers. When market conditions change, the company has to change to adopt the new standards and definitely match up to the quality and service expectations of the customers. This is again another area in which the engineer will have to function suitably. The fourth point is to ensure the growth of the business, and while this is a direction that the company has to take, the engineer may not have a direct role in this to a great extent. (Guiding Principles)

However, this has to be remembered as a target and action has to be altered accordingly. The next target is of being active team players, and this has been taken up as the growth of the organization has come from the ability of different people to be working together. For the growth of any business, it is essential that a number of people work together and work well. They…