Workforce Planning - Verizon Compared Sprint, AT&T

Workforce Planning - Verizon compared Sprint, AT&T T-Mobile. This part group project, discussing difference top phone companies. See attached. Workforce planning Workforce planning is a very challenging process for most companies. Most companies will want to cut on extra cost hence some of them end up paying their workers minimum pay with minimal benefit package. Workforce planning encompasses, attracting, recruiting and selecting, induct, train and develop the workers, motivate, manage and reward performance, retain and support, and lastly, leading and communicating.

It also entails assisting a business to undertake expansions, restructures and downsize in a strategic manner, by ensuring that the right staff are recruited on time and retained in the business for its future growth (Caligiuri, 2010).

Workforce planning involves five key steps, having a workforce gap analysis to ascertain the workforce future supply and demand and to establish the future gaps, then the workforce plan is developed and implemented, developing it entails assessing the risks involved, developing initiatives to attract and retain the workers and on the implementation side, the action plan with timeframes is computed, there after the actual implementation takes place.

The third step entails, reviewing the workforce plan Workforce planning also constitutes succession planning where the right talent are identified and prepared to fill positions within the company as they empty. Projection shows that by the year 2025 there will be more than 90 million baby boomers in America, currently the number stands at 83 million, as per the census data. Who will fill their positions when they retire or leave the workforce? Therefore, succession planning provides a way in which the company can retain its key talent.

The company is able to prepare individuals who will be able to face the challenges and accelerate their development by providing challenging, growth oriented and rewarding career opportunities A zero-sum approach to succession / workforce planning means a situation where a person's gains or loss are equally balanced by the gains or losses of others. This further implies that if the gains are added and the loss subtracted, the sum is zero, such that for a person to gain, another one has to loose for the process to cancel out.

In contrast, non-zero-sum situation can result in gains greater than zero, such that someone's gain does not have to be offset by another's loss. When a company operates under this approach, it implies that when a younger worker is promoted or more senior position are given to a more diversified group then the older workers will have to be laid off to create that space.

Other organizations would rather create the vacancy of work positions occupied by older workers by offering early retirement incentives, downsizing and reducing the investment of older workers (Caligiuri, 2010). The human resource department within a company should create a culture in the company whereby workforce diversity is welcomed and supported by a conducive environment. The HR department has a duty to establish which aspect of the company culture needs to be retained, which one is to be adapted or changed to suit the company's objective.

In addition, companies should also embrace compensation and benefit plan design. This compensation strategy is meant to change and motivate focused behavior so as to improve its performance outcomes. Verizon Company Verizon's mission is to "create a workplace environment that leverages the diverse characteristics and unique talents of our employees resulting in continued progress, increased profitability and enhance reputation to fulfill the Verizon promise" (Company Spotlight, 2008). Verizon's competitive edge is to have diversity in the workplace that is improved.

It has improved its diversity in the different units of the business in the context of leadership, education, employment, partnership and strategic alliances, communication and economic development. Each of the elements have a mission of improving the overall workplace environment, and to facilitate adherence to this program, Verizon has a Diversity Performance Incentive, which acts a link of the business success of the program to short-term incentives.

Verizon are known to examine its leaders on a quarterly basis to establish whether they have met the desired objectives of their diversity plans. The company also has a diversity council which their main aim is to reiterate the goals of the diversity initiative and ensure the company's work environment is improved. As part of Verizon workforce plan, they have a Development and Leadership initiative meant to develop and retain leadership potential of minority employees.

This initiative has a goal of cultivating a diverse workforce that is ready for the future progresses within the company such as promotions and better interactions between employees and supervisors among others (Datamonitor, 2011). Recently Verizon workers went on strike and some of the issues they raised concerned; wages, work rules, healthcare and protection of union jobs. Verizon has a workforce of 135,000 nonunion employees.

The recent cut in workforce is due to the steady and decline of its wire line business and it is going through this in order to strengthen the unit. Verizon's workforce consist of the white who are the majority with 63%, followed by the blacks at 20%, then the Hispanic at 10%, Asians at 4%, Indian-American at 1% and others minor ethnic groups at 2%. 60% of the workforce at Verizon consists of women and minorities.

AT&T and T-Mobile AT&T and T-Mobile are companies which are improving their workforce planning process by having designated leader who will bring up this needed change in operations. Unlike Verizon, T-Mobile uses a holistic workforce planning capability. T-Mobile have a future plan of cutting off 5% of its workforce which translates to 1,800 workers and closing seven of its call centers. This move is meant to reduce expenditure so as to finance its $4 billon 4G LTE networks, which will give it a competitive edge over other competitors.

AT&T and T-Mobile plan their workforce by reducing on the number of redundant position and instead of lying off the employees occupying those jobs; they are trained and eventually given other positions (Hammond, 2012). For many years, AT&T and T-Mobile have failed to plan their workforce effective leading to them incurring more expenditure on retaining customers who are not contributing towards the company's goals. This has led to slow growth of the company hence poor quality service and its inability to offer a competitive edge on technology.

AT&T and T-Mobile have focused on increasing the quality of service they offer their customer which has been lacking. This transformation came about after it started training its customer service representatives on skill such as emotional intelligence which plays a very big role when it comes to customer service. This training has also led to a reduction in absenteeism by 50% and tripling its productivity (Kirby, 2011).

Sprint Corporation Sprint Corporation has a workforce mobility program which engages almost 50% of their employees on any given day while at the same time improving the business speed. Sprint encourages its employees to work remotely as long as the company's goals are met. This remote working motivates the employees hence increasing their productivity. A survey done by the company HR department, it.