Travel Agency Strategy

H Travel Agency Strategy Plan February 25, 2013 This paper will look at the challenges that the travel agency is facing, detailing a plan for change based on observations of challenges that the HR department is facing. Using metrics to explain change and how they can assist senior management during the planning process. Furthermore there will be an outline for the determination of the HR strategic plan combined with methods for the recruitment and selection methods. The details provided should help in assisting the travel agency overcome their challenges with a new plan to help them grow and become a formidable opponent to the competition.
The travel agency appears to have challenges with the employees and the HR department. There are no goals or structure for the employees to rely on, and no goals to achieve. There are six major functions of HR that are needed to be implementing in order for the change to begin in the Travel agency. According to Byars and Rue (2008) The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has identified six major functions of human resource management: 1. Human resource planning, recruitment, and selection. 2. Human resource development. 3.
Compensation and benefits. 4. Safety and health. 5. Employee and labor relations. 6. Human resource research. (Byars & Rue, 2008). The HR department can start to outline a plan if HR, management and the employees all have clear communication and direction of what the HR department is for and how they assist the company and the employees. The challenges that the HR department will face is using, HRP (Human resource Planning), to align the company’s overall strategic plan with the appropriate employees in place to achieve this goal.

According to Byars and Rue (2008) Human resource planning (HRP), also referred to as workforce planning or personnel planning has been defined as the process of “getting the right number of qualified people into the right job at the right time. HRP involves applying the basic planning process to the human resource needs of the organization. To be effective, any human resource plan must be derived from the strategic and operational plans of the organization.
In essence, the success of HRP depends largely on how closely the human resource department can integrate effective people planning with the organization’s business planning process. 5 Unfortunately, HRP is often inadequately tied to overall corporate planning. (Byars ; Rue, 2008). There are four statistical modeling techniques that can be used by the HR department to forecast the needs that the agency will need. The can use time-series analysis, personnel ratios, productivity ratios and the regression analysis.
Another technique that can be used is benchmarking, “benchmarking involves thoroughly examining internal practices and procedures and measuring them against the ways other successful organizations operate. ’ Byars and Rue (2008). In order to meet the Demands of the company and put a solid plan into place, a skills inventory should be completed to see what types of employees the company has and their skill sets to determine future training and advancement opportunities. A skills inventory consolidates information about the organization’s human resources.
It provides basic information on all employees, including, in its simplest form, a list of the names, certain characteristics, and skills of employees. Because the information from a skills inventory is used as input into promotion and transfer decisions, it should contain information about each employee’s portfolio of skills, not just those relevant to the employee’s current job. (Byars & Rue, 2008). The next step will be metric for the HR department to gather data that can be used to show the senior management areas of improvement, or areas that need a deeper focus.
These metrics can show where the company spends the most of their time and money along with, areas of the company or departments that do not meet the desired metric goals. Metrics can show productivity based on a set desired goal for the companies employees. Metrics refers to any set of quantitative measures to assess workforce performance. Examples of metrics that HR might use include such things as analysis of the cost per hire, average length of time to fill a position, training cost per employee, turnover cost per employee, and new-hire performance by recruiting strategy. Byars & Rue, 2008). The reason that metrics are so important to the decision making of the senior staff is that they provide a starting point for the company to see where they need to start their focus for change. Being able to evaluate an employee’s performance will help coach and mentor the employee. Metrics provide real numbers that can show areas were training is needed to get the employees to a desired output or percentage goal. Communication of the desired results or a t new strategic plan can be tricky, especially to a skeptical bunch that has really had no definition or goals in place.
They are going to want to know what is in it for them. Communication is the key to ensure understanding. The whys must be answered, why this necessary, why are we doing this what is in it for me. In order to communicate these new changes all of these must be answered. The goal is to let the employees to know what HR does and what will be changing, for instance career planning, development and training. This will be to ensure that all employees have or will have the knowledge and skills to perform to the level that the company wants their employees to be at.
Letting the employees know that they are here to assist them in getting to where they want to be, while providing them an outline of career path and training to keep them interested. Where there is room for advancement there is room for recruiting new staff member with skills to help the company grow. When it comes to recruiting, there are several methods that can be used. Using internal sources at first, the organization will keep moral up as they seek already trained and qualified personnel.
Another method is reaching outside the organization to bring in new talent with other perspectives and fresh ideas to bring to the team. “Organizations have at their disposal a wide range of external sources for recruiting personnel. External recruiting is needed in organizations that are growing rapidly or have a large demand for technical, skilled, or managerial employees. ” (Byars & Rue, 2008). The external sources bring all types of employees plus they bring a wider skill set to choose from. Other sources include using job boards, advertising, web sites, job placement agencies, employee referrals and walk- ins.
When it comes to the selection process there are things that need to be looked at, what exactly is the company in need of, where do they want to go, where have past internal and external employees gone within the company. Use the metrics to see what has panned out in the past. In conclusion the travel agency has been lacking clear direction for future growth. In order to grow and to achieve success, the HR department and management need to determine how to incorporate the strategic plan and goals of the company into the HRP.
The HRP will then create goals, training and structure for growth in the company by determining what the company has in terms of employees and their skills. By determining the skills of employees then HR and management can determine the new metrics based off of the old ones and by using the metrics they can determine what changes need to be made first. By determining where the company is lacking in production will the help senior management determine what types of employees are needed for future success. References Byars, L. L. , & Rue, L. W. (2008). Human resource Management (9th ed. ). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.