Human Resource Planning in the City Fire Department

Human Resources Planning

Human resource structure is the primary organizational facility to sort and choose the best candidate to fit in at a company process. This structure indicates the need for additional employees to efficiently stimulate a corporation’s performance in case it lacks working personnel. When HR planning understands the need for extra labor, companies have several choices to make. The complete recruitment and selection processes operate not only on efficient employee management but also on intangible aspects, such as positive working environment maintenance, employees’ socializations, and company intellectual legacy and capital.

While considering alternatives to recruiting, HR planning implements strategic selection to obtain employee management that is a primary indicator of a company adjustment. The HR system resorts to hiring regular employees, outsourcing, or contingent labor to stimulate the overall organization prospects. Human resource professionals maintain a supply of people manifesting a particular set of aptitudes, skills, and knowledge an organization needs. Due to a proper choice of employees, a company might avoid several problems slowing down a corporation’s prosperity and success. A major goal of an HR expert is to correlate prospective workers’ needs with the company ones.

A Working Situation’s Overview

Being the newly appointed director of HR structure for the fire department in the northeastern United States, I have to consider several issues, such as the highest overall cost of living in this region and the high rate of income and property. Moreover, this state presents a poor overall job outlook and an intemperate climate with unsustainable climate conditions. The fire department is the perfect solution for employees who stay there to have a decent and stable job occupation, as there is the highest rate of out-migration in this region. Besides, such notions as the highest tuition fees for college and universities and the impoverished region’s overall job outlook must pay much attention to the HR director’s behalf.

As an HR director, I have to persuade my employees about their right choice to be a part of my organization. They have fewer opportunities to have the same salary as other job offers. These state residents of all ages are moving to other states that offer more working prospects and facilities.

It stands to reason that people do not want to stay there because of peculiar weather conditions, such as the significant weather shifts in winter and summer. The next point is that individuals do not wish to have a continuous residence there because of a lack of job prospects and an expensive living cost. It is very challenging to hire well-qualified, competent workers to recruit. My ex-college taking this position faced a complicated situation such as the lack of working personnel.

He resorted to a referral plan to increase the recruitment and implemented the overtime pay system to stimulate regular firefighters to combat local wildfires. As a result, firefighters have salaries higher than a newly appointed mayor; the mayor is dissatisfied with this scenario, claiming to eliminate the overtime system and hire new employees to distribute equal, not high, salaries. The firefighters who have worked in the overtime pay system accept it as an entitlement and are not ready to reduce their living costs. It is a case of conflict between me as a management representative to follow the mayor’s advice concerning hiring new employees and well-established staff.

Three Causes of Workplace Conflict between the City’s Firefighters and City Management

As a new HR director, I have to identify the major causes of conflict between the city’s firefighters and city management to satisfy the city’s firefighters’ needs and the newly appointed mayor. The mayor claims to hire new employees to reduce the overtime pay system that entailed the high salaries among ordinary workers. To detect three leading causes of this conflict, I have to keep in mind that HR planning is liable for “to the growing role of employees as an element of competitive enterprise advantage” (Winch 2021 199). To facilitate an organization’s competitive advantage at the great expanse of rival firms, I aim to resolve conflicts to tailor my employees’ needs and city representatives’ needs to get rid of escalating social issues.

Three conflict causes:

• The lack of working personnel caused the overtime pay system implementation; as a result, employees work more;
• Ordinary firefighters have a salary that does not correspond to their social position. It is a case of unfair money distribution among residents of this region, as the representative of authority has the annual salary more minor than the city’s firefighters do;
• The mayor claims to reduce the overtime pay system by hiring new workers, thus making the regular firefighters dissatisfied with the current position, as they have already planned to spend their established income.

Two Possible Short-Term Outcomes if the Conflict is not Resolved

• As an HR director, I have to survey the city’s fighters’ skills to interact only with qualified experts. In case they pass the examination process, they will remain members of this organization;
• An HR director has to resort to a modified version of a referral plan hiring only competent workers. In case an employee refers to a skilled firefighter, they will have fringe benefits. It is a substitute for the overtime pay system, where employees’ fringe benefits are correlated to their motivation to attract new workers rather than work more regularly.

Two Possible Long-Term Outcomes if the Conflict is not Resolved

• As an HR representative, I have to reduce the overtime system, thus providing my employees with equal salaries;
• To avoid social disendorsement, I will apply to build relations with social institutes to supply my company with more qualified workers. There are special social programs regarding the advertisement of particular facilities to attract more skilled employees.

Three Possible Actions for Resolving the Current Conflict about Overtime Pay

• Being an HR director, I resort to the overtime pay system in case of emergencies, such as violent fires;
• I will implement fringe benefits as a substitute for overtime pay, thus stimulating my employees to attract more workers;
• An HR director might create quarterly bonuses for firefighters manifesting good results. It is a case of replacement of the overtime pay and the motivational incentive for employees.

A Plan to Create a more Positive Work Culture in the City’s Fire Department

Two Primary Components Preventing Negative Conflict in the Workspace

• To avoid negative conflicts and a negative working environment, company representatives have to follow two basic elements of work culture. To maintain a positive working environment, company executives combined with HR experts have to do the following:
  • Make sure that all communication processes and policies are transparent for employees enable them to be rational and accountable for resolving escalating issues;
  • Depending on the conflict circumstances, take preemptive measures in the early stages of a conflict, as it is inappropriate to ignore it.
• Two new specifications for the “required” section of the attached “Job Description of City Firefighters” that relate to a candidate’s ability to manage workplace conflict effectively:
  • Firefighters must build resilience to challenging situations and refine stress tolerance by attending extra courses dealing with emergency guidelines.
  • Firefighters have to be flexible and enterprising in conflict approach incorporation; they have to rely on their skills to resolve conflict situations.
• Three Situational Interview Questions Designed to Illuminate a Job Candidate’s Competency in Managing Workplace Conflict:
  • What ways do you use to handle a conflict?
  • In case your working preferences or ideas do not correspond to your colleagues’ ones, what conflict policies will you implement to prevent an argument?
  • If you have an opposite assessment of a situation with your boss, will you try to prove your point of view or follow your boss’s advice?

Two Methods of Evaluating Improvements in Employee Relations in the City Fire Department

The two major methods of evaluating improvements are summative and formative. Snekalatha et al. (2021 84) claim that formative evaluating improvements are an essential part of every single working facility, “and the subsequent feedback on performance plays a vital role in improving” firefighters’ skills and aptitudes. While summative evaluations primarily focus on the results of the organization’s members in the city fire department. These two evaluation approaches regard detecting firefighters’ weak points in terms of their performance. The implementation of these two methods might help firefighters enhance their aptitudes in theoretical and practical ways.

Operating on the statistics of firefighters’ indicators and improvements, HR planning combined with company executives might devise new methods regarding employee relations. To tap into evaluating improvement methods is a profound solution for providing company participants with a positive working environment, where all employees are motivated and aimed at achieving the long-standing goals of a corporation. Firefighters might work collaboratively to detect weak points of their performance through mutual counseling and first-hand experience exchange. This method, coupled with formative and summative evaluations, aims at developing partnership employee relations that encourage individuals to share their skills. Besides, company executives have to encourage effective interaction and communication among workers, so that they can voice their opinions, expectations, and proposals.

References

Snekalatha, S., Mohamed Marzuk, S., Meshram, S.A., Maheswari, K., U., Sugapriya, G., Sivasharan ,K. (2021). “Medical Students’ Perception of The Reliability, Usefulness and Feasibility of Unproctored Online Formative Assessment Tests.” Advanced Physiological Education,45: 84–88.

Winch, Sławomir. 2021 «Human Resource Business Partner as a Source of Conflicts in an Enterprise–Research Results.” JEEMS Journal of East European Management Studies 26(2): 198-213.