People are the most crucial asset in organizations. Often, organization leaders are aware of this, but only a few compliment it with actions. To ensure that focused action can enhance the achievement of organization goals and business success, organizations should use a human capital plan as a tool. It allows organizations to assess, plan for, and proactively respond to their human capital challenges. Besides, the human capital plan is essential in shaping an organization by providing strategies to develop the workforce and practices required in meeting organizational goals, mission, and vision. There are many human capital challenges, including building capable leaders, driving high performance, enhancing workforce skills, and ensuring that the top talents are retained in the organization. The challenges can be resolved through the application of effective human capital planning. The human capital plan often establishes a framework of policies, actions, and practices that guide organizational efforts in attaining workforce needs. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the organization profile of the American Payroll Association (APA), look at its human capital plan, and propose a new human capital plan that would facilitate better achievement of organization’s goals and objectives.
Organizational Profile
The American Payroll Association (APA) is a leading organization in the United States payroll profession. This organization conducts payroll training courses yearly and publishes payroll resource texts. It has approximately 21 000 members and 121 affiliated domestic chapters, and registered lobbyists based in Washington. The founding year of APA is 1982, and the headquarters at San Antonio. The APA has two learning centers, MEET Las Vegas and the San Antonio Learning Center. Both learning centers provide training on the payroll through the utilization of the current technology and computer networking.
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Vision Statement
The organization’s mission is “to create opportunities and forge a community by providing the education, skills, and resources necessary for payroll professionals to become successful leaders and strategic partners within their organizations” ( American Payroll Association , n.d.).
Mission Statement
The APA pursues many objectives, which include; “increasing the payroll professional’s skill level through education and mutual support, representing the payroll professional on the federal, state and local levels, providing public service education on payroll and employment issues and, obtaining recognition for payroll work as practiced in today’s business and legislative environments and as a professional discipline” ( American Payroll Association , n.d.).
Strategies of The American Payroll Association
The APA lays down several strategies; to ensure that its objectives and goals are achieved. Firstly, the APA conducts education offerings like the annual congress. Such education offerings have more than 100 payrolls and affiliated workshops where it offers comprehensive indoctrination for payroll professions ( American Payroll Association , n.d.). The training is also provided in many forms, such as live classroom, eLearning, virtual classroom, and webinar training. Furthermore, under the education strategy, APA offers the APA experienced employment and law team's compliance resources. They are published in many forms like CDs, magazines, printed texts, and e-books. Secondly, APA has a strategy of holding annual conferences in May. Independent chapters of the APA often organize these conferences. APA's national conferences include the annual congress, capital summit, education institutions payroll conference (EIPC), and the fall forum.
Thirdly, APA has a strategy of enhancing government relations, which entails lobbying government state activities and sponsoring many member-led committees known as government relations task force committees. Such committees are obliged to communicate the payroll community's concerns to the government's legislature and executive arms. Additionally, these committees serve to establish ways through which employees can meet their requirements under the law while supporting government objectives. The committees ensure that employees, individual taxpayers, and the government face minimal administrative burdens. Fourthly, APA does many publications on a bi-weekly and monthly basis to ensure that payrolls reach the highest number of people. These publications contain essential information and news related to trends affecting the payroll industry, professional development, technological advancements, and payroll management.
Current Human Capital Plan
APA's current human capital plan is mainly made up of technical on-the-job training and education. It is often costly because it requires time and money. APA is aware of this and strategizes much on educational programs. The association conducts over 500 payroll training conferences, seminars, and in-house classes across the country each year and publishes a complete library of resource texts and newsletters. Every year, more than 47,000 professionals attend APA training sessions. When companies invest in education programs, the benefits go to employees, companies, and the public in general. However, other human capital factors, such as talent, time, and energy, are missing. At APA, the human capital plan is left to the human resource department. The APA faces challenges in identifying and attracting the most suitable candidates because the same skills are needed. Furthermore, APA conducts most education programs to inform customers about their products without further educating their employees. Such a human plan may lead to high rates of turnover since employees may not be knowledgeable about the new technological changes and trends regarding their jobs.
Proposed Human Capital Plan
The proposed human capital plan will consider ten main issues. Firstly, it is vital to have a strong recognition of the impacts of APA's human capital issues as an organization. Failure to recognize the importance of human capital in an organization, it is noted that all the plans regarding the workforce will crumble. Therefore, before APA drafts any human capital decision, it is necessary that an understanding of how the decisions affect the bottom line is made. Secondly, this new plan stresses the need to tie human capital plans to business outcomes. Herein, it is vital to observe that human capital issues should be viewed as a solution with expected returns and not as tied to cost centers. Thus, APA can increase revenue per employee, minimize or optimize costs per employee. Going for the first option of increasing revenue per employee requires that an organization becomes aware of the unique things it offers. For instance, if a company offers differentiated products, like in the case of APA, then such a company is likely to dominate a market. However, it should be noted that such products cannot be offered without the assistance of tremendous talents in the workforce.
Regarding the second option, APA should not minimize costs per employee to the extent of facing retention issues, but instead, focus on maximizing the costs. When APA continues holding education programs and conferences meant to develop professionalism, the costs incurred per employee will increase. However, the employees will acquire better leadership, communication, and management skills, which will, in turn, benefit the organization as a whole. This leads to an employee-customer-profit chain, which APA may use in gaining a larger market share. Thirdly, the new human capital plan stresses the need to target business practices to a specific industry. By implication, organizations should not adopt best practices on the basis that other firms are using them. Often, best practices work when they focus on employing and executing specified human capital actions relevant to an organization's business. Therefore, APA should consider going through a human capital planning process wherein all practices are related to its organizational goals. Under the new human capital plan, the fourth proposal is the alignment of organizational actions with the best practices. When actions are enacted, it is necessary to ensure that the actions are integrated and work together. Otherwise, organizations may face a situation whereby the system developed works against itself.
Fifth, the new human capital plan advocates that the whole work of human capital should not be left to HR alone. On the contrary, the human capital plan should be led by management. Under both planning and implementation of the human capital plan, all the leaders should be encouraged to participate. When involved in a human capital plan, organization leaders should be made to understand the involved business issues and what should be done from a human capital perspective. Nonetheless, organization leaders should be held responsible and accountable for their actions. The new human capital plan recommends that organization leaders should be made to understand that making numbers is as important as customer success, operational success, and workforce success. Sixth, the proposed human capital plan provides that it is necessary to plan ahead to assess results. Arguably, the human capital plan serves to maximize the value of an organization's investment in people. It is vital to think in advance about what the organization plans to achieve and what its expected results will look like. APA should, therefore, plan for the results it expects. Besides, APA should establish how it will measure its performance and what its benchmarks for success are. Better strategies should ensure the minimization of turnover and the maximization of employee retention rates.
Seventh, the proposed human capital plan encourages an understanding that the human capital plan is a process, not an event. This implies that there will be changes to be made as the plan moves forward. For instance, if APA establishes that it needs to hire five skilled personnel, and it has determined how to hire them and the market rate for their skill set, there may be a need to make adjustments in the future since additional workers may be required. Besides, APA may have to adjust remunerations to ensure a balance is established. Although it is vital to make on-going adjustments, there is a necessity to review the human capital plan, often quarterly periodically. The eighth proposal under the new human capital plan is limiting and prioritizing organizational actions. APA can consider making a priority of its actions based on ease of implementation and value. Actions that have higher value and are easier to implement should be accorded priority. On the other hand, actions with high value but are difficult to implement will require the largest investment.
The ninth issue under the new plan is the creation of a value chain. APA should establish a value chain from organization goals to individual actions that need to be taken t attain the goal. The proposed human capital plan offers solutions such as implementing the new compensation plan and hiring more employees. Creating a value chain implies that organizations should think about an added value in every action they make. The last proposal is that APA should conduct human capital planning from the outside. Arguably, customers are always at the core of the business. Organizations need to think about what they plan to achieve for their customers. An evaluation of the process and capabilities that organizations need to establish to attain maximized customer experience is necessary. APA should think about employees’ revenue and costs in the context of what it plans to achieve for its customers. Resultantly, that will give rise to the financial results expected by the organization. Furthermore, it will lead to differentiation. APA should use these proposals to establish a unique human capital plan, identical to its business model, organization goals, and organization situation. By so doing, APA will develop a powerful competitive advantage that can hardly be copied by other businesses in the market and the entire industry.
New Organizational Staffing Process
The selection and recruitment process is a key function of every organization's human resource department ( Otoo et al., 2018) . Staffing is essential to organizations because it is how organizations ensure their objectives and goals are attained by continually selecting qualified human resources. In the new staffing process of APA, much focus will be given to selection. Herein, the human resource department will consider who joins the organization and who does not. The new staffing process for APA will involve nine steps to ensure that ideal candidates are employed and retained. According to Sang & Ngure (2018) , all the staffing steps and processes should be transparent and exhibit sound performance.
Firstly, manpower planning will entail measuring the organization's labor force requirements in qualitative and quantitative aspects. This level, therefore, involves the creation of synergy for the development of workforce evaluating inventory. Furthermore, in this step, APA will develop the required skills among the employees identified for promotions. The second step in staffing will be recruitment. During this step, APA will search for prospective employees through advertisements, internal memos, and posting of vacant positions. Recruitment will serve the purpose of inviting candidates with the required skills to apply for the vacant job posts. The third step in the staffing process will be selection. It will help in the identification of the ideal candidates and incorporate them into the organization. The fourth step will be placement, where the employees selected will be introduced to their job position. Fifthly, the training will be offered. New developments often arise in job places; thus, it is necessary that employees are trained to ensure they keep in touch with the arising technological changes. After training, APA will conduct development where a system of the planned promotion will be introduced to employees. This will ensure that employees are aware of their suitable development possibilities, and resultantly, they do not become frustrated at their workplace. The seventh step in the staffing process will be a promotion, which will ensure employees are assigned to more senior responsibilities. Besides, the promotion will mean that employees become entitled to better salaries and incentives. The promotion aspect boosts employees’ morale and spirit to work in an organization ( Fogaça et al., 2018). The next step will be an appraisal, under which the performance efficiency of employees will be measured. The ninth step will be to determine the remuneration for employees, which involves making employees understand the rewards they will receive from their work. By APA applying these steps in its staffing process, it will benefit in several ways. Firstly, the organization will be able to get the right people for the right job at the right time. Secondly, the staffing process will help in improving an organization's productivity. Thirdly, staffing will establish harmony in the organization. Developing, promoting, and remunerating employees create peace among the employees ( Fogaça et al., 2018), facilitating the general achievement of organization goals and objectives.
Employee Life Cycle (ELC)
Employee life cycle refers to the large concept regarding employee employment. Making up the employee life cycle involves the employees' interaction and relationship with their organizations. At APA, the employees’ life cycle begins with the organization's first contact and ends with the organization's last interaction after being terminated. At APA, the employee life cycle is a scope of the human resource department, which supports the arguments presented by Njogu (2017). APA combines employee life cycle with work experience to ensure maximum retention.
Comprehensive Workforce Analysis
The workforce is made up of human resources. It is what predetermines the level at which organizations achieve their objectives. The human resource at APA plays essential roles in ensuring workforce planning, labor and employee relationship, and human personnel training and development. The workforce under human resources is affected by external and internal problems. Firstly, the workforce's external issues include the availability of the labor pool and government policy nature. Notably, HR is obliged to conduct workforce planning and ensure efficient staffing levels. The labor market availability is influenced by the number of qualified personnel readily available and the unemployment rate. The geographical location affects the workforce because there may not be enough qualified personnel in the immediate surroundings. Internal factors include the level of growth and technological application. Organizations experiencing rapid growth and expansion require that human resource concentrates on recruitment and staffing. On the other hand, stagnant companies focus on employee retention, while downsizing organizations are forced to dismiss some staff members. These decisions are left for the human resource department. Regarding the use of technology, it is observed that human resource departments and organization management show partiality in adopting and using technological advancements. Therefore, it is a factor that should be encouraged since it can free up a considerable amount of time and resources across the organization.
How This Proposal Will Improve the Organization's Overall Performance
When APA accepts and uses this proposal, the organization will benefit in many ways. First, the organization will understand how to establish an effective human development plan, which Urbancová et al., (2020) argue to ensure organizations achieve their objectives. Secondly, as presented by the proposal, the whole staffing process will ensure that APA achieves the highest retention levels and lowest turnouts. Thirdly, APA will understand both internal and external factors affecting the workforce. Thus, it will establish control measures in advance. I, therefore, recommend that APA accepts this proposal.
In conclusion, effective staffing is crucial in ensuring organization goals are attained. The staffing steps and processes should be transparent and exhibit sound performance. The APA’s current human capital plan is left mainly to the human resource department. This contributes to failures and challenges observed in the organization. It is important that APA adopts the discussed comprehensive staffing process and proposed human capital plan to ensure it becomes exceptionally competitive.
References
American Payroll Association (n.d.). https://www.americanpayroll.org/ .
Fogaça, N., Rego, M. C., Melo, M. C., Armond, L. P., & Coelho, F. A. (2018). Job performance analysis: Scientific studies in the main journals of management and psychology from 2006 to 2015. Performance Improvement Quarterly , 30 (4), 231-247. https://doi.org/10.1002/piq.21248 .
Njogu, I. W. (2017). Effect of Employees’ Work Experience on Performance within Hotel Industry: A Case of Amber Hotel, Kenya (Doctoral dissertation, United States International University-Africa). https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Effect-of-Employees%E2%80%99-Work-Experience-on-Performance-Njogu/66917bf52fb7fe0c79953b4bb6090150866bc86a .
Otoo, I. C., Assuming, J., & Agyei, P. M. (2018). Effectiveness of recruitment and selection practices in public sector higher education institutions: Evidence from Ghana. European Scientific Journal, ESJ , 14 (13), 199. https://doi.org/10.19044/esj.2018.v14n13p199 .
Sang, A., & Ngure, S. (2018). Ethical issues in recruitment, selection, and employee performance in public universities in Nyeri County, Kenya. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences , 8 (5). https://doi.org/10.6007/ijarbss/v8-i5/4090 .
Urbancová, H., Hudáková, M., & Fajčíková, A. (2020). Diversity management as a tool of sustainability of competitive advantage. Sustainability , 12 (12), 5020. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12125020
