Your Forecast

Develop Your Staffing Skills: Transition Analysis for the Ascend Sports Equipment Company
The Ascend Sports Equipment Company sells sports clothing and equipment for amateur, light
sport (running, tennis, walking, swimming, badminton, and golf) enthusiasts. It is the only
company in the nation that does this on a door-to-door basis, seeking to bypass the retail sporting
goods store and sell directly to the customer. Its salespeople have sales kits that include both
sample products, as well as a full-line catalog it can use to show and discuss with customers. The
sales func-tion is composed of full-time and part-time salespeople (level 1), assistant sales
managers (level 2), and regional sales managers (level 3). The company has decided to study the
internal movement patterns of people in the sales function, as well as to forecast their likely
availabilities in future time periods. Results will be used to help identify staffing gaps (surpluses
and shortages), and to develop staffing strategy and plans for future growth. To do this, the HR
department first collected data for 2018 and 2019 to construct a transition probability matrix, as
well as the number of employees in each job at the end of in 2019 in each job category. The
average transition rates for 2016 and 2017 are in the matrix as the expected transition rates for
2020. It then wanted to use the matrix to forecast the numbers of employees expected to be

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available in each job category at the end of 2020. The following data were gathered:
The Transition Probabilities for 2018-2019 Are the Expected Transition Rates for 2020 Job

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Category Level Sales, Full-time (SF) Sales, Part-time (SP) Ass’t. Sales Mgr. (ASM) Region.
Sales Mgr. (RSM) 1 1 2 3 SF .50 .05 .05 .00 SP .10 .60 .00 .00 ASM RSM .05 .10 .80 .00 .00 .

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00 .10 .70 Exit .35 .25 .05 .30 199 # Empl. End of ‘19 500 150 50 30
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Based on the above data, answer the following ques-tions. You should be able to answer all three
questions in about one page:
a. Briefly describe the internal labor market of the com-pany in terms of job stability (staying on
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the same job), promotion paths and rates, transfer paths and rates, demotion paths and rates, and
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turnover (exit) rates. Do you notice anything unusual in the com-pany’s internal labor market or
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career paths?
b. Forecast the numbers of employees expected to be available in each job category at the end of
2020. Cal-culate the forecasted surplus/shortage for each posi-tion and generate an action plan
for each position.
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c. Indicate potential limitations to your forecasts. Use the Internet to research three current labor
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market trends and describe the implications of those trends for staffing.

The workforce planning process, which is illustrated in Figure 5–1, typically includes the
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following five steps: 1. Identify the firm’s business strategy. A firm’s strategic vision, mission,
and strategy affect its current and future staffing requirements by influencing the types and num-
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bers of employees needed. 2. Articulate the firm’s talent philosophy and strategic staffing
decisions. As you learned in Chapter 2, firms differ in their commitment to things such as
promoting work-ers, retaining workers, and their preferences for hiring people with certain skills
or training them after they are hired. Because these factors influence the nature of the firm’s
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future labor supply and the type of workers it will need, they are important to understand when
forecasting and planning. 3. Conduct a workforce analysis. Forecast both labor demand and labor
supply and iden-tify any gaps between the two. 4. Develop and implement action plans. Develop
action plans to address any gaps be-tween labor demand and labor supply forecasts. The plans
should be consistent with the firm’s talent philosophy and can include both short-and long-term

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 recruiting, retention, compensation, succession management, and training and development
plans. For example, addressing the issues related to an aging workforce or a work-force with
many employees who are roughly the same age might require longer-term action plans. 5.
Monitor, evaluate, and revise the forecasts and action plans. Evaluate how effective the firm’s
workforce plan has been in terms of meeting the company’s recruiting and hiring goals. As the
business environment changes, the firm’s forecasts and action plans may need to change, too

A) At the end of 2019, Ascend Sports Equipment Company employed 730 individuals.
For (SF) Sales Full Time

The people of 50% were placed same

And 10% of the employees transfers to work on part time basis
5% of the employees got promoted to the position of Assistant sales manager
And 0% of the employees promoted to the position of Regional sales manager ( that means no
one promoted here)

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And we can see 35% of the people left the organization.
For (SP) Sales Part Time

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Here employees of 5% got transferred to full time status

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60% of the employees were remained as same
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And employees of 10% got promoted to the position of Assistant sales manager
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And here also 0% of the employees promoted to the position of Regional sales manager
In this employees of 25% were left the organization
For (ASM) Assistant Sales Manager
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Here employees of 5% were demoted from the work of full time basis
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And 0% of employees demoted from the work of part time basis (that means no one demoted)
Employes of 80% were remained as same
And 10% of employees got promoted to the position of Regional sales manager
5% of the people were left the organization
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For (RSM) Regional Sales Manager

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Employees of 0% that means no one has transferred or promoted to other

And 70% of the employeed remained as same
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30% of the people were left the organizationThe highest trend is related to employees who
decided to stay in their current role; 50% of FT Sales, 60% of PT Sales, 80% of AS Managers,
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and 70% of RS Managers were content enough to not look for other opportunities. There does
not appear to have many opportunities for advancement as only 5% of FT Sales and 10% of PT
Sales were moved into an Assistant Manager role and none of the sales positions became a
Regional Manager.
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The turnover rate for the sales positions at 35% and 25% are high – I can’t but help to wonder if
this is a direct result from the lack of promotions. It appears sales employees would just prefer to
leave the company instead of waiting for promotion to become available. There’s also a lot of
turnover in the Regional Manager role.

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 B)
C) The potentional limitations of the forecase of this study could be the forecased is based on the
date porivded by the company’s matrix related to previous date of the employees who have
promoted, demoted, transferred, and left from the company. The forecase of the comapanys
workforce and behavior is based on assumptions and nothing of this researchiner. The company
ahas gathered the datea from the system and this is twhy the date could be assumed as systemer
generated based on certain errors that might by incorrectly imput in the system.
Few Limitations according to the forecast

In this case sample size is more prominent to provide accurate conclusions.Because of few cells
containing less
And we can see that employee moves are multiple and very hard to identify the vacancies to be
fulfilled and and analysis assumption power might be decreaced.
And according to the forecast all the employees had the same probability of moves and which
these probabilities has no explanation for those moves.

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The Promotion paths are also along lines expected. However, part time sales teams are more
likely to be promoted and this can be a cause for concern.

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Regarding the transfer rates, there is a clear drift from full time to part time. The reasons for this

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needs to be uncovered and if it is not by design, it should be addressed.
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When it comes to demotions, there are a number of ASMs slated to become Sales people. This
leaves a gap towards the top. RSMs leave the job unless they are satisfied and hence do not face
demotions. Thus, whether they wield too much power over HR is also another question that
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crops up.
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Forecasted numbers for each category as a result of internal movements are:

Job Category Forecast Current Percent Decrease
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SF 260 500 48%

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SP 140 150 7%

ASM 67.5 50 -35%

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RSM 26 30 13%
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Thus, there will be much more ASMs than needed. Full time Sales members will be needed in
large numbers.
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Internal recruiting has the advantages of the incumbents knowing the business and the firm.
Thus, it is only specific skillsets that need to be transferred to them. Extermnal recruitment on
the other hand, brings fresh mindsets and approaches. Thus, the approach would be to promote as
many ASMs as possible to the RSM level, while recruit for new full-time sales people.

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 The major limitation of the data is that it is not statistically significant. The data is based on only
1 years' forecast. If movements do not occur as forecasted, then things will go for a toss. This is
of great significance as recruitments for exits cannot start before the actual exit is announced.
Another limitation is that this forecast does not take into account Sales growth or revenue targets.

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