【正文】 ect level. Once staff members are employed, it is the responsibility of workforce management to continuously manage the staff, skills sets, and objectives so that the correct level of staff is retained. Scope Workforce management is concerned with ensuring that the correct level of staff is employed and maintained within the operational production environment in order to ensure that the stated business requirements are consistently met. To recruit and retain staff, the following needs should be considered: ? The correct technical and nontechnical skills sets are understood, developed, and retained to meet the SLA requirements within a set budget. ? Attracting, developing, and retaining IT operations staff within an industry that has a high level of petition. ? Attract, Develop, and Keep (ADK). ? Best practices retention frameworks to help keep and develop staff. ? Induction processes to familiarize new employees with pany processes, teams, and support anization. ? Job descriptions clarifying roles and responsibilities. ? Regular assessment of current skill sets to ensure that the operational requirements are still being met. Service Management Function 7 ? Planning for retention, measuring retention against set goals, and analyzing the cost of retaining staff against recruiting and training staff. ? Establishing the reasons for unplanned absences and planning resource distribution for planned absences. ? Workforce objectives that are in line with SLA objectives. ? Workforce management ensures that external resource requirements are understood and integrated into the anization following the same processes as for permanent employees. That contract staff understand the goals and objectives of the anization. ? Employing staff who fit the anization’s culture. Training, mentoring, certification, and career paths are continuously reviewed and implemented to meet the correct level of support. ? Workforce management ensures that environmental factors are considered for employee fort and retention. Workstations are ergonomically designed, noise factors are considered, and the correct tools are available to alleviate the level of stress among staff caused by the working environment. The Workforce Management SMF has a strong relationship with the Service Level Management, Availability Management, IT Service Continuity Management, Capacity Management, and Problem Management SMFs in ensuring that the correct level of trained staff is in place and retained in order to meet the correct level of operational and business requirements. Key Definitions Best practices. An optimal set of procedures and functional principles that, when followed, produce superior system reliability, availability, supportability, and manageability resulting in effective IT service management. Certification. An officially recognized professional qualification. Usually an industry standard benchmark for technical achievement—for example, Microsoft Certified Professional or Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. Environment. Normally, the definition is: a collection of hardware, software, work munications, and procedures that work together to provide a discrete type of puter service. There may be one or more environments on a physical platform—for example, test and production. Each environment has unique features and characteristics that dictate how it is administered in similar, yet diverse, manners. In workforce management, environment means the surroundings and conditions in which employees work. Ergonomics. The study of the efficiency of staff in their working environment. Hiring. Recruiting employees. Induction. A formal introduction to a new job or anization. New employees are given an overall picture of the anization, its culture, and business and working processes and procedures. Job description. The analysis of the essential factors of a particular job or task and the qualifications and training needed to carry it out. Retention. Employing and keeping current staff. Return on investment (ROI). A benefit realized from an investment—for example, the ROI for spending on staff training would be: staff retention, skilled staff, less absence due to stress, the ability to meet the business requirements, and so on. 8 Workforce Management 4 Processes and Activities This chapter provides a detailed discussion of the processes and activities that occur in the Workforce Management SMF. Process Flow Summary Workforce management consists of six main processes and a number of subprocesses as follows: ? Crafting an operations anization ? Determining staffing requirements ? Hiring and retention considerations ? Proper employee orientation ? Job descriptions ? Workforce skills assessment ? Workforce retention management ? Managing workforce absence ? Workforce performance considerations ? Individual and group objective setting ? Performance monitoring and metrics ? Performance measurement ? Performance evaluation ? Reward and recognition considerations ? Considerations for external resources ? Maintaining a ready and reliable workforce ? Employee readiness considerations ? Operations professional training considerations ? Balancing training with support requirements ? Environmental considerations ? Employee safety 10 Workforce Management The following figure shows a process flow for workforce management. StartCrafting an OperationsOrganizationEndWorkforce PerformanceConsiderationsConsiderations forExternal ResourcesMaintaining a Readyand Reliable WorkforceEnvironmentalConsiderationsEmployee Safety Figure 1. Workforce management process flow diagram Crafting an Operations Organization This next section discusses various issues related to building the production operations anization and describes the methods for