HRM 548 Week 1 Workforce Planning and Assessment Example

Forecasting Who Saguaro Valley Credit Union Will Need by 2029: A Workforce Plan Built From Turnover, Growth and Retirement Data

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

HRM/548: Recruitment and Retention Practices

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Saguaro Valley Credit Union and all workforce data are composites written for a model paper.

Based in Phoenix, the composite Saguaro Valley Credit Union serves 310,000 members through 34 branches in the Phoenix and Tucson areas, a contact center and online banking. It employs 1,150 people. Its 2026-2029 strategic plan calls for five new branches in fast-growing suburbs, a doubling of digital mortgage and auto lending and a fraud prevention unit able to handle rising payment scams. Leadership asked HR whether the credit union will have the people to carry out the plan. A strategy that adds branches and products without a workforce forecast is a list of hopes, because every new goal depends on people who must be hired, trained and kept. This paper answers that question with a three-year workforce plan.

Profiling the Current Workforce

The workforce falls into six job families. Member service representatives, who work in branches and the contact center, number 520. Lending staff, including loan officers and processors, number 180. Operations and back office staff number 160. Technology and information security staff number 95. Risk, fraud and compliance staff number 45. Management and leadership number 150. Average tenure is 6.2 years overall but only 1.8 years among member service representatives.

Turnover by Job Family

Turnover is calculated as separations divided by average headcount. Over the past 12 months, the credit union lost 229 member service representatives, a rate of 44 percent. Lending turnover was 17 percent, operations 14 percent, technology 12 percent, fraud and compliance 9 percent and management 8 percent. The overall rate of 26 percent hides how concentrated the problem is in one family.

The Cost of Turnover

Each departing member service representative costs an estimated $11,500 once advertising, recruiter hours, six weeks of paid classroom training and the slower first months on the teller line are added together. At 229 departures, that is about $2.6 million a year. Heavey et al. (2013) found in a meta-analysis that collective turnover is negatively related to organizational performance, especially customer service quality, which matters for a credit union competing on member experience.

Retirement Exposure

Retirement eligibility is concentrated in leadership and lending. Of the 150 managers, 31 will be 62 or older by 2029, as will 22 senior loan officers. Their departures would remove knowledge of member relationships and lending judgment that takes years to build.

Forecasting Demand

Demand is forecast from the strategic plan using staffing ratios. Each new branch requires about 11 employees: a manager, an assistant manager, a loan officer and eight member service representatives. Five branches add 55 positions. Doubling digital lending, with automation absorbing some volume, requires 40 more lending staff. The fraud unit requires 18 analysts. Technology adds 15 positions for digital platforms and security. Contact center volume is expected to fall slightly as digital self-service grows, reducing that need by 20 positions. Net demand growth is 108 positions by 2029.

Estimating Internal Supply

Using movement records for 2023 through 2025, a transition matrix shows the probability that an employee in each family stays, moves to another family or leaves in a year. For member service representatives, the probabilities are 50 percent stay, 6 percent move into lending or operations and 44 percent leave. Applying the matrix year by year projects how many current employees will remain in each family by 2029.

The Supply and Demand Gap

The projection shows that, without changes, the credit union must hire about 690 member service representatives over three years simply to replace departures and staff new branches. It also faces a shortfall of 26 lending staff after internal promotions, 18 fraud analysts with no internal pipeline and 12 technology specialists. In leadership, retirements and new branches create about 50 openings, of which internal promotions can fill roughly 35 if development programs succeed.

Identifying Critical Roles

Not all gaps are equal. Fraud analysts, information security specialists and experienced mortgage loan officers are critical: they are central to strategy and scarce in the Phoenix labor market, where banks, fintech firms and large employers compete for them. Member service representatives are high-volume roles where speed and retention matter more than scarcity.

The Labor Market Context

Phoenix and Tucson have grown rapidly, and unemployment has been low. Competition for entry-level service workers comes from retail, health care and the region's large contact centers. Competition for fraud and security talent is national, since many roles can be done remotely. Recruiting strategies must reflect both markets.

What Drives Member Service Turnover

Exit interviews and a stay survey suggest causes: starting pay below several nearby employers, unpredictable schedules, high-pressure sales goals and limited paths beyond the teller line. Griffeth et al. (2000) found in a meta-analysis that job satisfaction, organizational commitment and the perceived availability of alternatives were among the strongest predictors of turnover, with pay playing a modest role. The credit union's data suggest a mix of all of them.

Where Retention Has the Largest Payoff

Reducing member service turnover from 44 percent to 30 percent would cut about 73 departures a year, saving about $840,000 annually and reducing the three-year hiring need from about 690 to about 490. That improvement is worth more than any recruiting gain, which is why retention is treated as part of workforce planning rather than a separate topic.

Building Internal Pipelines

The 6 percent of member service representatives who move into lending or operations each year are a source of future talent. Increasing that flow to 10 percent through a structured career path would fill much of the lending gap internally and give representatives a reason to stay.

Data Quality and Limits

The forecast depends on the HR information system's records, which had gaps. Transfers between branches were sometimes recorded as separations and rehires, inflating turnover in two regions, and job codes for the contact center changed in 2024. HR cleaned the data before building the matrix, but the figures should be read as estimates with a margin of a few percentage points. Better coding of internal moves is itself a recommendation, since future plans will rely on the same records.

Scenario Planning

Forecasts depend on assumptions. If digital adoption is faster than planned, contact center and branch needs fall further. If a recession slows lending growth, lending hiring can be delayed. The plan will be updated quarterly against actual hiring, turnover and growth, with three scenarios kept current.

Planning Targets

The plan sets targets: reduce member service turnover to 30 percent by 2028, fill critical fraud and security roles within 60 days, raise internal movement from member service to 10 percent a year and develop 35 internal candidates for leadership openings. Rubenstein et al. (2018) found that a wide range of attitudes and job features predict turnover, supporting measurement of several drivers rather than one.

Conclusion

Saguaro Valley's strategy requires about 108 more positions by 2029, but its larger challenge is replacing high-turnover member service staff and finding scarce fraud, security and lending talent. A transition matrix and job family analysis show where to focus. The weeks ahead will build recruiting, selection, offer and retention strategies to meet the targets set here.

References

Griffeth, R. W., Hom, P. W., & Gaertner, S. (2000). A meta-analysis of antecedents and correlates of employee turnover: Update, moderator tests, and research implications for the next millennium. Journal of Management, 26(3), 463-488. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920630002600305

Heavey, A. L., Holwerda, J. A., & Hausknecht, J. P. (2013). Causes and consequences of collective turnover: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98(3), 412-453. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032380

Rubenstein, A. L., Eberly, M. B., Lee, T. W., & Mitchell, T. R. (2018). Surveying the forest: A meta-analysis, moderator investigation, and future-oriented discussion of the antecedents of voluntary employee turnover. Personnel Psychology, 71(1), 23-65. https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12226