PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT

CASE STUDY 4

Workforce Planning (Recruitment & Retention)

MAKNA (Majlis Kanser Nasional –abbreviation translated from its Malaysian name) or
National Cancer Council Malaysia is a not-for-profit social enterprise mainly tasked to pool
and utilize every effort, expertise and welfare from every faction of society to fight cancer
and to reduce the pain, suffering and morbidity that cancer patients often experience.

The objective of the organization was also aimed at areas such as curative care, preventive
care, cancer research and support services to cancer patients and their families. MAKNA was
officially launched on 30 March 1995. Over the years, the types of services offered by
MAKNA have been diversified to support the nature of different cancer types. The
organization was also involved in support service, treatment, education & awareness,
research, fund & development in this area.

As part of its annual strategic planning process, the Management team learned that 15% of
their social workers under their employment are planning to retire over the next two years
and the recruitment of social workers has become increasingly competitive. This is a critical
issue as this will be added to their annual employee turnover due to resignation cases.

Tasks:

As the Human Resources Manager for MAKNA, you are required to design a practical
programme with detail execution initiatives to address the retirement issue through a
recruitment strategy. In addition, the recruitment strategy must be integrated with a retention
strategy as it will be pointless if you could not retain those that you have hired. Please ensure
that your solutions are specifically design for a not-for-profit organization / social enterprise
as the hiring of social workers and their motivation are different from those in for-profit
organizations.