Guttenberg Ferreira Passos

(UnB, Universidade de Brasilia)

Ilan Chamovitz

(University of Manchester, Manchester Business School)

Babis Theodoulidis

(University of Manchester, Manchester Business School)

System Dynamics & Agent-Based approaches to face HR constrains

August, 2014

Evolution of Employees

Human Resource Management (HRM) has emerged as a fundamental and critical capital in organizations. After all, human resources plan, design policies, handle machinery and innovate.

Human Resources also hire human resources! In this context, Information Systems can facilitate the understanding of problems, especially when there is a complex scenario involving decision making.

Thus, investment in HR Information Systems becomes increasingly valued by managers.

Evolution of Employees

The process begins with a survey in order to find out the need for staff. Upon completion of the survey that generates data to the Capacity Plan, the process of hiring employees starts in accordance to the suggested number.

Employee’s life cycle in the company comprises a chain based in aging. The Aging Chains Model proposed by John Sterman in the book "Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World" can be used to represent this cycle, and show employees evolution.

In the Evolution of Employees Model can map people development in their careers, taking into account their promotions and departures from hiring to retirement.

Aging Chain Model

During this cycle there is a delay that results in some more time spent to employee be promoted from beginner employee to more experienced employee.

There is also another delay for the employee to change from the phase of being a master to finish his career at that company. The closure can also appear prematurely in the intermediate stages.

The model was adapted from the original to allow temporary getaway of professionals. The main consequence is a greater delay in their promotions, causing them to remain longer at each stage.

Evolution of Employees - Aging Chain Model

TraineeEmployee

EmployeeMaster

Employeehires promotion 1 promotion 2 retirement

promotion delay 1 promotion delay 2

retirement delay

totalemployees

trainee firingrate

employee firingrate

promotion rate 1 promotion rate 2

fraction 1

fraction 2<Trainee

Employee>

<Employee>

<MasterEmployee>

LicensesTrainee

LicensesEmployee

LicensesMaster

removes trainee

returntrainee

removesemployee

returnemployee

removesmaster

returnmaster

fraction Tdelay T fraction C

delay C fraction M delay M

<LicensesTrainee>

<LicensesEmployee>

<LicensesMaster>

totallicenses

Evolution of Employees without hiring

The importance of the model for management in organizations is the possibility of planning the replacement of staff, because over time people leave the company.

The graph with the result illustrates a situation where, in the event there is no new hiring process, the amount of people tend to drop sharply over time. This situation results in a lack of quality or in overstress work.

Evolution of Employees without hiring

Employees Evolution without hiring

In the first model we have used Dynamic Systems Modeling, that means starting the approach from the macro to the micro, aiming to study the structure and the behavior of the system.

The second model depicts the same situation, however, using Agent Based Modeling, that means, coming from the micro to the macro, studying possible emergence in the system caused by the interaction of an agent with the others and with the environment.

It can observed that the behavior is the same in both models.

Evolution of Employees without hiringEmployees decreasing along the time

Evolution of Employees with Hiring employees per year

These models allow the managers to perform a sequence of simulations until they achieve an adequate number of hires.

Through the replacement of staff, the company can keep a suitable number of employees to perform their services.

Evolution of Employees with hiring employees per yearAfter a quick drop, the workforce gradual readjustment

Evolution of Employees with hiring rate of 30 employees per year

Evaluation of delays of care in ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction patients within a tiered health

system

The ST Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) was adapted from the Evolution of Employees Model.

Mortality rates amongst STEMI patients remain high, especially in developing countries, due to a lack of infrastructure and gaps in healthcare professionals training.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the factors related with delays in the treatment of STEMI patients to support a strategic plan toward structural and personnel modifications in a primary care hospital, aligning its process with international guidelines.

Dashboard to calibrate the model: X axis represents time patients retained in each process and

Y axis represents the percentage of patients retained. The right box presents the proposed improvement for each variable.

Sensitivity analysis for 20,000 simulationsTotal retained means the percentage of patients (0 to 100%)

retained on all processes

Customer Monitoring Marketing Model

The model was adapted from the Evolution of Employees Model, one of the System Dynamics & Agent-Based approaches to face HR constrains.

Customer Monitoring Marketing Model was presented in Netlogo at University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK, to show how simulation can be used to support Authentic Learning.

Customer Monitoring Marketing Model

Customer Monitoring

System Dynamics & Agent-Based with HR constrains

Conclusions There are some situations where the adoption of some type of policies results in constrains, such as impossibility of hiring of people.

The proposed model has been applied for a public service ICT software development company, in Brazil. At that time, hiring staff or services met strict criteria established by law and policies.

In this case, based on outputs from System Dynamics (SD) followed by Agent Based Modelling (ABM), managers could decide about relocation of people, following defined policies, without hiring staff.

The model, which was generated from the Responsibility Organizational Model, was extended to the ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and the Customer Monitoring Marketing Model.

System Dynamics & Agent-Based with HR constrains

References ANDRADE LD, LYNCH C, CARVALHO E, RODRIGUES CG, VISSOCI JRN, et al. (2014). System Dynamics Modeling in the Evaluation of Delays of Care in ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction Patients within a Tiered Health System. PLoS ONE 9(7): e103577. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0103577. < http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0103577 >

PASSOS, G.F. CHAMOVITZ, I., THEODOULIDIS, B. Organizational Responsibility Model: Dealing with demand for services higher than installed capacity. Article accepted for presentation at the IEEE SMC 2013 Conference (SMC: Systems Science), October, 2013. Access http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6722506 .

STERMAN JD. Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World. Boston, MA: Irwin/ McGraw-Hill; 2000.

Netlogo Models. < http://modelingcommons.org/account/login> . Access in August 2014.

Aging Chain used within Human Resources < http://api.adm.br/netlogo/HR/>. Access in August 2014.

Consumer Profile Monitor http://api.adm.br/netlogo/Marketing/ Access in August 2014.