Human resource planning

Human resource planning

Concept of Human resource planning:

Human resource planning is important for helping both organizations and employees to prepare for the future. The basic goal of human resource planning is to predict the future and based on these predictions, implement programmes to avoid anticipated problems. Very briefly humans resource planning is the process of examining an organization‘sor individual‘sfuture human resource needs for instance, what types of skills will be needed for jobs of the future compared to future human resource capabilities (such as the types of skilled employees you already have) and developing human resource policies and practices to address potential problems for example, implementing training programmes to avoid skill deficiencies.

Definition of HRP:

According to Vetter, ―HRP is the process by which management determines how the organization should move from its current man power position to desired manpower position. Through planning, management strives to have the right time, doing things which result in both the organization and individual receiving maximum long run benefits.

According to Gordon Mc Beath, ―HRP is concerned with two things: Planning of manpower requirements and Planning of Manpower supplies‖.

According to Beach, ―HRP is a process of determining and assuming that the organization will have an adequate number of qualified persons, available at proper times, performing jobs which meet the needs of the enterprise and which provides satisfaction for the individuals involved‖

HRP is a Four-Phased Process.

The first phase involves the gathering and analysis of data through manpower inventories and forecasts,

The second phase consists of establishing manpower objectives and policies and gaining top management approval of these.

The third phase involves designing and implementing plans and promotions to enable the organization to achieve its manpower objectives.

The fourth phase is concerned with control and evaluation of manpower plans to facilitate progress in order to benefit both the organization and the individual. The long run view means that gains may be sacrificed in the short run for the future grounds. The planning process enables the organization to identify what its manpower needs is and what potential manpower problems required current action. This leads to more effective and efficient performance.

Nature of Human resource planning:

It is the process of analyzing and identifying the availability and the need for human resources so that the organization can meet its objectives. The focus of HR planning is to ensure that the organization has the right number of human resources, with the right capabilities, at the right times, and in the right places. In HR planning, an organization must consider the availability and allocation of people to jobs over long periods of time, not just for the next month or the next year¹.

HRP is a sub system in the total organizational planning. Actions may include shifting employees to other jobs in the organization, laying off employees or otherwise cutting back the number of employees, developing  present employees, and/or increasing the number of employees in certain areas. Factors to consider include the current employees‘knowledge, skills, and abilities and the expected vacancies resulting from retirements, promotions, transfers, and discharges. To do this, HR planning requires efforts by HR professionals working with executives and managers.

Objectives of Human Resource Planning:

1.                To ensure optimum utilization of human resources currently available in the organization.

2.                To assess or forecast the future skill requirement of the Organization.

3.                To provide control measures to ensure that necessary resources are available as and when required.

4.                A series of specified reasons are there that attaches importance to manpower planning and forecasting exercises. They are elaborated below:

To link manpower planning with the organizational planning

To determine recruitment levels.

To anticipate redundancies.

To determine optimum training levels.

To provide a basis for management development programs.

To cost the manpower.

To assist productivity bargaining.

To assess future accommodation requirement.

To study the cost of overheads and value of service functions.

To decide whether certain activity needs to be subcontracted, etc.

HRP is the subsystem in the total organizational planning. Organizational planning includes managerial activities that set the company‘sobjective for the future and determines the appropriate means for achieving those objectives. The importance of HR is elaborated on the basis of the key roles that it is playing in the organization.

1.       Future Personnel Needs: Human resource planning is significant because it helps to determine the future personnel needs of the organization. If an organization is facing the problem of either surplus or deficiency in staff strength, then it is the result of the absence of effecting HR planning. All public sector enterprises find themselves overstaffed now as they never had any planning for personnel requirement and went of recruitment spree till late 1980‘s. The problem of excess staff has become such a prominent problem that many private sector units are resorting to VRS ‗voluntary retirement scheme‘.The excess of labor problem would have been there if the organization had good HRP system. Effective HRP system will also enable the organization to have good succession planning.

Part of Strategic Planning: HRP has become an integral part of strategic planning of strategic planning. HRP provides inputs in strategy formulation process in terms of deciding whether the organization has got the right kind of human resources to carry out the given strategy. HRP is also necessary during the implementation stage in the form of deciding to make resource allocation decisions related to organization structure, process and human resources. In some organizations HRP play as significant role as strategic planning and HR issues are perceived as inherent in business management.

3.       Creating Highly Talented Personnel: Even though India has a great pool of educated unemployed, it is the discretion of HR manager that will enable the company to recruit the right person with right skills to the organization. Even the existing staff hope the job so frequently that organization face frequent shortage of manpower. Manpower planning in the form of skill development is required to help the organization in dealing with this problem of skilled manpower shortage

4.       International Strategies: An international expansion strategy of an organization is facilitated to a great extent by HR planning. The HR department‘sability to fill key jobs with foreign nationals and reassignment of employees from within or across national borders is a major challenge that is being faced by international business. With the growing trend towards global operation, the need for HRP will as well will be the need to integrate HRP more closely with the organizations strategic plans. Without effective HRP and subsequent attention to employee recruitment, selection, placement, development, and career planning, the growing competition for foreign executives may lead to expensive and strategically descriptive turnover among key decision makers.

5.       Foundation for Personnel Functions: HRP provides essential information for designing and implementing personnel functions, such as recruitment, selection, training and development, personnel movement like transfers, promotions and layoffs.

6.       Increasing Investments in Human Resources: Organizations are making increasing investments in human resource development compelling the increased need for HRP. Organizations are realizing that human assets can increase in value more than the physical assets. An employee who gradually develops his/ her skills and abilities become a valuable asset for the organization. Organizations can make investments in its personnel either through direct training or job assignment and the rupee value of such a trained, flexible, motivated productive workforce is difficult to determine. Top officials have started acknowledging that quality of work force is responsible for both short term and long term performance of the organization.

7.             Resistance to Change: Employees are always reluctant whenever they hear about change and even about job rotation. Organizations cannot shift one employee from one department to another without any specific planning. Even for carrying out job rotation (shifting one employee from one department to another) there is a need to plan well ahead and match the skills required and existing skills of the employees.

8.             Uniting the Viewpoint of Line and Staff Managers: HRP helps to unite the viewpoints of line and staff managers. Though HRP is initiated and executed by the corporate staff, it requires the input and cooperation of all managers within an organization. Each department manager knows about the issues faced by his department more than anyone else. So communication between HR staff and line managers is essential for the success of HR Planning and development.

9.Succession Planning: Human Resource Planning prepares people for future challenges. The ‗stars‘are picked up, trained, assessed and assisted continuously so that when the time comes such trained employees can quickly take the responsibilities and position of their boss or seniors as and when situation arrives.

10.Other Benefits: (a) HRP helps in judging the effectiveness of manpower policies and programmes of management. (b) It develops awareness on effective utilization of human resources for the overall development of organization. (c) It facilitates selection and training of employees with adequate knowledge, experience and aptitudes so as to carry on and achieve the organizational objectives (d) HRP encourages the company to review and modify its human resource policies and practices and to examine the way of utilizing the human resources for better utilization.

HRP Process:

HRP effectively involves forecasting personnel needs, assessing personnel supply and matching demand –supply factors through personnel related programmes. The HR planning process is influenced by overall organizational objectives and environment of business.

The HRP Process

Environmental Scanning:

It refers to the systematic monitoring of the external forces influencing the organization. The following forces are essential for pertinent HRP.

Economic factors, including general and regional conditions. Technological changes

Demographic changes including age, composition and literacy,

Political and legislative issues, including laws and administrative rulings Social concerns, including child care, educational facilities and priorities.

By scanning the environment for changes that will affect an organization, managers can anticipate their impact and make adjustments early.

Organizational Objectives and Policies: HR plan is usually derived from the organizational objectives. Specific requirements in terms of number and characteristics of employees should be derived from organizational objectives

Once the organizational objectives are specified, communicated and understood by all concerned, the HR department must specify its objective with regard to HR utilization in the organization.

HR Demand Forecast:

Demand forecasting is the process of estimating the future quantity and quality of people required to meet the future needs of the organization. Annual budget and long-term corporate plan when translated into activity into activity form the basis for HR forecast.

For eg: in the case of a manufacturing company, the sales budget will form the basis for production plan giving the number and type of products to be produced in each period. This will form the basis uponwhich the organization will decide the number of hours to be worked by each skilled category of workers. Once the number hours required is available organization can determine the quality and quantity of personnel required for the task.

Demand forecasting is influenced by both internal factors and external factors: external factors include-competition, economic climate, laws and regulatory bodies, changes in technology and social factors whereas internal factors are budget constraints, production level, new products and services, organizational structure and employee separations.

Demand forecasting is essential because it helps the organization to 1. Quantify the jobs, necessary for producing a given number of goods, 2. To determine the nature of staff mix required in the future, 3. To assess appropriate levels in different parts of organization so as to avoid unnecessary costs to theorganization, 4. To prevent shortages of personnel where and when, they are needed by the organization. 5. To monitor compliances with legal requirements with regard to reservation of jobs.

Techniques like managerial judgment, ratio- trend analysis, regression analysis, work study techniques, Delphi techniques are some of the major methods used by the organization for demand forecasting.

HR Supply Forecast:

Supply forecast determines whether the HR department will be able to procure the required number of workers. Supply forecast measures the number of people likely to be available from within and outside an organization, after making allowance for absenteeism, internal movements and promotions, wastage and changes in hours, and other conditions of work.

Supply forecast is required because it is needed as it 1. Helps to quantify the number of people and positions expected to be available in future to help the organization realize its plans and meet its objectives 2. Helps to clarify the staff mixes that will arise in future 3. It assesses existing staffing in different parts of the organization. 4. It will enable the organization to prevent shortage of people where and when they are most needed. 5. It also helps to monitor future compliance with legal requirements of job reservations.

Supply analysis covers the existing human resources, internal sources of supply and external sources of supply.

HR Programming:

Once an organization‘spersonnel demand and supply are forecasted the demand and supply need to be balanced in order that the vacancies can be filled by the right employees at the right time.

HR Plan Implementation:

HR implementation requires converting an HR plan into action. A series of action are initiated as a part of HR plan implementation. Programmes such as recruitment, selection and placement, training and development, retraining and redeployment, retention plan, succession plan etc when clubbed together form the implementation part of the HR plan.

Control and Evaluation:

Control and evaluation represent the final phase of the HRP process. All HR plan include budgets, targets and standards. The achievement of the organization will be evaluated and monitored against the plan. During this final phase organization will be evaluating on the number of people employed against the established (both those who are in the post and those who are in pipe line) and on the number recruited against the recruitment targets. Evaluation is also done with respect to employment cost against the budget and wastage accrued so that corrective action can be taken in future.

Requisites for Successful HRP

1.                HRP must be recognized as an integral part of corporate planning

2.                Support of top management is essential

3.                There should be some centralization with respect to HRP responsibilities in order to have co-ordination between different levels of management.

4.                Organization records must be complete, up to date and readily available.

5.                Techniques used for HR planning should be those best suited to the data available and degree of accuracy required.

6.                Data collection, analysis, techniques of planning and the plan themselves need to be constantly revised and improved in the light of experience.

Barriers to HRP

Human Resource Planners face significant barriers while formulating an HRP. The major barriers are elaborated below:

1)      HR practitioners are perceived as experts in handling personnel matters, but are not experts in managing business. The personnel plan conceived and formulated by the HR practitioners when enmeshed with organizational plan, might make the overall strategic plan of the organization ineffective.

2)      HR information often is incompatible with other information used in strategy formulation. Strategic planning efforts have long been oriented towards financial forecasting, often to the exclusion of other types of information. Financial forecasting takes precedence over HRP.

4)      Conflict may exist between short term and long term HR needs. For example, there can be a conflict between the pressure to get the work done on time and long term needs, such as preparing people for assuming greater responsibilities. Many managers are of the belief that HR needs can be met immediately because skills are available on the market as long as wages and salaries are competitive. Therefore, long times plans are not required, short planning are only needed.

5)      There is conflict between quantitative and qualitative approaches to HRP. Some people view HRP as a number game designed to track the flow of people across the department. Others take a qualitative approach and focus on individual employee concerns such as promotion and career development. Best result can be achieved if there is a balance between the quantitative and qualitative approaches.

6)      Non-involvement of operating managers renders HRP ineffective. HRP is not strictly an HR department function. Successful planning needs a co-ordinated effort on the part of operating managers and HR personnel.