HR Planning

 

Heuman Resource Planning. 

Workforce planning is a core process of human resource management that is shaped by the organizational strategy and ensures the right number of people with the right skills, in the right place at the right time to deliver short- and long-term organizational objectives.’ CIPD (2019)

Why and How Organizations Use HRP

Why do organizations plan their human resources? In the introduction, we outlined why some organizations no longer plan and described the background of change and uncertainty which discouraged them. Why is it that, facing the same pressures, other organizations continue to use HRP? From a review of the literature and our own research, there are a number of reasons which can be grouped into two:

Planning for substantive reasons, i.e., to have a practical effect: 

To optimize use of resources/make them more flexible.

To acquire and grow skills which take time to develop.

To identify potential problems

To minimize the chances of making a bad decision

and

Planning because of the process benefits:

To (re)gain corporate control over operating units

To understand the present in order to confront the future

To challenge assumptions/liberate thinking

To co-ordinate/integrate organizational decision making and actions

To link HR plans to business plans so as to influence them

To make explicit decisions which would allow later challenge

To stand back, provide an overview

To ensure long-term thinking is not driven out by short-term focus.

To communicate plans so as to obtain support/adherence to them.

Historically, there have been two drivers to manpower planning: supply shortage and the need to improve labor utilization. Manpower planning grew during the 1960s and early 1970s when demand was not a constraining factor, only supply. Unemployment levels were low and skill requirements were becoming greater due to technological progress. Employers sought therefore to hang on to their skilled labor because of the difficulty of acquiring it and the cost of training it once recruited. Interest centered on recruitment planning, wastage, and retention. The early exponents of manpower planning developed increasingly sophisticated models to forecast how manpower supply might match demand, but in a context of relative economic stability.

In parallel, there was concern over the UK's poor labor productivity performance compared to the USA and Germany. Many line managers especially in manufacturing plants gave their attention to how output could be raised. This spawned interest in improving manpower utilization and efficiency through work study methods, and by productivity schemes which also tried to reduce the frequent demarcation disputes.

When serious concern about supply shortages returned in the second half of the 1980s, the context had significantly changed. Increased international competition, a more complex business environment, and unpredictable patterns of change meant that organizations did not necessarily return to older methods of manpower planning which were by then seen as too deterministic. Restructuring, particularly the devolving of decision making, also meant that some organizations had lost the capacity to plan and had less central control over resource management. There was, moreover, a change in the HR agenda. Issues now concerned quality — of performance, of output or of product — rather than quantity.

Yet despite this apparent disillusionment with planning, the above list shows that benefits are still seen by some. There are organizations predisposed to plan and which have always done so because of:

A policy of 'growing their own timber' rather than 'buying in' as necessary

The need for skills which are often in short supply

The complexity of the expertise required which leads to extended training with consequently long recruitment lead times.

There are also factors that come from the demand side of the equation:

Decisions are made over extended timescales particularly in capital intensive industries

A perception that the organization's demand is stable, or at least predictable

Control of resources rather than laissez-faire growth is required in organizations at a particular stage of development.

These are the sort of employers who would choose to argue in favor of HRP for the substantive benefits it gives in anticipating or avoiding problems, especially where the consequences of errors are serious due to the length of time required for correction. There are others who have accepted the imperatives of the modern world and have adapted HRP accordingly. Thus, there is an awareness of the importance of skill development in an environment that requires adaptability rather than stability. This means a more flexible approach to staffing. There is a recognition that employee contribution must be maximized through better utilization and deployment. Finally, there is an understanding of the need to frame employee tasks in the context of business plans, and to make them more challenging in the drive for continuous business improvement. In summary, to concentrate purely on numbers is insufficient. Due attention has to be given to who is employed and how they are used so that resources can be optimized. HRP is seen as being able to assist in meeting these objectives.

Those that see value in HRP's process benefits emphasize the importance of coordinating actions, and indeed in some companies gaining corporate control over them. This has the advantage of aligning behavior in relation to common goals. Additionally, it is felt that it gives organizations time and space to think about the future, not necessarily with any certainty as to how it will turn out, but with the belief that this will provide a reference point for later use.

Before giving examples to illustrate these uses in somewhat more detail, we will consider the organizational context of how HRP is used.

References:- 

https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/system/files/resources/files/312.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341119383_Human_Resource_Planning

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335058560_THE_ROLE_OF_HUMAN_RESOURCE_PLANNING_IN_THE_HUMAN_RESOURCE_NETWORK