human resource management

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

Human resource planning is fundamentally an approach to establish collaboration between ‘HRM’ department and other organisational activities to meet certain objectives of the business. ‘HRP’ emphasises on some significant issues such as demand, supply and proper utilisation of existing human resources. Moreover, ‘HRP’ focuses on some internal and external factors to create a good working environment thus a well motivated workforce. Hence ‘HRP’ has a strong connection with recruitment, selection process and also involved with training and development prospects of any workforce regardless any organisation.

‘HRP’ basically serves as the integration link between strategic business planning and strategic ‘HRM’. There happens to be a powerful bond between strategic ‘HRM’ and ‘HRP’. Strategic ‘HRM’ reflects to some organisational policies which are set in order to create corporate benefits and improvise employee performance. According to Miller,

“Those decisions and actions which concerns the management of employees at all levels in the business and which are directed towards creating and sustaining competitive advantage”

On the other hand, ‘HRP’ specifies recruiting and selection goals, including the number and type of individual performance and productivity. However, it can determine the number and type of employees needed to achieve strategic goals. In addition, ‘HRP’ specifies future job requirements and indirectly affects rewards through the category and working ability of the employees required.

As every organisation has people working for them, it becomes very important to direct them in an efficient way. At the present phenomenon the world business environment is adopting global approach. As a result the business practices are changing in a modern way. As the nature of the business has changed for the past couple of years, the corporate methods of managing workforce has taken place in a different way as well. In this report we would have a look at some of the contemporary and traditional way of managing personnel. Examine how traditional way of Manpower planning has changed its image and resulted into Human Resource Planning and evaluate the pros and cons of the statement made by Rothwell .

Manpower planning:

As we can see from the diagram that , Manpower planning is one of the basic elements of any HRM planning. However , we can speculate that Manpower planning plays a significant role in contributing to any business strategy and planning. All businesses in any industry are required to operate within some financial , marketing and production targets with some implicit or explicit demand for labour. It basically reflects an active approach by human resources purposes to make sure the proposition supply of labour which will allow business targets to be achieved in future. For instance, we can talk about the business season of Christmas. During Christmas time it is considered to be very busy at shopping malls and stores etc. In order to meet the labour demands for that particular time companies recruit employees on a temporary basis. So therefore, it shows that for the time being new people are been hired to react according to the demand of labour and to fulfil the supply. For example, another typical manpower approach can be seen when a company decides to start new branch or introduces a new product they tend to hire new people to meet additional labour demand. They actually make assumption of required manpower following the current situation; consider the supply of manpower and then design manpower planning according to their need in order to reach certain goals.

Key elements for Manpower Planning:

Assessing existing manpower resource
Reviewing labour utilization
Forecasting labour demand and supply
Developing plans for manpower

The basic intention of Manpower planning is to propose its composition according to business tactics and strategies of any organisation and also to organise a well motivated, skilled workforce by supplying them when required.

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Key elements for Manpower Planning:

Assessing existing manpower resource
Reviewing labour utilization
Forecasting labour demand and supply
Developing plans for manpower

Now days Manpower Planning has a more improvised approach which can also be named as diagnostic approach. Diagnostic approach is a more modern n specified way of Manpower planning. In this process Manpower plans and strategies are guided effectively. However, specialized techniques were brought forward to monitor the functional progresses to identify potential obstacles when they tend to rise. To be more précised it is an effort to utilize Manpower information to recognize and also to take essential steps to conquer the obstacles in the future business. Indeed, the whole concept of Manpower planning has been an appropriate area of significance for functional research and the application of statistical methods. An organization can optimize its future goals by applying it as an overall system of resource allocation.

Human Resource Planning:

Human resource planning is a very efficient and useful way of resolving any business strategy. One of the key benefit of ‘HRP’ is it focuses on as many of the factors that are interconnected with the workforce. The basic idea of manpower planning and human resource is same. To be more précised ‘HRP’ is a more improved and modern way of organising human workforce and plan for future aspects. According to Beardwell (2004):

“HRP is the process for identifying an organisation’s current and future Human resource requirements, developing and implementing plans to meet these requirements and monitoring their overall effectiveness”

‘HRP’ mainly helps to improvise corporate strategies to get the finest output, allocate opportunities to vital resources like labour. It contributes to make workforce more motivated by influencing their decisions, focuses on individual performance and co-operate with them to enhance their working skills. We can take a great example of one of the most dominating company in UK ‘John Lewis’. The company has started its journey in 1864, as a textiles shop in Oxford Street, London. At the begining of the 20th century it had developed itself into a departmental store, so far it has established 27 branches throughout United Kingdom. The company has a very unique organisational structure and Human Resource strategies. Every employee in the company is considered as a “Partner”, which is about 69,000 in figures at this moment. It is very unlikely any public limited company that the profit of the company, is actually shared amongst its partners, which demonstrates the importance the company gives to its employees, consequently motivates them to work according to world class standards. It is undoubtedly a solid example of very good HR Planning and also how they are benefiting their business and employees to gain the maximum out put respectably.

Moreover,’HRP’ generates a long term vision for the company’s future in order to deal with uncertainty and to cope up with the changing trend of the business environment. According to Taylor (2002) Human Resource planning is designed with some key purposes such as,

Recruitment gaps
Training and development
Staff payment
Redundancy
Collective bargaining
Place and location

Human resource planning can be divided into two parts such as ‘Hard’ HRP approach and ‘Soft’ HRP approach. They are quite different from each other. The concept of ‘Hard’ HRP has a resemblance with the traditional Manpower planning because in that process quantitive methods are been used to figure out labour demand for suitable jobs. ‘HARD’ HRP allows direct control over employees whereas , ‘SOFT’ HRP reduces direct control over employees , gives priority to their decisions , more concerned in shaping culture , develops skills and employess value ,treats them as a vital part of the company rather than considering them as a resource. The basic Human resource planning cycle consists couple of stages.

The very first and one of the most important part of ‘HRP’ is forecasting future demand for HR. Forecasting demand plays a significant role for any organisation. Every organisation has certain goals to achieve and in order to meet the targets they need skilled workforce to work for them. In this process varies job roles are considered such as the predicted number of jobs, type of jobs such as full time or part time, required skills and working ability for the proposed job role etc.

On the other hand, supply plays major role in obtaining any business objectives. It basically focuses on the redundancy and the recruitment of the employees within any organisation. Some basic quantitive methods are used In order to forecast supply which is given here:

Labour Turnover Rate (also called Wastage Index)

Number of Leavers per period ----------------------------------------------------------------- x 100

Average number of employed during that period

However this method faced some difficulties. Thus, lead to a new method in 1974 which is called the stability index.

Stability Index

Number of Employees with one or more year’s service ------------------------------------------------------------------------ x 100 Number employed one year ago

Both of the methods are used to help increase the overall company performance. While applying these methods company considers working environment focuses on different issues about people working in, such as what sort of job is available, how the characteristic of employees should be, avaibility of the required people internally and externally etc. Moreover , it is very important for Human Resource Planner to know exactly what is the demand for the company and the supply of employees he can provide in order to achieve certain objectives. Therefore, the whole function develops overall company performance and increases the accuracy in forecasting demand and supply.

While determining the demand of the company any Human Resource department would have to keep in mind and be concerned about the probability of internal and external supply of manpower. Internal supply basically means to look for your desired workforce within the organisation. For example, a new job role has taken place in the company and the management is looking for someone who has got certain job experience and skills. Most often it’s cost effective and lot easier to look for employees internally. This internal supply can be done through collecting data about employees job skill, qualification, performance related audits and managerial reviews.

Forecasting external supply draws an idea of perceiving the recruitment and maintenance effects on workforce and such factors usually cover these areas:

Demographic models and patterns
Unemployment levels
Developing varies economic, social, educational aspects.
Evaluate the local and national pay policies and plans of other individual employers.

Human Resource Variants:

Human Resource Planning has got some variants as well. They are actually used by human resource planning department whenever they need according to their business environment. For example Micro Planning is used to make predictions about near future, Contingency Planning is used as a backup in case of the failure of any business strategy, Succession Planning refers to identify reasons or to establish logical planning, skill planning vastly used to figure out exact job skills and forecasting what may be the requirement for a particular job role and the last variant is mentioned as Soft Human Resource Planning.

Human Resource Management is the essential part for any company. The actually design of it is based on the overall development system of any company to increase internal and external company efficiency, enhance performance of the workers and to meet objectives.

Perhaps, we can infer that the principle of human resource planning is to make sure that the right persons are at the right place at the right time. However, a big challenge for Human Resource Planning is to focus on the requirements of company and to manage its workforce in an organised way. Because according to Rothwell ‘HRP’ was unfavourable for large companies as it is been used on a smaller scale. Moreover, according another statement it is unfeasible to make accurate assumptions about the demand and supply using HRP, although the perceptions were made based on some previous practice and emphasized the fact that future could be unpredictable for any organisation. (Cited by Taylor, 2002).

Indeed, Human Resource Planning plays a significant role in obtaining human resource strategies. The success and performance of the company entirely depends on the important factors such as its employees and how the existing man power is operated within an organisation. Human resource planning is a key pratice which can improvise any companies and employees activity and lead them to prosper in future.

BOOKS:

Taylor, S. (2002) People Resourcing, 3rd edition, London, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Dowling, P. J. and Schuler, R. S., (1990), International Dimensions of HRM, Boston: PWS- Kent.
Holden, L and Beardwell, I., (2001), Human Resource Management A contemporary approach, Ed 3rd, London: Prentice Hall
Edwards, T & Pinnington, A., (2000), Introduction to Human Resource Management, New York: Oxford University Press
Dessler, G., (2006), A Framework For Human Resource Management, Ed 4th, New York: Pearson Prentice Hall
Bratton , J and Gold , J., (2001) , Human Resource Management Theory And Practice , Bratton : Routledge.