Human Resource Planning.

Whatever goals company will have it could be archived only with a help of human skill and effort. One of the  stages in human resource planning is to estimate what will be required in terms of skills, number of people to archive the business goals.(Foot.M & Hook.C p37) For that reason, Human resource planning is tightly connected with demand and supply forecasting. Demand forecasting is a process of estimating the future number of people, skills they will have to have in a matter to bring maximum outcome for the company. (Armstrong. M. p373). We can consider a few good reasons, why companies may consider forecasting (Rothwell. W. & Kazanas. C. H p215):

1. Quantify the positions necessary for producing a given number of goods or services in demand
2. Identify the department or workgroups that can benefit from productivity improvements efforts
3. Determine what staff mix is desirable in the future
4. Look at the staff levels in different parts of organizations, to avoid unnecessary costs
5. Prevent shortage of people where they are most needed
6. Helps to control costs associated with human resources, ensuring that recruitment, promotions match organizational needs.

 The ideal basic for the forecast can be budget as well as long term business plan. The company that have a big project planned ahead will have to consider the job that would have to be done and to compare it with the workforce available at the moment, also they can consider ways to motivate and appraise their staff. If there are not enough people in the company to do the job effectively or they don’t have skills needed, there is no need for the company to wait until the project begins to start filling the gaps, as this may result in delay of the project and in worst case scenario in a failure.

For manufacturing company, the sales budget will be translated into manufacturing plan giving the number and types of products that would have to be produced. (Armstrong.M p373) .From this data the number people and hours will be worked out to complete the job. To have right amount of people with the skills required is essential for the company success, for that reason the plans will have to be reviewed as modern business world is unstable, and long term forecast may not be very helpful for the company. Forecasts that are not reviewed constantly will bring unnecessary costs to the company as it will be out of date, because business world is unstable, and the information that was adequate when the forecast was produced may not be useful after some time.

Job analysis

“Job analysis is a process of collecting, analysing and setting out information about the content of jobs in order to provide the basis for a job description and data for recruitment, training, job evaluation and performance management.” (Armstrong. M. p174) Job analysis is function that helps human resource planning to succeed as it has the information required for human resource planning to make decisions. As far as human resource planning activities are concerned, job analysis and job design link the tasks of calculating the demand for human resources and the internal supply of human resources, since together they provide a blueprint for what is required but also document the existing complement of employees, what job do they do and what skills they have and using to perform their job. (Foot. M & Hook. C. p39) Job analysis is an important part of human resource planning as it should give more clear information about the amount and type of people required, also the skills they will have to have.

“Hard” vs “Soft” HRP

It is necessary to introduce different approaches to Human Resource planning. Mostly discussed in a literature is between “hard “and “soft” HRP.

Hard human resource planning involves more traditional activities, such as looking at whether the organization has the right amount of people to perform the tasks. The “hard” version HRP looks at the human resources as they will look at land or capital. (Leopold. J p12) It has to be measured and quantified in a calculative, instrumental way with a view to minimize cost and maximise output. In that case every organization must know how many employees it will need in a short, medium and long term, the availability of appropriate people, and how they can be recruited. (Needham. D. p247) It also must access their training and development needs. The staffing plan must match the objectives of an organisation future plan.

“Soft” is concerned with ensuring the availability of people with the right type of attitudes and motivation who will be committed to the organisation and will bring the most benefits to the company. (Armstrong. P 364) The “soft” version of HRP stresses the human the human dimension of the term and sees human beings as a unique resource available to organisation and ones that have to be led, motivated and communicated with. (Leopold. J p12) The companies that will choose to use “soft” approach rather that “hard” understand that it is creativity, commitment and skills of employee can bring them desired competitive advantage over different companies. In matter to archive that employers must carefully select, develop and reward their employees, even if it is sounds expensive, but the results can be significant. In today's world, skills and experience are the most valuable aspects, as everything else like product and marketing strategy can be easily imitated by the rival firms. Nowadays putting people first, or at least taking people issues seriously, is more important than it was before.  Techniques, that human resource planning use, will require a lot of attention from senior management. It may be difficult for some companies to understand and employ this, but it is what you will see in organisations that succeed in the field through their people. As long as companies will understand that people give them great competitive advantage over their rivals and leaders will manage their people with trust and bring changes to the company that will benefit not only top management but the people that work in the organisation as well, all companies in any field can archive great results. (Pfeffer. J /www.leadertoleader.org) It just requires managers of the companies to change their point of view about the people that work for them and look at them as the most important asset after all.

One of the examples of the success that have been archived through people is Whole Foods, which has grown in the 1990s from $100 million to $1 billion, is famous for its use of self-managed teams. The company shares detailed financial and performance information with all their employees, as most of the people in the company own a company shares and they are part of the company. Also Whole Foods makes individual salary data available to their employees. “It also shares productivity gains with its people through team-based incentive compensation, in the process of fostering decentralized decision making”. (Pfeffer. J ) All those techniques shows to their people that they are part of the company and that companies success is their success as well. The company makes it clear that their people is the main asset, on their website it says ”Our people are our company. They are passionate about healthy food and a healthy planet. They take full advantage of our decentralized, self-directed team culture and create a respectful workplace where people are treated fairly and are highly motivated to succeed.”(www.wholefoodsmarket.com)
Whichever model, if any, company chooses to adopt will vary from organisation to organisation. The main factors that can influence the decision could be the size and structure of organisation, also industry of the organisation and type of skills required in the industry, whether it is foreign owned or not, the presence or not of trade unions, also the philosophy of senior management.

Conclusion.

It appears that the old aphorism, "people are our most important asset," is actually true. If the people is the source of competitive advantage for the company, than the development of people in the organisation require as much attention as financial aspects of firm.  For the human resource planning to work effectively it has to be controlled by the senior management and the great amount of time has to be spend making sure that it works. Some organisations will say that they would better spend their time on business plans, strategies and financial aspects of the company rather than spending time concentrating majority of the time on their employees.

 For the companies that want to gain competitive advantage through the people they employ is very important that this philosophy begins from the senior management position and goes downwards .Different companies will choose to use different techniques to motivate and praise their staff, but both material and non-material appraisal will benefit the company. It might sound expensive to some management that have never tried to do it and doesn’t know that the benefits the company receive probably will overtake the cost. Also I think that the “soft” approach to human resource planning will have more benefits than the “hard” approach, as the “soft” approach looks at the people not just as quantative aspect of the company but as humans, which have to be trained, motivated and cared for.

 Many leaders of different organisations understand and agree that putting peoples issue in front makes strategic sense, not many organisations actually do it.

Bibliography

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2. Bratton. J & Gold. J (2007) Human Resource Management, Theory and Practice,4ed, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan
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