Human resources planning is a key part of the human resources function.

Authors Avatar

Human Resources Planning

Human resources planning is a key part of the human resources function.

Through human resources planning decisions can be made on how to go about doing recruitment and selection, performance Management and employee training.

It is a strategic activity to ensure the right people resources are available and will be available in the future in order for the organisation to meet its HR plans.

Human resources planning involves the collection of information inside and outside of the organisation relating to the following:

External to the organisation:

  • Employment trends
  • Skills shortages
  • Availability of labour

Internal  organisation informaiton:

  • Ages of the workforce
  • Skills
  • Training
  • Sickness and accident rates
  • Labour turnover and labour wastage rate

External labour market information

Analysing external labour market information gives an organisation a good base for Human resources planning.

The information collected allows better decisions to be made on recruitment, training and all other aspects of the Human Resources function.

Recruitment and

Selection

The Recruitment Process

There are many processes involved in filling a vacancy in an organisation. The vacancy needs to be identified, future applicants need to be informed of the vacancy and apply, the applicants need to be short listed, interviewed and short listed again.

Below is a diagram showing the key stages in the recruitment process.

Legislation

One of the key factors, which must be considered all throughout the recruitment process, is legislation.

There are three main Acts, which need to be applied during the recruitment process.

The sex discrimination Acts, the race relations act and the Disability discrimination act.

Sex discrimination Acts 1975 and 1986

The act outlines the fact that it unlawful to discriminate a person on the grounds of gender or marital status.

Both direct and indirect discrimination is unlawful.

To avoid direct discrimination organisations must choose applicants based on their qualifications and suitability for the job rather than gender.

To avoid indirect discrimination, during advertisements and Job specifications organisations have to be careful that the criteria set down for the vacancy is not of a discriminative language.

Race Relations Act 1976

The race relation’s act is similar to the sex discrimination act. Direct and indirect race discrimination are both illegal.

There is a Commission for Racial Equality, which provides a Code of Practice, which encourages monitoring to help identify and eliminate race discrimination.

Disability Discrimination Act 1995

This states that it is unlawful to treat disabled less favourably that others. Employers are required to make reasonable adjustments to premises for disabled applicants.

There is also a Code of Practice written by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC)

To put it simply the Race Relations Act, Disability Discrimination Act and the Sex Discrimination Act make it unlawful for an organisation to take a persons, colour, race, nationality, ethnic origin, disability, gender and marital status into account when making an employment decision.

They should also be taken into account at other stages of the employment process from the Job analysis to advertising and the way of selection.

The Recruitment Process

Field Study

This is the first stage of the recruitment process.

In order to write up or update a Job Description and Personal Specification the job must be analysed. By analysing the job you will find out how the job is performed, what skills are needed to perform the job and if the way the job is done should be changed to give more or less responsibility.

There are various ways of carrying out a field study e.g. observation of the job, interview, self-reports, diaries, etc.

Job Description

After the field study has been carried out there is the writing of the job description, which describes the main duties of the job.

As an Example The Claim Groups Job description for a Claims advisor:

Job title: Claims Advisor

Reports to: Area Manager

Scope of job: To advise members of the public who have had an accident, which wasn’t their fault on making a claim.

Job Content:

1.  Canvassing in Town centres

2.  Door canvassing

3.  Manning exhibition stands

This is an important document in the recruitment process; it defines for employees and candidates for employment exactly what is expected of them in the position. It has effective use in the recruitment process, selecting of the right applicant and the induction process.

Personnel Specification

After the Job description is written up then a personal specification has to be written.

A Personal specification describes the ideal person for the job. Its sets down the minimum requirements that an applicant must have before being considered for employment.

Below is an example of a Personal Specification

Job title: Claims advisor

Join now!

This document helps in the advertising process, as the skills needed should be stated on the advertisement. It is a key document in the selection process as those who do not meet the minimum requirements will not be asked for an interview and the desirable section helps to shortlist applicants according to the best qualified.

Competency Frameworks

In addition to a Personal Specification a Competency Framework can be drawn up. The information collected from field study is used to ...

This is a preview of the whole essay