Human Resource Planning:
Ensuring your Organization
has the Right People
Thomas P. Holland, Ph.D., Professor
UGA Institute for Nonprofit Organizations
What is Workforce Planning?
• Workforce planning is making sure you have the
right number of people with the right skills,
experiences, and competencies in the right jobs
at the right times.
• It is a comprehensive process that provides
managers with a framework for making staffing
decisions based on the organization’s mission,
strategic plan, budgetary resources, and a
desired set of work competencies needed to
accomplish goals.
Benefits of Workforce Planning
• Enables managers to be proactive instead of
reactive to changes in organization and markets
• Provides guidelines for selecting, developing,
retaining, and replacing staff to ensure that the
needed competencies are available when
needed
• Allows organizations to address systematically
the issues driving workforce change (ie, aging of
staff, retirements, changes in technology,
competition)
• Guides staff development and training activities
• Enables organization to accomplish its goals
and sustain excellence in performance
• Supports accountability
Requirements for Good Workforce Plan
• Strong management leadership
• Clearly articulated vision, mission,
strategic goals
• Cooperative, supportive staff
• Budget sufficient to gain and retain
needed staff and competencies
Gap Analysis and Planning
• Examine the competencies of the present
workforce.
• Identify the competencies needed in the future.
• Compare the presently available competencies
with future needs.
• Identify competency gaps and surpluses.
• Specify and implement steps to build the needed
workforce.
– Train current staff
– Hire new staff
– Recruit volunteers
• Monitor movement to needed competencies.
Defining a New Job Role
• Recognize need through problems in completing
work assignments or
• Anticipate need when planning for new service
or program
• Specify tasks and competencies through
examination of current job roles and gaps
• Identify how new role fits with organizational
structure, work flow
• Write job description
• Estimate costs, including salary, benefits, taxes
Part II
Competencies
Competencies
• Competencies are sets of behaviors that include
skills, knowledge, abilities, and personal
attributes that are critical to successful work
accomplishment.
• Identifying competencies needed to accomplish
organizational goals serves to
– describe the ideal workforce
– inform management decisions about feasible
objectives
– guide employee behaviors and expectations
– provide basis for hiring and for staff training and
development
– Identify work tasks that should be outsourced
Benefits of Competency Frameworks
• Underpins personnel selection and
evaluation
• Helps employees achieve greater
effectiveness
• Leads to greater organizational
effectiveness
• Enables targeted analysis of training
needs
• Supports effective career management
Defining Competencies
• Occupational standards: The behaviors that employees
must have (or acquire) to carry out their work at a high
level of performance.
• Define the expected areas, procedures, levels, and
outcomes of work performance; what actions will be
valued, recognized, and rewarded
• Must be stated in clear, specific, and observable forms
• May include sets of skills in areas such as
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Communications
People management
Team skills
Customer service skills
Results-orientation
Problem solving
Use of technology
Developing Competency Frameworks
• Internally generate sets of tasks, requisite skills,
and expected levels of performance for a job.
• Draw from existing models
• Specify indicators of successful performance
• Monitor performance to refine definitions
• Assess how well it works in
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writing job descriptions
selecting among applicants
orienting and guiding their work
achieving high levels of performance,
assessing individuals’ capability and performance
providing feedback to guide skill development
training
Assessing Competency Frameworks:
How well does it
• Communicate to employees what behaviors are
valued and how they contribute to success
• Identify key themes and aspirations
• Get conditions in place for success
• Address key issues including knowledge, skills,
attitudes
• Keep it simple and meaningful to staff
• Allow observation and monitoring of successful
performance
• Guide training (not blaming). Do staff and
supervisors make use of it?
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Part III:
Bringing in the Right People
Generating applications
Screening them
Interviewing
Selecting
Orienting
Generating Applications
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Prepare job description
Decide if role is to be staff or volunteer
Advertise the position, starting internally
Provide sufficient information for reader to do
self-screening
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Title and general responsibilities
Required skills, experience, education, limitations
Closing date for consideration
Identify application forms and supporting documents
required (ie. resume, recommendation letters,
references)
– Contact information
Screening Applications
• Examine applicant’s career objectives
• Work history, jobs, dates, gaps
• Competencies match those needed by
organization?
• On best candidates, gather and evaluate
reference letters
• Get others’ views of applications
• Select a few finalists for further
investigation
Interviewing Applicants
• Contact those on finalist list to set interview times,
location, expectations
• Prepare interview questions and follow them consistently
in every interview
• Questions must focus on performing the duties of the
job, not about characteristics unrelated to job (ie. age,
marital status, religion, handicapping conditions)
• Consider open-ended questions, such as
– “Why do you thing your skills are appropriate for this
position?”
– “What was your biggest challenge in past job and
how did you handle it?”
• Introduce them to others in organization
• Ask about salary expectations and when person could
begin work
Compensation
• A systematic approach to providing monetary
value to employees in exchange for work
performed
• Forms
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Base pay
Commissions
Overtime
Merit pay
Travel, meals, housing allowances
benefits
Purposes of Compensation
• Helps recruit and retain qualified
employees
• Contributes to staff morale
• Encourages top performance
• Supports fairness, equity among staff
• Encourages loyalty to organization, reduce
turnover
Developing Compensation Plans 1
• Decide on general job categories and pay
levels across them
– Executives
– Professional staff
– Support staff
– Hourly vs. salaried
– Contingent pay (commissions, bonuses)?
Developing 2
• Conduct task analyses for positions
• Specify assignments and expected levels of
performance for each position
• Rank all positions within and among
departments
• Establish levels within positions based on criteria
such as
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Prior skill and experience
Knowledge
Performance
Length of service
Developing 3
• Estimate market demand and supply for each
kind of position
• Estimate pay rates for positions
• Compare with data from outside compensation
surveys, make adjustments
• Specify pay for various levels of performance
within similar jobs, such as
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Entry level
Acceptable performance
Outstanding performance
Longevity
Developing 4
• Identify types and extent of benefits for
each position
• Complete summary of pay and benefits for
all positions
• Present to manager and board for review
and approval
• Specify implementation steps
• Monitor implementation and fine-tune plan
Benefits
• Forms of tangible value awarded to
employees in addition to salary
• Costs must be considered in total
personnel expenses
• Examples of benefits paid by organization
or shared payments with employee
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Insurance for health, life, disability
Pay for vacation time, holidays
Retirement plans
Leave for health reasons, maternity (may be paid
or unpaid)
Candidate Selection
• Get impressions of everyone who saw
applicants, starting with interviewer(s)
– Ask which they prefer and why
– Ask about perceived gaps, problems
• Look for one with most positive
recommendations
• Take recommendation to final decision-maker
• Inform finalist by telephone and letter
Possible Problems
• No suitable candidate or everyone turns
down the job
– Re-configure and re-advertise the job
– Ask finalists about reasons for declining
– Go back to top candidate with best fit and
negotiate for whatever needed to improve
attractiveness of position (ie. higher salary or
benefits, training opportunities
Orienting Newcomer
• Go over in greater detail the position,
expectations, limitations, policies and
procedures, resources, questions
• Take to office and provide keys, supplies,
important documents, and individual copy of
personnel manual
• Tour facility and introduce staff, including
executive, supervisor, mentor
• Invite group to meet for lunch, encourage other
social interactions
• Schedule any needed training
• Meet with person regularly to resolve questions
about position, performance expectations and
reviews, common challenges
SMARTER: Make sure goals
and expectations are clear
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Specific
Measurable
Acceptable
Realistic
Time-framed
Extend capabilities
Rewards provided for
accomplishments
Make use of Volunteers
• Traditional “busy-work” not interesting or
motivating to most people
• Begin with workforce needs and identify tasks at
all levels that may be done by volunteers
• Must engage staff in planning
• Follow similar steps of preparing job description,
recruitment, screening, orienting, training,
supervising, firing
• Monitor performance and satisfactions, make
adjustments to retain good volunteers
• Recognition and appreciation are essential for
retention