PEOPLE RESOURCING
Chapter Five
Human Resource Planning:
Methods and Applications
The techniques of human resource planning are some of
the most involved and complex activities carried out by
employee resourcing professionals.
By contrast, the basic principles on which they are
founded are straightforward, with a potential significance
that is readily understood.
There are different uses of the term ‘human resource
planning’ by different authors.
The focus is on forecasting the supply and demand of
labour and developing plans to reconcile any future gap
that is identified between the human resources an
organisation needs and those to which it is likely to have
access.
Stages in human resource planning
The principal concern is assessing an organisation’s
position in relation to its labour markets and
forecasting its likely situation in years to come. It is
thus mostly used to formulate the data on which plans
of action can be based, rather than actually to draw
up those plans.
Stages in an HR planning cycle:
1. Forecasting future demand for human resources
2. Forecasting future internal supply
3. Forecasting future external supply
4. Formulating responses to the forecasts.
Forecasting future demand
The process of assessing demand can be defined as
‘analysing, reviewing and attempting to predict the
numbers, by kind, of the manpower needed by the
organisation to achieve its objectives’.
It depends on:
•
the time-scale that the forecast is intended to cover
•
the nature of the activities carried out by the organisation.
Four basic categories:
•
systematic techniques
•
managerial judgement
•
combining systematic and subjective approaches
•
working back from costs.
Systematic techniques
•
Time series – estimating future requirements from an
analysis of past and current experience. Appropriate
only in relatively stable business environments.
•
Work study – study of individual tasks or processes in
order to establish the numbers required to complete
them most effectively and efficiently.
•
Incorporating productivity trends into the time series
calculation.
Managerial judgement
Bases decisions on the subjective views of managers
about likely future human resource needs. This is
often the only option in situations where the business
environment is highly volatile.
‘Delphi technique’ – a systematic approach to decisionmaking that aims to introduce a measure of objectivity
into the process by which forecasts are made on the
basis of managerial judgement.
Working back from costs
The process begins with the future budget for staff costs.
The HR planner then works out, given that constraint,
how many people and at what salary level will be
affordable. The focus is on designing organisational
structures and methods of working that will permit the
budget to be met
Forecasting internal supply
Analysing the current workforce department by
department or by grade before estimating the
numbers likely to remain employed and the skills they
are likely to possess.
Techniques:
•
wastage analysis
•
stability analysis
•
cohort analysis
•
internal promotion analysis.
Forecasting external supply
Having established the future demand for different kinds
of employee, and how these needs will or will not be
met internally, it is necessary to give attention to filling
the gap and reconciling supply and demand using the
external labour market.
Organisations must turn to statistical information on local,
national and even international labour markets.
Computer applications
There are many different ways in which IT can be used
to support and undertake human resource planning.
Three broad categories:
•
Information provision – Computerised personnel information
systems (CPIS) allow more data to be stored, and permit far
swifter generation of reports.
•
Modelling – The ability of computers to handle vast quantities of
data permits highly complex formulae concerning numerous
variables to be built up, and results to be calculated in seconds.
•
Presentation – User-friendly reports make data easy to interpret.
This can help significantly with HR efficiency and credibility.