HRM

HRM

HRM

Part One - HR Planning and Recruitment Strategies

Human asset (HR) designing is a blend of forecasting staffing needs and strategic planning. It involves planning, developing, implementing, administering, and performing ongoing evaluation and assessment of recruiting, hiring, orientation, and organizational exit to ensure that the workforce will meet the organization's goals and objectives. The typical role of an HR professional performing the staffing function is selecting appropriate employees to meet the needs of the organization, training them for future needs, developing their careers, and retaining them as staff so the organization will not spend time and money replacing them. In essence, HR planning results in strategies for staffing to ensure that both short- and long-term organizational objectives are met.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) believes that there are three major roles in HR—strategic, operational, and administrative—and that strategic HR activities include change management, organizational culture and structure management, and performance management system development. Strategic HR includes HR planning, and part of that is forecasting. Forecasting involves identifying expected future staffing conditions based on information about the past and the present. Forecasting staffing needs is a four-step process: demand analysis, supply analysis, reconciliation of the budget, and strategic analysis.

Demand analysis consists of obtaining or creating a forecast for the organization's demand for future employees. This can be accomplished simply by requesting future staff estimates from managers within the organization. For this type of forecasting to be effective, an organization must consider all the various conditions and issues that might arise. When forecasting their future staffing needs, managers should consider any new or different skill sets required, structure changes in the organization, contract labor (temporary workers) needed, and identify any positions that can be eliminated, combined, or changed. The organization's size and budget should also be considered when conducting a demand analysis. Another method for forecasting is to conduct a statistical analysis of the potential need for the organization's products and/or services (normally, a greater demand for the product or service means more need for staff). This type of analysis should be conducted in conjunction with formal strategic planning.

Supply analysis includes a review of the current workforce, the future demographic makeup of the labor force, current and future productivity needs, and the organizational structure. An organization should also consider issues such as internal promotions, diversity of the workforce, transfers, retirements, layoffs, training and retraining, voluntary and involuntary separations, health care costs, and many other factors. It is also important to review corporate trends such as sales and productivity over time to forecast future staffing needs.

Reconciliation of the budget is vital in this process as well. The forecast should be presented in dollars and should include how much the staffing forecast will cost the organization.

Last is strategic analysis. Not only should HR professionals review current supply and demand when forecasting staffing needs, but they should also consider replacement planning and succession planning.

The horrific events of September 11, 2001, actually caused organizations to place more emphasis on succession ...