HR Planning

The Importance of an HR Plan

HR planning is an essential part of any business. Without this plan, an organisation may find itself with a badly balanced people structure, which can cause productivity to be less efficient, and output to have a lower quality than necessary (Turner, 2002).
For example, when recruiting and selecting it is important that an organisation recognises where gaps lie regarding skills that are needed, and personalities which will complement the other employees.
In some organisations, they may realise that training and re-training their staff is essential, because it may not be realistic to find someone already qualified with the required skills. Although this may come as an expense to the company, it is necessary for its functions that employees understand their roles.
By offering career progression opportunities to its current employees, a company can reduce its staff turnover, and therefore may find skills get developed slowly through experience. Also, by transferring staff that are already trained or skilled to other branches of the organisation, they can also save funding and time.
When a business is having financial difficulties, it must anticipate how many employees it can afford to keep, and how much it can afford to pay them. The organisation must plan to avoid over employment, and so avoid redundancies.


Person Specification

When drafting a personal specification for a job role, there are 7 important points to consider (BOLA, 2010). These are known as Rodger’s seven point person specification. For example, when creating a specification for a university lecturer, the following features may be expected.

Physical makeup: The lecturer must have good communication skills, so speech and body language must be appropriate.

Attainments: Lecturers must be qualified to teach the subject or module, and so employers would be looking at how specific their experience and qualifications are.

Intelligence: A lecturer must be able to build and deconstruct ideas with its students, as an ability to analyse things critically is what will help others to learn from them.

Special aptitudes: If the employer is looking for a specialised lecturer, which they probably would be, then it is important that the lecture has a specialist understanding and knowledge in that subject.

Interests: Out of work interests are not likely to be of any concern when recruiting a lecturer, unless it involves some level of relevant experience. The employer will need to know if any work based compromises will be expected, regarding other jobs, hobbies, or commitments.

Disposition: Many people will be dependent on the lecturer to be reliable. Therefore they must have a good attendance history. People skills are also important, because a good lecturer-student relationship will improve the learning experience for the student.

Circumstances: The lecturer needs to be easily accessible to the university. Therefore, the lecturer needs ideal travel conditions, such as car ownership, or reliable public transport options.


Labour Questions

When a large organisation is thinking about starting up a new branch in new territory, it must consider the factors which will contribute to its labour situation. For example, what kind of people would Waitrose expect to employ if it opened a store in High Wycombe?
They would firstly need to question the level of competition in the area. Are there any other large supermarkets in its locality, and what’s its appeal? They must then decide whether or not they can compete, and have a market. Waitrose can usually be found mostly in high income areas, as it specialises in high quality groceries, which are more costly than most supermarkets.
If the areas unemployment levels are high, Waitrose will have no trouble finding employees, and these employees will be more likely to work for a lower wage and less benefits, because they know there is little work elsewhere. However, if unemployment levels are low, there will be less people wanting work, and Waitrose will have to be less selective and do more to accommodate its employee’s needs. They may expect to be paid a higher wage. If Waitrose were to not cooperate, they may find themselves with a high staff turnover.
Dependent on the area, it’s possible that Waitrose may find they have to deal with skill shortages. If the there are many people who are skilled or qualified to do the jobs, then that means they would not need to offer as much training. However, if the employees are lacking in skills, the training schemes could be quite costly and time consuming for the company.

So in summary, the following questions need to be asked. What’s the competition? What are the unemployment levels? What wages would be expected by the employees? What training will be required? What are the patterns of employment in the area?


References:

BOLA (2010) Recruitment: Alec Rodger: seven point plan. [online]. Available from: http://www.bola.biz/recruitment/rodger.html [Accessed 20 April 2010]

Turner, P (2002) HR forecasting and planning. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development