HUMAN RESOURCE

MANAGEMENT
Personal Planning and Recruiting
Employment Planning
• It is the process of deciding what positions the firm will have to fill, and how to fill them
• Its aim is to identify and address the gaps between the employer’s workforce today, and its
projected workforce needs
• Workforce planning is done for recruitment and selection
• Following steps are involved in the employment planning:
i. reviews the business plan and workforce data
ii. identify what positions need to fill and potential workforce gaps, workforce supply and
demand projections
iii. develop a workforce strategic plan; prioritize key workforce gaps such as, what positions will
have to be filled, and who can fill them?
iv. identify specific training and other plans for filling any gaps
v. Finally implement the changes (for instance, new recruiting and training programs), and use
various metrics to monitor the process
Strategy and Workforce Planning
• Decide the number of and types of positions to be filled
• decisions regarding how to fill these positions
• These decisions will impact other HR plans, like training and
recruitment plans
• three sets of employment forecasts: 1) personnel needs (demand),
2) supply of inside candidates, 3) supply of outside candidates
• the manager can identify supply–demand gaps, and develop action
plans to fill the projected gaps
Forecasting Personnel Needs (Labor
Demand)
• Forecasting workforce demand therefore starts with estimating what the demand will be for your
products or services
• Short term, management is concerned with daily, weekly, and seasonal forecasts
• Longer term, managers follow industry publications and economic forecasts closely, to try to get a
sense for future demand
• Such future predictions won’t be precise, but should help you address the potential changes in
demand
• The basic process for forecasting personnel needs is to forecast revenues first
• Then estimate the size of the staff required to support this sales volume
• However, managers must also consider other factors like i) projected turnover, ii) decisions
to upgrade (or downgrade) products or services, iii) productivity changes, iv) financial resources, v)
decisions to enter or leave businesses
• The basic tools for projecting personnel needs include trend analysis, ratio analysis, and the scatter
plot.
Trend analysis
• Trend analysis means studying variations in the firm’s employment
levels over the past few years. For example, compute the number of
employees at the end of each of the last 5 years in each subgroup
(like sales, production, secretarial, and administrative) to identify
trends
• Trend analysis can provide an initial rough estimate of future staffing
needs.
• However, employment levels rarely depend just on the passage of
time. Other factors (like productivity and retirements), and changing
skill needs influence impending workforce needs
Ratio analysis
• Ratio analysis, means making forecasts based on the historical ratio
between (i) some causal factor (like sales volume) and (ii) the number
of employees required (such as number of sales people). Suppose a
salesperson traditionally generates $500,000 in sales. If the sales
revenue to salespeople ratio remains the same, you would require six
new salespeople next year (each of whom produces an extra $500,000)
to produce a hoped-for extra $3 million in sales.
• Like trend analysis, ratio analysis assumes that things like productivity
remain about the same
• If sales productivity rise or fall, the ratio of sales to sales people would
change
Scatter plot
• A scatter plot shows graphically how two variables—such as sales and
firm’s staffing levels—are related. If they are, then you can forecast
the business activity (like sales), you should also be able to estimate
your personnel needs
• For example, suppose a 500-bed hospital expects to expand to 1,200
beds over the next 5 years. The human resource director wants to
forecast how many registered nurses the hospital will need
• The human resource director realizes he/she must determine the
relationship between hospital size (in number of beds) and number of
nurses required
• Drawbacks of scatter plots:
i. Historical sales/personnel relationships assume that the firm’s
existing activities and skill needs will continue as is
ii. They tend to reward managers for adding employees, irrespective
of the company’s needs
iii. They tend to institutionalize existing ways of doing things, even in
the face of change
• Computerized systems and Excel spreadsheets help managers
translate estimates of projected productivity and sales levels into
forecastable personnel requirements
• Managerial judgment:
• Few historical trends, ratios, or relationships will continue unchanged
into the future
• Judgment is thus needed to adjust the forecast
• Important factors that may modify initial forecast of personnel
requirements include decisions to upgrade quality or enter into new
markets; technological and administrative changes resulting in
increased productivity; and financial resources available, like, a
projected budget crunch
Forecasting the Supply of Inside
Candidates
• The personnel demand forecast provides only half the staffing equation, by answering the
question like how many employees in what positions will we need?
• Next, the manager must forecast the supply (availability) of inside and outside candidates
• Most firms start with possible inside candidates. The main task here is determining which
current employees are qualified or trainable for the projected openings
• Department managers or owners of smaller firms can use manual devices to track
employee qualifications (or will simply know who can do what)
• For example, you can create your own personnel skills inventory and development record
form for each current employee, list the person’s skills, education, company-sponsored
courses taken, career and development interests, languages, desired assignments, and
other relevant experiences
• Computerized versions of skills inventory systems can also be used
Personnel replacement charts
• Provide other options for the firm’s top positions
• In personnel replacement charts company records showing present
performance and promotability of inside candidates for the most
important positions
• This data for each position can be used for potential replacement
• As an alternative, with a position replacement card, you may create a
card for each position, showing possible replacements as well as their
present performance, promotion potential, and training
Markov Analysis
• Employers also use a mathematical process known as Markov analysis
(or “transition analysis”) to forecast availability of internal job
candidates.
• Markov analysis involves creating a matrix that shows the
probabilities that employees in the chain of feeder positions for a key
job (such as from junior engineer, to engineer, to senior engineer, to
engineering supervisor, to director of engineering) will move from
position to position and therefore be available to fill the key position
Forecasting the Supply of Outside
Candidates
• If there won’t be enough skilled inside candidates to fill the anticipated
openings (or you want to go outside for another reason), the firm may turn to
outside candidates
• Forecasting workforce availability depends first on the manager’s own sense of
what’s happening in his or her industry and locale. For example,
unemployment rates above 7% a few years ago signaled to HR managers that
finding good candidates might be easier
• The manager then supplements such observations with formal labor market
analyses. For example, look for economic projections online from the official
websites, data banks
• The firm may also forecast specific occupations, reports projections for most
occupations
Predictive Workforce Monitoring
• Workforce planning involves paying continuous attention to workforce
planning issues
• Managers call it predictive workforce monitoring
• For example, Intel Corporation conducts semiannual “Organization
Capability” Assessments
• The staffing department works with the firm’s business heads twice a
year to assess workforce needs—both immediate and up to 2 years in
the future
Succession Planning
• Succession planning involves developing workforce plans for the
company’s top positions
• Succession planning is the ongoing process of systematically
identifying, assessing, and developing organizational leadership to
enhance performance
• It entails three steps: identify key position needs, develop inside
candidates, and assess and choose those who will fill the key positions
1. Identify key position needs
i. Based on the company’s strategic and business plans, top
management and the human resource director identify what the
company’s future key position needs will be
ii. It includes defining key positions and “high potentials,” reviewing
the company’s current talent, and creating (based on the
company’s strategy) skills profiles for the key positions
2. Develop inside candidates
• After identifying future key positions, management creates candidates
for these jobs
• Creating means identifying inside or outside candidates and providing
them with the developmental experiences they require to be viable
candidates
• Employers develop high-potential employees through internal training
and cross-functional experiences, job rotation, external training, and
global/regional assignments
3. Choose those who will fill the key
positions
• Finally, succession planning requires assessing these candidates and
selecting those who will actually fill the key positions
Developing and Using application
Forms
• Purpose of Application Forms:
• With a pool of applicants, the prescreening process begins
• The application form is usually the first step in this process (some firms first require a brief,
prescreening interview or online test)
• A filled-in application provides four types of information:
i. First, you can make judgments on substantive matters, such as whether the applicant has
the education and experience to do the job
ii. Second, you can draw conclusions about the applicant’s previous progress and growth,
especially important for management candidates
iii. Third, you can draw tentative conclusions about the applicant’s stability based on previous
work record (although years of downsizing suggest the need for caution here)
iv. Fourth, you may be able to use the data in the application to predict which candidates will
succeed on the job
Application Guidelines
• Ineffective use of the application can cost the employer dearly
• In the “Employment History” section, request detailed information on
each prior employer, including the name of the supervisor and his or
her e-mail address and telephone number; this is essential for
reference checking
• In signing the application, the applicant should certify that falsified
statements may be cause for dismissal, that investigation of credit and
employment and driving record is authorized, that a medical
examination and drug screening tests may be required, and that
employment is for no definite period
• Estimates of how many applicants exaggerate their qualifications
• Therefore, make sure applicants complete the form and sign a
statement on it indicating that the information is true
• The court will almost always support a discharge for falsifying
information when applying for work
• Finally, doing a less-than-complete job of filling in the form may
reflect poor work habits
• Some applicants scribble “see résumé attached” on the application.
This is not acceptable. You need the signed, completed form