Effective HRP involves more than a year-end head count. Human-resource planners work with financial and marketing planners to ensure that corporate growth areas will be adequately staffed through recruitment, training, and development
To assist in this planning, HRP departments typically are divided into areas which supply necessary data and information: human-resource information systems (HRIS); human-resource accounting; career planning; succession planning; and equal-employment-opportunity and affirmative-action planning.
Human Resource Information Systems: Some form of HRIS is necessary to control and coordinate personnel activities. Although a small firm may not need a computerized system, medium and large companies need an HRIS to identify emerging problems and assist in evaluation and control. The amount of information and reports from all HRM areas can be overwhelming for a manual record-keeping system.
An HRIS can serve each area of HRM. For example, the system can provide compensation calculations and analyze EEO work-force composition statistics quickly and accurately. Likewise, information in the system can help make recruitment and selection decisions. HRIS analysts also serve basic administration needs by maintaining and updating personnel records.
HRIS's greatest impact is on human-resource planning. As an HRIS analyst, you would produce reports including information on skills inventories, career paths, career ladders, organizational charts, and availability data. Sophisticated systems can forecast future availability of talent and assist HR planners in analyzing the effects of current personnel policies on future availability. You might run simulations of environmental and organizational conditions, turnover rates, promotion rates, performance ratings, potential ratings, training and development programs, and career ladders. For example, an HR planner may ask, "If we maintain our present promotion and management development policies, will we have enough middle management talent to add a new division in five years?" You would then prepare a forecasting program to simulate future conditions, using employee career path selections, performance and potential ratings, attrition rates, and current training and promotion policies to derive a five-year prediction of managerial talent availability. From this the HR planner can determine whether a shortage is expected. By altering the model's parameters (i.e., changing a promotion rate or expanding a training program), the planner can study the effects of policy changes on future availability of talent.
Adaptability to changing conditions is crucial for organizations. HRIS helps improve adaptability through the rapid and versatile exchange and manipulation of data, and facilitates planning through the use of forecasting and simulation techniques. Many organizations are now computerizing HRP activities. Over the next decade, the need for appropriate skills in this area is likely to increase. The demand for managers, systems analysts, and programmers specializing in human-resource planning programs should continue to grow.
Human Resource Accounting: As a human-resource accountant (HRA), you would analyze the financial aspects of human-resource programs. You would help management analyze personnel and budget actions by performing cost/benefit analyses. For example, you might calculate turnover statistics and determine which variables, such as compensation, sales volume, and unemployment rate, have the greatest impact on turnover. Using these analyses you can suggest ways to reduce costs, reduce turnover, and improve recruiting policies. You might also examine compensation levels to ensure external competitiveness and internal fairness, or to determine if a layoff is cost-effective.
Human-resource cost estimates are often required in capital budgeting decisions, as well as decisions whether to hire experienced people or train inexperienced ones. In addition, HR accountants design reporting systems for HR costs to provide relevant information to shareholders and investors, allocate personnel to projects or operating units, or examine the sources of overhead costs.
In recent years, HRA activities have increased considerably; about 25 percent of the companies surveyed in the mid-70s either had already implemented or were in the process of developing HRA systems.
Career Planning: Traditional approaches to HRP focused on skills, and included a job skill analysis, assessment and evaluation of talent, and development of skill inventories. Contemporary approaches also include career planning programs which yield an inventory of available skills and examine the availability of talent for the future through monitoring present employees' career development.
One aspect of career planning is the development of a realistic awareness of career paths. Although there may be few formal paths between positions, the planner identifies possible lines of progression through jobs in an organization or division. The career-planning specialist's definition of work activities involves job content analysis, which provides data for many HRP areas. Job analysis integrates what employees say they do on the job with what managers say should be done. The planner then identifies personal requirements in terms of necessary skills and knowledge, based on the defined work activities.
These requirements are grouped into positions and job families, which are used as a basis for charting career paths and HRP decisions. Because of the multiple uses of job analyses, organizations assign personnel from various areas of HRM to do them, including recruiters, compensation analysts, and human-resource planners.
Once the specialist has developed career paths, career-related information is communicated to employees through pamphlets, newsletters, bulletin boards, and the like. Many companies feel that, although they are responsible for compiling and sharing relevant information, employees are responsible for individual career planning. It is to a corporation's benefit, however, to help generate as many employee career plans within the organization as possible. This is usually accomplished by career counselors who assist employees in identifying career opportunities and training and development activities to prepare them for target jobs. Effective career counseling uses information from all areas of the organization to help employees design a realistic personal-action plan and take charge of their own career.
Career-planning workshops provide another method for communicating career information. Although workshops are usually created by the training and development unit, a human-resource career planner will often assist in the design and implementation stages, and will process the data gathered. This activity involves summarizing employee career plans, reviewing training and development activities, and accounting for time considerations to forecast talent availability. Career planners then incorporate performance ratings, evaluations of potential, and attrition factors to improve the forecast.
Succession Planning: A primary concern of human-resource planning is to ensure that the organization has the necessary managerial, technical, and support talent available in the future. The continual presence of a competent management force is critical to the success of an organization. Managers are often highly skilled and require substantial time to develop their expertise. Moreover, they are usually highly paid, and their loss, particularly to competitors, can have a severe impact on an organization. Succession planning has emerged in organizations in order to (1) plan for better training and development of the talent required to meet future business needs, and (2) demonstrate organizational commitment to employee growth, development, and satisfaction. Succession planning is most effective in combination with a career-planning program; the inclusion of employee career aspirations in the succession plan results in a more practical forecast of available talent.
As a succession planner your primary responsibility would be to construct a replacement chart. This chart displays who are the most likely replacements for high-level managerial positions, and the time frame for the replacement. This involves an ongoing process of gathering and coordinating data on employee demographics, skills, abilities, and career plans. Data on employees' performance level, long-range promotability, salary grade, position title, years of service, years to retirement, readiness for promotion, and probability of loss, as well as career goals and aspirations, must be included in the replacement chart.
Once you construct a replacement chart, you can identify organizational areas where shortages and surpluses of promotable people exist, pinpoint promotional blockages, and identify managers who are good (or bad) developers of people. You can also identify individuals who need development and their specific needs. This suggests integration of career succession activities with training and development, as well as with recruiting.
In this work you must have a thorough knowledge of the career paths available to employees, and may assist in the development of career ladders. Interaction with job analysts to facilitate this process is common. You also need to be able to appraise performance and evaluate potential techniques in order to select the most qualified candidates for a position.
Equal employment opportunity (EEO) and affirmative action planning (AAP): EEO AAP coordinates management efforts to meet the requirements of all government regulations and laws regarding discrimination, equal employment opportunity, and affirmative action.
As an EEO administrator, you would interpret government rules and regulations and recommend appropriate compliance and affirmative action for the company's benefit. You must develop, analyze, interpret and submit EEO statistical reports and other relevant information demonstrating the effectiveness of the company's programs. You might represent the organization in government-conducted compliance reviews-on the federal, state, or local level-and also maintain a liaison role with minority and women's organizations and other community groups. You would process charges and complaints, often working with company lawyers on discrimination charges. Fact-finding is a major responsibility when complaints are filed; in these situations you would develop and present evidence and expert viewpoints. You also would write and review reports for submission to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and regularly develop systems to monitor and measure progress.
As an EEO worker you also work with training and development staff to increase minority participation in upward mobility programs, and work with individual managers who are responsible for helping meet AAP goals. You must be aware of current legislation and understand its impact on the organization. You must be able to deal with complaints diplomatically and be investigative. You will also have to write clear, succinct reports.
In summary, the human-resource planner may be involved in any of the five essential areas of activity described above: human-resource information systems, human-resource accounting, career planning, succession planning, and EEO-AAP. In each of these areas the HR planner is at the core of all HRM activities, which include recruitment, selection, and staffing decisions; compensation and benefits; employee and labor relations; and training and development.
