This document provides an overview of human resource planning. It discusses the introduction, purpose, history, key features, reasons for, importance of, and factors influencing human resource planning. The history section outlines human resource planning from ancient times through the present day. Key features include it being an ongoing, long-term process that is closely related to corporate planning. Reasons for planning include attracting and retaining staff, ensuring effective utilization of employees, and anticipating changes in labor supply. The importance of planning is that it enables organizations to maximize human resource utilization and better achieve objectives. Factors influencing planning can be internal, such as organizational objectives and leadership style, or external, such as government policies and economic conditions.

1. OVERVIEW OF HUMAN
RESOURCE PLANNING
LESSON 1
Katopola, D.A © 2016: NIT

2. What is covered in this lesson?
i. Introduction to human resource planning
ii. Purpose of human resource planning
iii. History of human resource planning
iv. Key features of human resource planning
v. Reasons for human resource planning
vi. Importance of human resource planning
vii. Barriers to human resource planning
viii. Factors influencing human resource planning
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3. What is HRP?
• Is the process of anticipating and making provision for the
movement of people into, within, and out of the work
organization (Sherman, Bohlander, & Snell, 1998, p. 124).
• HR planning as traditionally practiced focuses attention on
quantity, the number of people, rather than the quality, or
underlying characteristics (talents or competencies), of
people.
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4. Primary purpose
• Its primary purpose is to enable the work organization to
maximize the utilization of its human resources by
ensuring that the right number of people, of the right
abilities, are available to perform in correspondingly right
job positions at the right time.
• Human resources planning helps work organizations to
implement their short- and long-term business plans. Due
to the pivotal role of human resources to the performance
of organizations, human resources planning is a very
important part of the strategic plan of any work
organization.
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5. Cont.
• To have excellent HR planning process, planners must
establish and maintain a human resource management
system in which to store, update, and, most important,
instantaneously access information about workers'
competencies. An information management system must
display clearly the expertise available in the organization.
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6. 4 Key features of HRP
1. HRP is a continuing process. i.e. Business environment is
dynamic. So HRP should keep on changing to meet the
dynamic nature of the environment.
2. It is both short-term and long-term but with specific
emphasis on longer-term survival of the organization. So
HRP has to be changed for the organization to survive
longer.
3. It is closely related to corporate planning process. That is
why HRM is a strategic functions. E.g. Opening more
branches is associated with the increasing number of HR.
4. The resources should be at a level required for
organizational effectiveness. i.e. all the HR plans should be
in accordance to the available resources.
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7. History of HRP
• The origin of human resource planning can be traced
using the six (6) phases below:
i. Great Pyramids Construction Period (2630 B.C)
ii. Neo-Classical Economist Period (1800s)
iii. Scientific managers’ period (1841 – 1920s)
iv. Deep recession period (1950s – 1960s)
v. Human resource school of management thought (1970s – 1980s)
vi. Human resource planning today
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8. Great Pyramids Construction Period (2630 B.C)
• Basically, there must have been some HR planning going
on, even in earliest times. It is hard to imagine that the
builders of the Great Pyramids in Egypt (2630 B.C – 2611
B.C).
• Yet records from that time do not exist to reveal how
managers planned for their human resources
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9. Neo-Classical Economist Period (1800s)
• Some classical economist took some trouble to lay the
foundations of human resource planning. This is proved
by Ward, Tripp and Maki, 2013 in their book titled,
“Positioned Strategic Workforce Planning that Gets the
Right Person in the Right Job”.
• Alfred Marshall was calling for the analysis and for labour needs in
organisations.
• As a founder of neoclassical economics, he brought supply and
demand, marginal utility and costs of production into a coherent
whole.
• This concept is being used to date.
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10. Scientific managers’ period (1841 –
1920s)
• This era was the origin of manpower planning. Among the
first to raise the manpower-planning issue was the
Frenchman Henri Fayol (1841–1925).
• His famous fourteen points of management are still
considered valid today.
• One point had to do with what Fayol called stability of
tenure of personnel.
• For Fayol, administrators bear responsibility to plan for
human resources, ensuring that “human and material
organization is consistent with the objectives, resources,
and requirements of the business concern” (Fayol, 1930
as cited by Rothwell & Kazanas in 2003).
• This point resembles some modern definitions of HRP.
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11. Deep recession period (1950s – 1960s)
• A deep recession in the late 1950s sparkled the need for a new
way of thinking about management.
• People were increasingly viewed as assets—human
resources—that could be either developed or wasted.
• Human creativity and job satisfaction are still two of the most
important concerns of management.
• The 1960s also spawned the term manpower planning. Initial
manpower planning efforts were typically tied to annual
budgeting, as is still the case in some organizations. - Early
planners were more often found in planning and budgeting
departments than in personnel or HR departments.
• However, it was a need to budget, not a desire to stimulate
creativity or increase productivity that spurred them.
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12. Human resource school of management
thought (1970s – 1980s)
• As the Human Resources school of management thought
grew in importance throughout the 1970s, manpower
planning activities gradually shifted to personnel
departments.
• At the same time, the term human resources planning
supplanted manpower planning.
• Likewise, personnel departments were renamed human
resource departments, reflecting a new and more
pronounced emphasis on the human side of the
enterprise.
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13. Human resource planning today
• Human resource practitioners and other contemporary
observers of the management scene have expressed a
growing awareness ever since the 1990s that people
represent a key asset in competitiveness.
• Without the creative application of human knowledge
and skill, organizations would not be formed and would
not thrive for long.
• Human beings thus represent intellectual capital to be
managed, just like other forms of capital
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14. Reasons for HRP
1. To attract and retain staffs in sufficient numbers & competencies
2. To have effective utilizations of employees or staff
3. To ensure that employees receive all the training and development
necessary for effective performance in their current
jobs/positions/roles.
4. To anticipate and meet the changes in the demand of labour
supply. Because the labour market is dynamic.
5. To meet future HR requirements from its own internal sources.
E.g. through promotion i.e. succession plans as one of the ways of
motivating employees.
6. To ensure that equal opportunity for development and promotion
are available to all employees.
7. To keep control over human resources cost. i.e. have optimal cost
pertaining to Human Resources.
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15. Need/Importance of Human Resources
Planning
The importance of any management function can best be discussed
from the point of view of the advantages derived from its effective and
efficient performance. Accordingly, a good and well implemented
human resources plan enables the organization to reap the following
major benefits (Ngirwa, 2006) :
• (1) It enables the organization to maximize the utilization of its
human resources. Almost all the time, the organization has the right
numbers and quality of employees for its jobs, thus eliminating idle
labour power, and overwork of employees.
•
• (2) It enables a better achievement of the organization's
objectives; by ensuring that management efforts are made in good
time to avail the requisite labour power for the organization's
performance processes.
•
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16. Cont…
• (3) It enables the organization to economize on its recruitment function. An
organization with poor or without human resources planning wastes money hiring the
wrong numbers or quality of employees. Such an organization also cannot screen and
validate the applicants' qualifications properly and therefore compels the organization
to invest in extravagant additional training for the new recruits before they can work at
anticipated performance standards.
•
• (4) It enables the organization to organize successful exit plans for the advantages
of the employees and the organization. Work organizations with poor or without human
resources planning cannot put in place employee succession programmes that prepare
younger staff to take over from retiring staff; they cannot give retiring staff useful
preparatory counseling; they are also unable to make the right preparations to meet
their financial obligations to retiring employees.
•
• (5) It increases the organization's information base to the advantage of the human
resources department and other departments. Such information forms a basis for
correct decisions in the implementation of core and non-core human resources
programmes.
•
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17. Cont…
• (6) It enables the organization to make a more effective and
efficient use of the labour market. An organization with good human
resources planning, approaches the labour market at the right time
and knows what it is looking for in terms of quantities and quality. On
the internal labour market, the human resources department knows
accurately and at the press of a button the available candidates, their
ability particulars from which to proceed to determine the
organization's readiness to spare them for the vacant jobs. In both
the internal and external markets, the human resources department
can accurately describe the human and industrial engineering
requirements of the job so that it is able to attract the right applicants.
• (7) It facilitates career or personal development. An organization
with poor or without human resources planning makes it difficult for its
employees to make plans for their personal development, because
they cannot clearly identify clear career paths, career opportunities,
and conditions for their access. As a result the more marketable and
ambitious employees seek employment in other organizations which
have clear career opportunities.
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18. Strategic Partners in HR Planning
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19. Factors Influencing HRP
• Human resources planning is influenced by various factors. These factors are both internal
to the work organization and external to it.
• Internal Factors
• Organisational Objectives.
• The objectives of the organisation are its goals. These can be general or overall objectives
e.g. producing and marketing a reliable, low cost, fuel-efficient motor cycle. Organisational
objectives are also specific, particularly those that relate to key result areas. Specific
objectives for key result areas are objectives related to areas in which performance
determines the success of the organisation. Examples of objectives for key result areas
include: to increase the number of units of product Z by 10 percent by June 2016. General
organisational objectives must be further translated into directorate, departmental, and
sectional levels.
•
• The processes of achieving organizational objectives, whether general or specific necessarily
involve people. They necessitate the examination of the processes’ component activities in
relation to the available number of people. Consequently decisions must be made to recruit
additional staff or in rare cases, reduce available staff.
• The nature of tasks
• The nature of work influences human resources planning.
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20. Cont…
• Leadership Style
• The style of a leader or supervisor, i.e. his or her experience, how he or she guides and handles the
employees determines how many employees will be necessary to execute the work, as well as how
often these employees will have to be replaced.
• Work groups
• Work group dynamics influence human resources planning. For instance, the transfer of individual
members of a group requires that the dynamics of his or her work group be taken into consideration.
• EXTERNAL FACTORS
• Government Policies
• Government policies may stipulate requirements or regulations which, for example require that only
employees with particular specialised qualifications are allowed to carry out certain functions.
• Economic Conditions
• Economic conditions can exercise an important influence on planning for employment. For
example, in an economic slump the economy becomes less active and constrains employment.
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21. Cont…
 Labour Market Conditions
• The labour market generally keeps changing and at any given time, has particular
conditions for each occupation or profession. For instance in Tanzania, during the
nineteen seventies and eighties, the labour market demanded lots of accounting staff
as a result of strict conditions laid down by the National Board for Accountants and
Auditors (NBAA). But during the nineteen nineties and early two thousands, the labour
market demanded less accounting staff and lots of qualified human resources
management staff probably as a result of economic liberalisation policies.
• Trade Unions
• Trade unions can set certain requirements with regard to number and type of
employees for specific tasks.
• Changes in Technology
• Advancement in technology e.g. in information technology, calls for recruitment of
qualified IT experts but also displaces employees who used to perform given manual
tasks.
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22. PROBLEMS OF HRP
• HRP is very complex than planning for other resources i.e. Non-human resources. This
is due to;
1. People are unpredictable. i.e. they can easily upset your plans.
2. People are different. i.e. they have differences in experiences, professions and
culture.
3. Insufficient management support.
4. Shortage of fund for planning process, as the entire process of planning requires
money.
5. Shortage of Human Resources experts, as many orgs employ people with
irrelevant qualifications.
6. Inactive Human Resource Department, in Tanzania consider the tendencies that
underrate HRM profession.
7. Poor involvement of line managers.
8. Poor information base as the entire process of planning requires information.
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23. Q & A
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