Challenges of Human Resource Planning (HRP)

The challenges to HRP include forces that are constantly changing. These include employees getting sick, promoted, vacationing, or leaving for another job. HRP ensures the best fit between workers and jobs, avoiding shortages and surpluses in the employee pool.

To help prevent future roadblocks and satisfy their objectives, HR managers have to make plans to do the following:

• Find and attract skilled employees.
• Select, train, and reward the best candidates.
• Cope with absences and deal with conflicts.
• Promote employees or let some of them go.

Investing in HRP is one of the most critical decisions a company can make. After all, a company is only as good as its employees, and a high level of employee engagement can be essential for a company’s success. If a company has the best employees and practices in place, it can mean the difference between sluggishness and productivity, helping to lead a company to profitability.

What Are the Four Steps to Human Resource Planning (HRP)?

Four general, broad steps are involved in the human resource planning process. Each step needs to be taken in sequence to arrive at the end goal, which is to develop a strategy that enables the company to successfully find and retain enough qualified employees to meet the company’s needs.

Analyzing labor supply

The first step of human resource planning is to identify the company’s current human resources supply. In this step, the HR department studies the organization’s strength based on the number of employees, their skills, qualifications, positions, benefits, and performance levels.

Forecasting labor demand

The second step requires the company to outline the future of its workforce. Here, the HR department can consider specific issues like promotions, retirements, layoffs, and transfers — anything that factors into a company’s future needs. The HR department can also look at external conditions impacting labor demand, such as new technology that might increase or decrease the need for workers.

Balancing labor demand with supply

The third step in the HRP process is forecasting the employment demand. HR creates a gap analysis that lays out specific needs to narrow the supply of the company’s labor versus future direction. This analysis will often generate a series of questions, such as:

• Should employees learn new skills?
• Does the company need more managers?
• Do all employees play to their strengths in their current roles?

Developing and implementing a plan

The answers to questions from the gap analysis help HR determine how to proceed, which is the final phase of the HRP process. HR must now take practical steps to integrate its plan with the rest of the company. The department needs a budget, the ability to implement the program, and a collaborative effort with all departments to execute that plan.

Standard HR policies after this fourth step may include vacation, holidays, sick days, overtime compensation, and termination guidelines.

What Is the Goal of Human Resource Planning (HRP)?

HR planning aims to have the optimal number of staff to make the most money for the company. Because the goals and strategies of a company change over time, human resource planning must adapt accordingly. Additionally, as globalization increases, HR departments must implement new practices to accommodate government labor regulations that vary from country to country.

Many corporations’ increased use of remote workers will also impact human resource planning and require HR departments to use new methods and tools to recruit, train, and retain workers.

Why Is Human Resource Planning Important?

Human resource planning (HRP) allows a business to maintain better and target the right talent to employ — having the right technical and soft skills to optimize their function within the company. It also allows managers to train the workforce better and help them develop the required skills.

What Is “Hard” vs. “Soft” Human Resource Planning?

Hard HRP evaluates various quantitative metrics to ensure that the correct number of people is available when needed by the company. Soft HRP focuses on finding employees with the right corporate culture, motivation, and attitude. Often these are used in tandem.