Section ThreeContribution to Strategic Human
Resource Management
Aside from anecdotal evidence on the strategic importance of
human resource planning, surveys of company practices also
provide an indication of its increasing importance for strategic
applications. A survey asked human resource executives from
137 companies to indicate the reasons why their companies
engaged in human resource forecasting, which is a major
component of human resource planning. The top three reasons
were for developing their human resources (77.6 percent), for
avoiding personnel shortages (73.1 percent), and to obtain
information for decisions (73.1 percent). A second set of
reasons for human resource forecasting included the following:
affirmative action efforts (63.6 percent), budgeting (62.1
percent), and career planning (59.7 percent). As noted earlier,
forecasts are probably needed for the development of
estimates of when affirmative action goals can be reached.^
Similarly, another survey has found an association between the
development of affirmative action strategies and human
resource planning.^8
7