Section Three SUMMARY
This section has reviewed the changing environment that has
increased both the strategic importance and the difficulty of
human resource planning. Organizations are concerned about
having an adequate supply of successors for their top-level
positions who will have the experiences and skills needed to
provide leadership in this century. With the recognition of
human resources as a source of competitive advantage, human
resource planning will have a larger strategic role in the future.
Along with increasing strategic importance, there also has been
a trend toward decentralization of the responsibilities for
human resource planning to line mangers.
Aside from the benefits of such planning, the problems
that organizations incur when they fail to plan also were
discussed. Such problems include having shortages or surpluses
of employees with various skills and experiences, as well as
higher operating costs, which result from failures to include
staffing projections in strategic plans. A number of managerial
issues related to planning also were discussed. These issues
included the importance of human resource planning to
individual managers, the changing receptivity toward human
resource planning, and the paradox of the value of planning.