l Human resource planning (often referred to, especially in the public sector, as
workforce planning)– assessing future business needs and deciding on the
numbers and types of people required.l Developing the organization’s employee value proposition and its employer
brand.l Resourcing plans– preparing plans for finding people from within the
organization and/or for learning and development programmes to help
people learn new skills. If needs cannot be satisfied from within the
organization, it involves preparing longer-term plans for ensuring that
recruitment and selection processes will satisfy them.l Retention strategy– preparing plans for retaining the people the organi-
zation needs.l Flexibility strategy– planning for increased flexibility in the use of human
resources to enable the organization to make the best use of people and
adapt swiftly to changing circumstances.l Talent management strategy– ensuring that the organization has the
talented people it requires to provide for management succession and
meet present and future business needs (see Chapter 15).HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING
Defined
Human resource or workforce planning determines the human resources
required by the organization to achieve its strategic goals. As defined by
Bulla and Scott (1994) it is ‘the process for ensuring that the human resource
requirements of an organization are identified and plans are made for satis-
fying those requirements’. Human resource planning is based on the belief
that people are an organization’s most important strategic resource. It is
generally concerned with matching resources to business needs in the longer
term, although it will sometimes address shorter-term requirements. It
addresses human resource needs both in quantitative and in qualitative
terms. This means answering two basic questions: 1) how many people? and
2) what sort of people? Human resource planning also looks at broader
issues relating to the ways in which people are employed and developed in
order to improve organizational effectiveness. It can therefore play an
important part in strategic human resource management.
Link to business planning
Human resource planning should be an integral part of business planning.
The strategic planning process defines projected changes in the types of
Employee resourcing strategy l 157