In today's society, where globalization and global interdependence create a new context for the work of small and medium-sized companies, it is clear that progress towards a better quality of life is based on the sum of joint efforts.
The historical responsibility that we live forces us to face the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities that are offered to us today.
Strategic planning is one of the most powerful tools that a small and medium-sized business can use to always move its business forward.
It is not exclusive to large transnational companies or huge corporations that we see shine in the business world at all times.
It is used by entrepreneurs with an entrepreneurial vision, for small and medium-sized companies that are the ones that most require and value it.
Today, companies must bear in mind that it is very important to have human resources planning in order to have optimal growth and achieve their objectives through the strategic plan designed by the organization.
Human resource planning concept.
It is a technique to determine in a systematic way the supply and demand of employees that an organization will have.
By determining the number and type of employees that would be needed, the personnel department can plan its recruitment, selection, training, and more. (Werther, William B. Jr., 2000)
This enables the personnel department to supply the organization with the right staff at the right time. For this reason it becomes a high priority activity.
Purposes:
- Use all these resources as effectively as possible, where and when they are needed, in order to achieve the goals of the organization Anticipate periods of labor shortages and oversupply Providing greater employment opportunities for women, minorities and the disabled Organize employee training programs.
Advantage:
- Improve the utilization of human resources Allow the coincidence of efforts of the personnel department with the overall objectives of the organization Economize in hiring Expand the personnel database to support other fields Assist in the coordination of various programs, such as obtaining better levels productivity through the contribution of more trained personnel.
A small organization can also achieve these advantages, but its improvement in effectiveness may be considerably less due to the smaller scale of its operations.
In fact, the advantages of Human Resources Planning.
Internal and external sources of demand for human resources.
The demand for human resources.
Organizations estimate their future staffing needs to prepare for their operational strategies. This process can be carried out formally or informally, sometimes considering the possible characteristics of the job offer.
The challenges that characterize the demand for human resources and the methods that exist to evaluate and estimate it require a brief explanation.
The future demand that an organization experiences in the field of human resources is essential for the planning of employment policies.
Most of the companies evaluate their future needs in this field.
Despite the fact that the demand for human resources is influenced by many challenges, changes in the environment, the organization and the workforce are usually present in the process. These factors appear in both short-term and long-term plans.
Causes of the demand. Many factors influence the demand for human resources in the organization and in the workforce.
The set of these factors influences corporate strategies and long-term plans that the organization formulates. Some of these factors are within the organization's area of control, while others are not, as illustrated in Figure 2.1.
Figure 1. Werther B. William, Jr. Personnel and Human Resources Management, Fifth Edition, Editorial McGrill, 2000
External challenges.
The changes that occur in the environment in which the organization exists and operates are difficult to predict in the short term and their long-term effects are sometimes almost impossible to assess.
- Factors of a social nature, even those of a political or legal nature, are a bit more difficult to predict, but their implications are not always clear.
In other cases the effect they will have on the organization is obvious.
- Technological changes are very difficult to predict, but very often they can radically alter all the human resource plans of the organization.
For example, many people considered that the appearance and introduction of computers in traditional Latin American societies would cause massive unemployment.
By contrast, computers have created thousands of jobs almost throughout the area. Computers, however, did not create uniform jobs at all levels; they adversely affected certain areas, such as accounting, while they increased the offer in others, such as Internet communication services departments.
Organization decisions.
- Strategic plans. An organization responds to the changes it perceives in its environment by making decisions that alter and modify its strategic plans.
These plans establish objectives such as growth rates and market penetration or the preparation and launch of new products and services.
To achieve long-term objectives, the managers and directors of the company, together with their human resources specialists, must design long-term resource plans.
- Budgets. In the short term, planners can formulate their actions using budgets, which are generally valid for one or two years. Organizations reflect their priorities and objectives in the human resources field through budget increases or cuts.
Production estimates and sales are not as accurate as estimates, but they can be quick indicators of short-term changes in demand for human resources.
- New operations, lines or products. The start of new activities within the organization also means the change in the characteristics of the human resources plans.
When a new operation is generated internally in an organization, the time required to implement the entire program may be sufficient to design human resource plans.
A merger of two companies, for example, can lead to a total reorganization, as well as fundamental changes in job design.
These reorganizations can profoundly modify the human resource needs of companies.
Workforce factors.
The demand for human resources experiences variations due to factors such as:
- Retirements, resignations, pregnancies, illnesses, dismissals, deaths, licenses
When these phenomena include considerable numbers of employees, the experience obtained on previous occasions can serve as an indicator of the action to be taken, always taking into account the new factors that may point to the coexistence of changing past practices.
Techniques for forecasting the demand and supply of human resources.
In the field of human resources, they consist of various practices that guide the determination of future personnel needs.
Based on experience:
- Formal decisions made by experts in the area. They are based on the opinions issued by a group of people widely familiar with the future human resources needs of the organization.
Since line managers make most of the hiring decisions, human resource planners must employ methods that enable them to learn about the personnel needs of those managers.
In smaller organizations the COO or HR manager may have all the information they need.
- Sampling. In larger organizations, the simplest method is to sample managers who are an authority on human resource needs in departments.
This sampling can consist of an informal survey, questionnaire, or discussion on the topic, using the nominal group technique.
- Nominal group technique. In this dynamic, a group of managers is presented with a basic issue, for example: What will be the factors that will most affect our demand for human resources for the coming year?
Each of the participants (between 5 and 15) proceeds to write the answers that they deem pertinent.
After 10 minutes the group's ideas are discussed, they are classified and each member is allowed to number them in order of importance, selecting the three or four most important ones.
- Delphi or Delphi technique. It is a technique of opinion polling, in this dynamic specific estimates are requested from a group of experts, usually at the managerial level.
Human resource planners act as intermediaries, summarize the responses obtained and report the results to the experts. The process is repeated until the group begins to agree on certain factors. Generally, four or five successive phases are enough to reach concrete results.
Based on trends.
Probably the most expeditious technique is projecting trends in the organization over the past. Now they present:
- Extrapolation.
By means of extrapolation it is necessary to extend past trends to future phases.
For example, if the average hiring of workers in the plant has been 20 workers per month, the extrapolation of this trend would mean in the future a need for 240 workers in the span of one year.
- Indexing.
It is a useful method for calculating future needs, by which a comparison is made between the increase in employment levels with a given index, such as the relationship between the number of workers in production departments and sales figures. of the company.
- Statistical analysis.
Of greater complexity, they use computer models that include factors such as variations in the external demand for the product. Statistical procedures use historical data to project future demand. Model processes can provide a simplified representation of human resource demand across the organization.
By altering the input data, human resources needs can be contrasted in different demand scenarios.
Among the statistical modeling techniques used to forecast human resource needs are the following:
a) Time series analysis. Historical staffing levels (rather than workload indicators) are used to project future human resource needs.
Historical personnel levels are studied to isolate seasonal and cyclical variations, long-term trends, and random movements. Long-term trends are then extrapolated using a moving average, exponential smoothing, or the regression technique.
b) Personnel ratios. Past personnel data is examined to determine historical relationships between the number of employees in various positions or job categories.
Regression analysis or productivity ratios are then used to project total needs or key groups of human resources, and staff ratios are used to assign total needs to various job categories or to estimate needs of non-key groups.
c) Productivity ratios. Historical data is used to examine the historical levels of a productivity index. Formula: p = Workload / Number of people. If consistent or consistent relationships are found, human resource needs can be calculated by dividing the expected workloads by p.
d) Regression analysis. Historical levels of various workload indicators, such as sales, production levels, and value added, are examined to find statistical relationships with staffing levels.
When sufficiently strong relationships are found, a regression (or multiple regression) model is obtained. The expected levels of the maintained indicators are passed into the resulting model and used to calculate the associated level of human resource needs.
Regression models have the advantage of sensitivity to changes in the organization's orientation, which makes it possible to identify the need to reassign personnel or modify staffing levels. Regression models work well when used with companies operating in a stable environment.
Based on other methods:
- Budget analysis and planning.
Organizations need to plan their resources usually have long-term plans and budgets. A study of the different budgets of the departments allows to know the financial allocations to hire new employees.
These data, plus extrapolations of changes in the workforce (including resignations, terminations, retirements, etc.), can provide short-term estimates of human resource needs. Long-term estimates can be estimated from the future plans of each department or division.
- Analysis of new operations.
When the emergence of new activities or company shifts complicates the human resource planning process, planners can use new business analysis, which requires making comparisons with companies doing similar activities.
- Computer models.
The most advanced and complex techniques for determining needs include the preparation of computer models, which simultaneously combine extrapolation through mathematical formulas, indexing, the results of various opinion polls, and estimates of changes in the workforce to determine staffing needs.
As time goes by, changes in the demand for human resources are used to refine and correct the formulas that computers use.
The more complex techniques are used in large organizations that have accumulated years of experience in the process of determining their staffing needs.
Labor market and human resources market.
The labor and human resources market is carried out through:
- Analysis of labor markets.
Success in identifying new employees depends on the job market, but also on the ability of human resources specialists to carry out this important task. Even when unemployment rates are high, it is difficult to find the right personnel for certain occupations.
A reality that is surprising to many recent graduates of human resources management careers is the fact that in the Spanish-speaking world, despite the high global unemployment rates that afflict a good part of its economies, unemployment among the groups professionals is well below the general unemployment level.
Even in countries where the rate where the general unemployment rate affects up to 35% of the economically active population, unemployment among professionals is considerably lower.
In certain specialized areas, the unemployment level remains below 4%, which in economic terms constitutes a practically total level of employment. These reasons show that it is not always easy to find the right person to carry out certain tasks.
Regardless of the unemployment rate, an organization's staffing needs can be met by attracting employees from other companies to the organization.
In the long term, community dynamism and demographic trends are the defining elements in labor markets. The dynamism of a community can translate into factors that profoundly affect the future of a company.
- Community attitudes. The level of impulse and promotion that a community provides to companies established in it or that consider operating in the area is of essential importance for the job market in which the organization must operate. Demographic aspects. The changes experienced by the population of a city, region or an entire country are elements that affect the supply and demand of labor in the long term, these trends are often predictable, within a certain margin.
Conclusions.
The planning of human resources will allow to identify the vision of the organization, where it is established what is the object of it and what is wanted from it, as well as what are the main weaknesses, opportunities, strengths and threats to direct the organization's efforts for development and growth, with a long-term projection.
This type of planning is conceived as the process that consists of deciding on the objectives of an organization, on the resources that will be used, and the general policies that will guide the acquisition and administration of such resources, considering the company as a total entity.
Human resource planning is one of the most powerful tools that a small and medium-sized business can use to always move its business forward.
It is not exclusive to large transnational companies or huge corporations that we see shine in the business world at all times.
It is used by entrepreneurs with an entrepreneurial vision, for small and medium-sized companies that are the ones that most require and value it.
Bibliography.
Wherther, William. Personnel management and human resources. Fifth edition. McGraw-Hill Publishing. 2000.
Chiavenato, Idalberto. Human resources management. Fifth Edition Editorial McGraw-Hill. 2000.
