Ortaliza, Eden Mae R.

HR – ELEC 104
CBET – 17 – 602E S 5:00 – 8:00pm

CASE STUDY 1-1

1. What accounts for John’s problem?

John P. Mcquillan is a business management student and he is

interested to pursue his career in personnel management particularly in
Human Resource Planning. John is taking a research for a term paper in
his graduate seminar in Human Resource Planning and decided to talk to
an HR planner to gain information. He telephoned the personnel
departments of large local employers to find an HR planning specialist but
had no luck in finding one. In addition, he has been unable to find a single
organization in which Human Resource Planning has been made a distinct
structural component in an organization. John is confused because the
assigned readings for the graduate seminar imply that HRP is common.
Hence, in this case study, it is determined that John’s problem is he can’t
find an HR planner specialist who he want to talk to for his research and
he also unable to find an organization with a Human Resource Planning
department.

2. How might John go about finding HRP by virtue of roles enacted by

practitioners? Where should he look for them in organizations that do not
possess a formal HR planning department? Why do you think so?

John might go about finding Human Resource Planning by

determining the virtue of roles an HR practitioner enacted in an
organization. These HR planners do more than act as technical specialists
and they also act as the highest-level decision makers in their respective
departments in an organization. They mainly focus on the human side of
the enterprise. The roles enacted by HR planners and potentially by all HR
practitioners engaged at one time or another with activities associated with
Human Resource Planning and these roles are HR-organizational
coordinator, Work analyst, HR auditor, HR forecaster, HR planning,
integrator and evaluator. These roles thus match up to many activities that
have frequently and typically been linked to HRP. With these roles
enacted by the HR practitioners, John will certainly find out the Human
Resource Planning.

Based on what I’ve research, if there is no formal Human Resource

Planning department in an organization, this field may fall in the Human
Resource Management Department, Operational Management
Department and in Corporate Strategic Management Department. These
are the departments that John should look for in an organization that do
not possess a formal HR planning department specially the Human
Resource Management Department since it mainly focus in the HR field
and it is considered as the counterpart to strategic business planning. In
addition, John should not also just look for an HR planning specialist by
just using the job title or position title. He should look for them in terms of
roles because based on the role theory, role does not mean the same
thing as “job title”, rather, it connotes an organized set of behaviors
belonging to an identifiable office or position. After all, HR practitioners in
some organizations wear many hats or titles. They tend to be generalists
and typically bear titles like HR planner specialist. There is an instances
that practitioners are given titles like “compensation specialist,” “technical
trainer,” “learning officer,” and “recruiter.” The title “HR planner” or some
variation of it is only rarely found in small or medium-sized firms. Hence, it
really makes more sense to look for them in terms of roles rather than job
titles only.