HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING

HRP is the process by which an organization has right number and kind of people, at right place, at
right time, capable of effectively and efficiently completing tasks that will help the organization
achieve its objective.

Objective of HRP

 To forecast human resource requirement.

 To cope up with change.
 To promote employees in systematic manner.
 To use existing human productively.

Benefits of HRP

 Prepares people for future.

 Creates reservoir for people.
 Cuts cost.
 Helps in expanding or contracting the business.
 Succession planning.
 Problems/ Barriers to HRP (Human Resource Planning)
Human resource planning is as important is not so easy to make. The planners face various problems
while formulating human resource plans. The major ones are discussed as follows:
 People perceive that people are available in abundance in our labor surplus economy. Then,
why to spend time and money in forecasting human resources? Surprisingly, this perception
about human resource planning is also held by the top management.
 Another problem in human resource planning is that the demand for and supply of human
resources is not cent percent accurate. Experience suggests that longer the time horizon for
forecasting human resource requirements, greater is the possibility of inaccuracy in
estimates of human resource needs.
 Various types of uncertainties like labour turnover, absenteeism, seasonal employment,
market fluctuations and changes in technology render human resource planning ineffective.
The reason being these uncertainties makes human resource forecast mere a guess far from
reality.
 Sometimes human resource planning suffers from a conflict between quantitative and
qualitative approaches used for it. Some people view human resource planning as a mere
numbers game to track the flow of people across the departments and in and out of the
organization. Conversely, others take a qualitative approach focusing on the quality of
human resources like career planning development, skill, morale etc.
 Generally, human resource personnel are perceived as experts in handling personnel
matters. But, they are not experts more than often. Hence, human resource requirements
estimated by such people are not realistic ones. The organizational plans based on such
estimates are endangered to be flopped.
 As human resource planning is based on data relating to human resources, the same is not
maintained in a proper manner in some of the industrial organizations. Then, in the absence
of reliable data, it becomes difficult to develop effective human resource plans.
 In sum and substance, problems in human resource planning arise both from inherent
limitations of forecasting, on the one hand, and from weaknesses of human that do it, on
the other. But, both can be overcome.

Following are some of the steps that may improve the effectiveness of human resources planning.
1. Human resource plans must be viewed as an integral part of corporate planning. So to say,
human resource plans should be tailored with the objectives, strategies and overall environment of
the particular organization.
2. The support and commitment of the top management be ensured before starting the
process of human resource planning.
3. Personnel records must be complete, up-to-date and readily available to ensure an
adequate and strong data-base. Data-base serves as backbone for human resource planning.
4. The time horizon of the human resource plan should be appropriate to accommodate the
changing needs and circumstances of the particular organization.
5. Both quantitative and qualitative aspects of human resource plans should be stressed in a
balanced manger in order to avoid conflicts between the two.