Human Resources Planning

Human resource planning has many different purposes within an organisation, one of the most basic purposes is that it can be a tool that could be used to asses whether an organisation has the right amount of employees with the correct knowledge, skills and attitudes that are needed to carry out the job effectively while at the same time achieving the organisational goals. Since the 1990’s human resources planning has rapidly evolved. One such change being the move from manpower planning towards human resource planning. Manpower planning would have focused on acquiring, improving and retraining current employees. It was seen as a ‘hard’ approach as it dealt with quantitative forecasting of labour supply and demand, whereas human resource planning anticipates the skills and the number of employees needed when a business strategy is going to be put into place, is also seen as ‘soft’ approach as it deals with issues such as motivation, commitment and culture (Price, A. 2007). In many organisations human resources are seen as the most important asset towards success but it can also be the most volatile and unpredictable. Organisations at all times must send human resources to the departments that need it, at the right time and in good cost. If this is not achieved it could result in operational difficulties for the organisation (Gunnigle, P. et all, 2005). For instance in 2007, a group of high ranking police officers in Ireland were due to retire all in the same year, this was an example of bad human resource planning, as the human resource department had not monitored the age profile of that particular department resulting in no specific development, progression, recruitment or training to cover the retirement of those police officers.

Resource management

“Resourcing is the process by which people are identified and allocated to perform necessary work. Resourcing has two strategic imperatives: first, minimizing employee costs and maximising employee value to the