How does Human Resource Planning contribute to achieving goals?

“A process which anticipates and maps out the consequences of business strategy of an organization’s human resources. This is reflected in planning of skill and competence needs as well as total headcounts”.

http://www.hrmguide.co.uk/hrm/chap7/ch7-links3.htm

In broader sense human resource planning is a long term activity which enables organization to cope with coming obligations to achieve its objectives. We can say that it is a technique to hire a right person for right job with right experience for accomplishment of organizational goals. Achieving organizational goals solely depends on the human resource planning, because human skills play an important role for goal accomplishment.

For the accomplishment of goals it is necessary that goals must be achievable, measureable and there should be time frame for it. Planning makes it easy to do all that. Human resource planning tells you that how much people with how much experience are required to do that job in specified period of time. Once the process is started there is need of regular follow up and review so that things go in right direction.

Employee motivation keeps the workers in good spirit to do their job well. If the employees are well motivated they will be able to perform the duties well. It is the part of human resource planning to have a reward system for the employees to keep them motivated.

Recruitment Requirements:

It is legal, moral and business requirement of the organizations to hire the staff. Without human resource nothing can be achieved. There are number of recruitment processes which companies adopt for hiring. One of the recruitment processes is as under:

Filling the vacancy which has arisen because one of the employees has left or retired.

Job description and person specification are reviewed and changed as required.

Publishing the vacancy through internet on organizations’ website and local newspapers.

Setting a merit for the selection in line with equality act and regulation.

Application forms, Curriculum Vitae, Covering letters and hand written applications are invited for submission.

Reviewing the applications in reference with job description and person specification for short listing.

Interviews are held for selected candidates.

Induction of selected candidates in the organization.

There are some requirements which must be followed when recruiting new staff such as sex discrimination, disability discrimination, data protection, asylum and immigration.

Professional Development and Training:

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http://www.call-center.net/training-and-development-main.htm

This process can be used for the following:

To develop a training programme in collaboration with company’s strategy.

To build up a needs assessment.

To create a high calibre course.

To form an understanding to develop training programme.

To identify individual needs for development of Professionalism.

To incorporate training with other courses like hiring, monitoring and measurement of performance.

Significance of Employee Motivation and Appraisal Programmes:

It is managers’ job to keep employees motivated so that they perform their job well to achieve the set targets. Motivation is a key to performance improvement. There is an old saying, quote “you can take a horse to water but cannot force it to drink, it will drink only if it’s thirsty – so with people” unquote.

Thus performance is a function of ability and motivation

Job Performance = f(ability)(motivation)

http://www.accel-team.com/motivation/

Motivation is a reaction of behaviour in response to purpose and direction. In other words it is an invisible force that fills the individual with energy to achieve personal as well as organizational goals. It is very important for organizational survival to have motivated staff. The more motivated employees are the more productive organization is. It is very important for the manager to understand what motivates the employees because in today’s world factors of motivation are keep on changing on regular interval of time.

Appraisal programmes are important to let the employees know how they are doing. Performance appraisal can help improve the way employees work in a work place. It helps in establishing a relationship between employee and management, to build employee development and enhance a employee motivation.

School of Management Thought that developed over the last Century:

There are number of theories which developed over the last 100 years but unfortunately they all do not reach the same conclusion or results. The review of some of the theories is as follow:

Employees are motivated by the salary/wages followed by the close supervision of the management. So there is a need to break down the job into small tasks where employees should be well trained with appropriate tools to perform a designated assignment. Then they shall be paid hourly with a specific rate. According to Taylor after that employees are encouraged to work at their full potential.

Elton Mayo says that employees are not just motivated by the pay but they are well motivated if their social needs are met at the work place. He was of the opinion that managers shall interact with employees to make them comfortable at the work place for better results. Mayo concluded that better communication, managers’ involvement and working in team can lead to best motivational level of the employees.

Maslow introduced hierarchy of needs which he called psychological needs of the employees. There are five levels of human needs which are as follows:

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http://tutor2u.net/business/gcse/people_motivation_theories.htm

This theory says that as the lowest need gets fulfilled the person gets motivated for the higher level need. This is organizations’ responsibility to give different incentives to employees to keep them motivated.

Next theory has close link to Maslows’ theory with two factors of motivation i.e., motivator and hygiene factor. He believes that companies should adopt diplomatic approach to motivate employees, which can be done by doing job enlargement, job enrichment and empowerment.

Democratic and Autocratic ways of Implementing change:

Democratic way of change means to bring a change in the Organization through the consent of the employees in terms of ballot or survey. Democracy is reaching a conclusion by the people power like referendum. It is also said that democracy means government by the people. In my point of view it is easy for the organization to bring change through democratic way because by doing this there will be less resistance from the employees. This can be achieved by the following:

Understanding the need of change

Planning ahead for the change in all the departments of the organization

Orientation to employees regarding change, its advantages and disadvantages

Conducting a ballot or survey

Pilot launch of the change in some areas of the company

Final launch of the change with fallow up of its implications

Autocratic way of change means to bring a change in organization all of a sudden. Through this way when change is implemented there is a resistance from the employees in shape of strikes, holidays and sticking to job description. As a result of autocratic change following problems can encounter:

Cultural differences

Staff reluctance

Power imbalance

Change in management approach

To bring a change in any organization is one of the major challenges companies ever have. It solely depends on the management that which way they chose to implement change. Change can be made easier through following steps

Maximum orientation about change

Reason for change

Involvement of people in planning and implementing

Better communication

Implementing the pilot project of change to show the results to the employees

Train employees about relevant new skills

Identify the effect of change on individual

Benefit of change to everyone including organization

Review how employees are going with the change

Offer every possible support to employees to carry out new jobs