What is Human resource planning?

Human resource planning (HRP) is the process for company to find right kind and right amount of people to work for company’s goals successfully. In this blog post I will speak why it is so important for company and what kind of problems lack of good HRP might affect. (Gomez-Meija, Balkin, Cardy 2016 p. 177-203)

Hiring process

Hiring new people to work for the company costs a lot, that’s why is it so important to have right knowledge about it. Managers and supervisors handle that in some organizations, but that’s extra for their normal job. Imagine the situation where you need to do your work and recruit people at the same time. This is why HR manager is so important for company. Hiring process has three sections: recruitment, selection and orientation. (Gomez-Meija, Balkin, Cardy 2016 p. 177-203)

Recruitment

There are many ways to recruit people to work in company. I won’t speak about all of them, but here we have some good ways to find people. Companies can use agencies, add ads on internet, or even recruit people directly from school. Recruitment process starts with selling the job for the candidate. There have to be in the add, what kind of person company is looking for and which position is available. Some positions are easy to fill with internal recruitment, but this will usually open other position to recruit a person. Recruitment step is mostly planning how to recruit most efficient ways right people. (Gomez-Meija, Balkin, Cardy 2016 p. 177-203)

Selection

It is never easy to find the right person and some companies will have huge problems by hiring or promoting a wrong person. In small businesses it’s even more important to hire right candidate. (Gomez-Meija, Balkin, Cardy 2016 p. 177-203)

According this book, there are many different tools available to make selection easier. The best tools are reliable and valid. Reliability is never easy to measure and it’s rarely if ever perfectly achieved. Time and judges will tell a lot about it, former employer knows how do candidate act at work and that would help selectors to hire right candidate. Promotions are also good measurement option about candidates motivation, hardly anyone wants to do same work for a lifetime without any changes or increased responsibility. (Gomez-Meija, Balkin, Cardy 2016 p. 177-203)

Validity is measured by different techniques to find out if candidate is honest and really having those skills there are found in CV or motivation letter. There are different ability tests, personal tests and honesty tests which are screening out if candidate who doesn’t have right skills for job. (Gomez-Meija, Balkin, Cardy 2016 p. 177-203)

Interview is maybe the most common nowadays, but according to studies, it’s been criticized about poor reliability and validity. Every interview is different, some interviewers ask question where candidate has to tell something about himself. This is usually about you and how do you feel things without any testing. Many companies do interviews through job analysis, where company map ability to react in different situations, job knowledge and worker requirements.(Gomez-Meija, Balkin, Cardy 2016 p. 177-203)

Challenges

As I wrote before, hiring someone isn’t easy. This book have example about Espresso Hut’s hiring process, where they were looking for assistant manager. In my opinion, manager Emily has only experience to hire workers, not anyone for positions of responsibility. Anthony was recruited by his repairing skills and business studies without experience about job he would manage. I think this case isn’t that much about bad hiring, article didn’t say that, but I believe the problem was in job orientation. Article said that Anthony forgot to order needed supplies, but was there a person to teach him what to do? (Gomez-Meija, Balkin, Cardy 2016 p. 177-203)

In this case HR manager wouldn’t hire Anthony, he hasn’t skills or experience to treat customers right way and no experience about being barista. I think better option would be hire or promote some experienced barista to assistant manager role and in promotion case, hire someone for barista job. (Gomez-Meija, Balkin, Cardy 2016 p. 177-203)

In the Abercrombie case, company was hiring people by “look policy”. Article said that even in the group interview people looked alike. Company had strict idea, what should workers look like who are working there and they were basically hiring models. Manager had no idea about personalities and experiences candidates had. Their recruitment system was done by checklist what the worker should look like and by company’s workers. This case was long time ago and I don’t know how things were managed then, was it legal or not, but nowadays that kind of recruitment would be illegal and against equal employment opportunity. (Cook 2015)

Hiring managers are facing a problem to adapt new job markets. Employment percent is high nowadays and it’s hard to find talented professionals. Managers usually require long selection process and many candidates are abandoning process early, because they are asked to do more and more to getting hired. People wants a job now and they have no time to survive through a month or longer process. For hiring managers or headhunters, main target is in passive candidates who are already working for some company. (Le Phan 2018)

Companies are also facing a problem to keep talented workers to work them. Talented professionals are having more and more leverage while employment numbers increase. Steven Benson, Founder and CEO of Badger Maps said that “To be successful in a more competitive hiring market you need to create a culture and business that people are really excited to work at. Then you don’t lose people, and word tends to spread about what a great place it is to work. You can try to gloss over a crappy work environment with higher pay and perks, but ultimately, people leave their jobs because their manager is bad or because the company has a crappy culture that sucks the life out of them. But it’s hard to fake, you have to create an authentic, genuinely awesome place to work, or your best employees will go somewhere else that does.” (Le Phan 2018)

Summary

Social media is a big part of our life. Companies must be more careful how they act and how they treat their workers. All the negative will be first for everyone to see so companies really have to think what they do. Good organized human resource planning is vital to business growth and in company’s success.

References

Gomez-Meija L. R. , Balkin D.B. , Cardy R. L. 2016 p. 177-203 Managing Human Resources, Recruiting and Selecting Employees

Le Phan L. 13. 9. 2018 The biggest hiring challenges we’re all facing today, according to 15 hiring experts URL: https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/the-biggest-hiring-challenges-were-all-facing-today-according-to-15-hiring-experts Accessed 29. 1. 2019

Cook A. 28. 6. 2015 What It Was REALLY Like Working As an Abercrombie ‘Model’ URL: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-it-was-really-like-working-as-an-abercrombie-model_b_7154042 Accessed 29.1.2020