Chap 5

• Human Resource Planning


  The process of aligning a company's strategic direction with its human resource needs
• Societal trends and events that affect employers

  • Consumer markets
  • Labor markets
• Human Resource Planning Process

  1. Forecasting

  2. Goal Setting and Strategic Planning

  3. Program Implementation and Evaluation
• Forecasting


  Ascertaining the supply of and demand for various types of human resources, and predicting areas within the organization that will have future labor shortages or surpluses
• Labor demand forecasting


  Developing demand forecasts around specific job categories or skill areas relevant to the organization's current and future states
• Labor supply forecasting


  Analyzing how many people are currently in various job categories within the company, and using transitional matrices to show the proportion (or number) of employees in different job categories at different times
• Labor surplus or shortage

  Ascertaining whether there will be a labor shortage or labor surplus for respective job categories, and determining what to do about these potential problems
• Options for reducing an expected labor surplus

  • Downsizing
  • Pay reductions
  • Demotions
  • Transfers
  • Work sharing
  • Hiring freeze
  • Natural attrition
  • Early retirement
  • Retraining
• Options for avoiding an expected labor shortage

  • Overtime
  • Temporary employees
  • Outsourcing
  • Retrained transfers
  • Turnover reductions
  • New external hires
  • Technological innovation
• Downsizing


  • Reduces labor costs, but has negative effects on long-term organizational effectiveness such as loss of talent, disruption of social networks, and decreased motivation levels
• Early retirement programs and buyouts

  • Helps employers concerned about losing the experience and implicit knowledge of older workers, but can block the advancement of younger workers
• Temporary workers and independent contractors are the most widespread means of eliminating a labor shortage
• Temporary workers and independent contractors

  • Advantages: Flexibility, frees firm from administrative tasks and financial burdens, agencies may test and train employees, temporary person brings objective perspective

  Disadvantages: Lack of job security, health benefits, and retirement
• Outsourcing and offshoring


  • Outsourcing uses outside organizations for a broad set of services, while offshoring is outsourcing where jobs leave one country and go to another. Increases due to rapid technological changes, but can have quality control problems, security violations, and poor customer service experiences.
• Immigration


  • H2-A visa for seasonal work, mostly agriculture, often don't meet needs so employers use undocumented workers. H1-B visa for highly skilled workers.
• Altering pay and hours

  • Garner more hours from current employees (causes stress and frustration), cut salaries, reduce contributions to 401(k) plans, reduce hours of all workers (furloughs)
• Program Implementation and Evaluation

  Someone is held accountable for achieving stated goals and has authority and resources to accomplish them, with regular progress reports and evaluation of results
• Affirmative Action Planning


  • Plans for subgroups within the labor force, forecasting and monitoring the proportion of protected group members, and conducting workforce utilization reviews. Controversial due to perceptions of unfairness.
• Human Resource Recruitment


  Any practice or activity by the organization to identify and attract potential employees
• Areas of recruitment


  • Personnel policies
  • Recruitment sources
  • Recruiter's characteristics and behavior
• Personnel policies


  • Internal vs external recruiting, due process policies, employment-at-will policies, extrinsic and intrinsic rewards, "lead-the-market" approach to pay, image advertising
• Recruitment sources


  • Internal sources
  • External sources
  • Direct applicants and referrals
  • Electronic recruiting (e-cruiting)
  • Public and private employment agencies
  • Colleges and universities
  • High school recruiting
• Recruiter


  Both HR specialists and line managers, with warm and informative traits, and a focus on realism and realistic job previews