Question

Human Resource Planning (HRP) represents a significant improvement on traditional Manpower Planning exercise. Discuss

Answer 1

Human resource planning is the process of systematic planning which helps in achieving the organizational goals with the optimum amount of the employees. This helps in ensuring the best fit between employees and the tasks also ensuring that there is no shortage of surplus of the manpower. Unlike the traditional HR practices, human resource planning is very important and strategic to an organization. Some of the ways in which human resource planning shows a significant improvement from the traditional manpower planning are in the following ways.

• In case of the traditional human resource management, when the employees make a request to address a problem, the HR manager takes steps in order to subside it. But in case of human resource planning it also involves various stages of planning, recruitment, delegating the task, training and development and also scaring the employees to increase the productivity and profit goals.

• In human resource planning, forecasting is a very important aspect. Traditional HR systems just focus on the current employees whereas in case of human resource planning they would also project about the company's requirements in the future and the number of employees that would be required to meet the goals of the organization. The skills and educational qualification those employees would require is also determined and the recruitment process is conducted accordingly.

• Traditional HR practices remain the same over the years in an organization. But in an organization which follows stringent human resource planning activities updates their human resource planning methods and stay on the top of the game. They also employ technologies that can help to manage employees easily.

• In organizations with traditional human resource practices, people are put into the job and then trained to master the task. Whereas in organizations with human resource planning, the first priority is given to assigning jobs to those people who are proficient in doing it. It means that assigning the right job to the right person is the crux of human resource planning. This can reduce the unwanted cost incurred in attrition and unwanted training.

• Nowadays in organizations that practice human resource planning treats the manpower as real corporate assets unlike the traditional HR practices. Organisation provides anything and everything in order to motivate employees and keep them on top of their productivity, thus considering them to be the real assets.

• HR costs in case of organisations with human resource planning can be maintained at very low level because it can anticipate imbalances and act accordingly. Unwanted costs due to faults in recruitment and training can be avoided by recruiting the right candidates and delegating them to the right departments from the beginning itself.

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