5 Critical Steps to Future Proofing Your Human Resources Strategy

By: Emily Dusablon BLOG POSTS/ARTICLES | Feb 21, 2013

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You have a business plan and a business strategy. What about a human resources (HR) plan? Its just as important. An HR plan helps you determine the resources you need now and in the future to achieve your business goals. It can help you prepare for employee turnover, anticipate your recruitment needs and make strategic hiring decisions. It should also include a succession plan, so you can limit disruptions to your business should there be a change in management or structure. Here are five critical steps to creating an effective plan for your company. 1. Assess your current workforce. Your first step in strategic HR planning is identifying your current employees knowledge, skills and abilities. This includes evaluating your employees strengths, education levels and additional training or certifications. But you shouldnt stop there. You should also consider what talents they have beyond their current job description. For example, your data entry employee may also have a knack for building customer relationships.

Performance reviews can help you determine when an employee is willing and able to assume additional responsibilities. 2. Consider your future human capital needs. As your business grows, so will your staffing needs. To find the best people for the job and your business, you must first know what youre looking for. Start by evaluating the information you gathered about your current workforce. Do you have enough people? Do they have the right skills and know-how to help you achieve your business goals? This information can help you decide what jobs need to be filled and who would be the best fit. From there, you can determine if you can promote from within or if youll need to recruit new talent as your business grows. Now look at your potential staffing challenges. Are there upcoming technology changes or shifts within the economy that might impact your business and your ability to recruit quality talent? Knowing this can help you avoid recruiting road blocks before they become a problem. 3. Set your employees up for long-term success. Hiring qualified employees is only one step when building a long-term, winning workforce. To make a real impact, your employees work needs to support the companys growth goals. You can do this by making an employee development plan for each of your employees. This will help you create clear direction on how to increase their skills and advance their careers so that your business can forge ahead. Once you've determined what your employees career path looks like, you may need to provide some additional training and development opportunities to ensure your employees grow with your business. 4. Conduct a gap analysis. A gap analysis helps you identify what resources your company has and what youll need in the future. When performing a gap analysis, youll assess your HR practices and determine where your company is falling short. With this information, you can improve your current procedures and implement new practices that will better support your businesss growth. 5. Be prepared for change. With growth comes change. Its inevitable. Whether its a shift in the executive team or a reorganization of departments, you need to be prepared. A succession plan can help you minimize disruption by identifying critical roles in your business and employees who have the skills to immediately assume these positions, should someone leave.

To make sure your plan supports your future business goals, you should seek guidance from more than one professional advisor, such as a lawyer and an accountant. They can help you lay the groundwork now for a successful transition in the future. Remember: HR planning is an ongoing process. Your strategy should be reviewed regularly and updated as your organization changes. Not sure how to get started? With more than 26 years of HR experience, Insperity can help you create an air-tight HR strategy that puts you on the path to success.

Emily Dusablon has more than 12 years of HR experience and is currently an HR advisor at Insperity. She is part of a team of subject matter experts that provide assistance with HR client service products, resources and service delivery. Emily holds a Professional in Human Resources (PHR) certification from the HR Certification Institute.
What are the steps involved in the process of manpower planning?

(A) Deciding objectives of manpower Planning -The ultimate objective of manpower planning is one of matching or fitting employee abilities to enterprise requirements with an emphasis on future instead of present arrangements. The objectives may be laid down for a short term i.e. for one year for example the short term objective may be to hire 50 persons from backward classes for purposes of training. The long- term objective may to start a new industry or to expand the market or to produce a new product or to develop its own sales force. (B) Estimating future manpower requirements The management must estimate the structure of the organisation at a given point in time. For this estimate, the number and types of employees needed have to be determined. This determination is affected by many environmental factors viz., business forecasts, expansion and growth, design and structural changes, management philosophy, government policy, product and human skills mire and competition. After estimating the future organisation structure the next step is to draw up the requirements of human resources, both for existing departments and for new vacancies. In determining the requirements of human resources, the expected losses due to labour turnover dismissals, promotions, layoffs etc. should be considered. Then, the real shortage o( surplus will be found out. Auditing Human Resources Once the future human resources needs are estimated the next step is to determine the present supply of manpower resources through "skills inventory". A skills inventory contains data about each employee's skills, abilities, work preferences etc. Some organisations prepare "Organisation charts". "Manning Table" or "Manpower Replacement Charts" Ail these help in determining and evaluating the quantity and quality of the present human resources of an organisation. (D) Job-Analysis After having decided how many persons would be needed, it is necessary to prepare a job analysis which records details of training, skills, qualifications, abilities, experience and responsibilities etc. which are needed for a job. Job analysis includes the preparation of job descriptions and job specification.

(E) Developing a Human Resource Plan The last step is to develop and to implement the human resource plan which consists in finding out the sources of labour supply with a view to making an effective use of these sources. The first thing to be decided is whether the personnel be hired from within the organisation or to be obtained from an outside source. The best policy, which is followed by most organisations is to fill up higher vacancies by internal sources i.e. promotion etc and lower level positions by recruitment from external sources. The personnel manager should have a thorough knowledge of the labour market. Which source in the labour market will be tapped, depends upon the policy of a firm, position of labour unions and Government regulations.