Three out of four CEOs believe employees are the deciding factor in their companies’ success. It is no wonder, so many businesses take care to seek the best candidates the market has to offer and nurture them into high-performing employees. However, few companies take time for human resource planning, and HR managers operate based on momentary needs and rely on their gut feeling. Still, a human resource plan is an invaluable benefit for any market and niche. If you are taking a Business course, professors are bound to task you with human resource planning. Today we’ll take you through the primary steps of the process and explain why this file matters.
What Is a Human Resource Management Plan?
If you look at a random human resource plan example, it might be challenging to understand what it is about. The primary goal of this document is ensuring the company possesses the human resources required to meet its business goals at any time. In other words, this plan helps businesses control the number of employees and their qualifications to avoid losses caused by staff inflation or understaffing.
This document is invaluable across the organization; you can use a human resource plan in project management, process automation, strategic business planning, and more. Once you realize its potential, you will be eager to learn how to develop a human resource plan for your budding business venture.
Four Stages of Human Resource Planning
You cannot create a generic HR management plan suitable for every company. To be actionable and useful, it must be tailored to the needs of a specific business. However, you might need to come up with a random set of requirements or ask your professor to provide them before you start.
Analyze Current Human Resources
Before you move on to strategic HR planning proper, you need to understand the current state of affairs. This might include the overall number of employees, their education, expertise, skills, and experience, as well as their engagement in different departments or projects. Think of it as an inventory of the company’s staff.
In a business environment, you might use self-assessment questionnaires or the data accumulated by previous performance reviews. The HR department should be able to help you find the necessary data points.
Assess Future HR Requirements
The second stage of creating an HR management plan relies on how accurate your predictions can be. You might need access to short- and long-term business strategy and plans to:
- Predict the demand for employees based on future projects, new directions, automation implementation, and other factors.
- Forecast the supply of qualified employees within the company and in the open market to meet your business’ needs.
- Match the demand and supply to ensure your company is never short on staff when the next big project comes up.
This might be the most challenging and unsure stage of the human resource plan development, as unexpected factors can ruin the most accurate forecasts. For instance, the 2020 pandemic demolished the employment prospects for millions of people and thousands of companies. These are the risks you may try to account for, but it is ultimately impossible to predict and prepare for every eventuality. You need to find a balance between the accuracy and complexity of your prediction model.
Develop and Implement Talent Strategies
Strategic HR planning starts long before any employee-related troubles occur. For the best results, you need to begin resource management planning at the recruitment stage and account for every possibility. Here is a list of aspects your human resource plan should include for best results:
- Recruitment, selection, and hiring strategies and guidelines. Your recruiters and HR managers should have a clear understanding of the company’s staffing needs and have automated and standardized procedures for finding, interviewing, and hiring new team members.
- Onboarding training and new employee development plans. As soon as a new staff member joins the team, their education should begin. They will need to be acquainted with the team, their new environment, software and hardware infrastructure. The more frictionless you make this process, the sooner a new employee can start generating profit for the company.
- Employee retention strategies through salary and benefits management. Considering the time and resource expenses required for the previous two aspects of HR management, you need to ensure every team member is satisfied with their job requirements and compensation.
- Performance review protocols and incentives. Regular reviews and assessments keep every employee from falling into a routine and ensure they develop and improve their skills for the company’s benefit. Coupled with astute benefits management, this HR tool is invaluable for businesses.
- Employee relationships, environment, and health management. These factors are often overlooked, but are, in fact, crucial for workers' satisfaction and retention rates. The HR department should stay on top of interpersonal relationships and environmental issues to prevent undesirable resignations.
Analyze and Review
Once the human resource management plan has been in effect for a few weeks or months, you need to analyze its results and assess any mistakes that have been made in the initial version. You should develop key performance indicators (KPIs) for your human resource management planning and evaluate the document accordingly.
For example, you can identify the number of new recruits, the retention rate, business growth, salary and benefits increases, and more. Ultimately, the KPIs will depend on the business goals and needs of the company. Still, you need to be ready to reiterate and correct mistakes when the human resource plan does not produce expected results. This analysis and evaluation should be repeated regularly and become a part of the HR strategy. As businesses evolve, and their priorities shift, so should their human resources approach.
Final Thoughts
You are unlikely to find a reliable human resource plan example online, as most are developed by your peers, and there is no way to tell how many mistakes they hold. However, you can use our infographics to remind yourself of the four aspects of a resource plan for project management or any other business need. Finally, if you need professional help with your human resource plan for your class, startup, or job, contact our support managers, and they will guide you through the order process.