Hr_Planning

Human Resource Planning in the face of change and uncertainty Human Resource Planning (HRM) can be defined as an analyzing of an organization's needs of human resource under changing conditions and developing activities to meet these needs. HRP involves forecast the human resource required by the organization to ensure the availability of right number of employees with certain skills at the right time and place, retain the stability of manpower through pay and benefits, response to change that happen from major operational strategies, and establish standards, performance control systems and build long-term employee relationship (Verhoeven 1981, p. 341; 'Human resource planning' 2005, p. 47; Kramar, Hollenbeck & Wright 2008, p. 219). Nowadays, many organizations are faced with many challenges that were not present in the past. This is due to the sudden and constant changing environment; organizations need to strategically plan their human resource in order to secure a competitive advantage. Human resource is recognized to be a unique valuable strategic asset that can be difficult to imitate unlike other sources such as technology, facilities, or capital. As a result, Human Resource departments are becoming more involved in a strategic management function and the operations of the firm of linking the organization's human resource to the business. Therefore, HRP is the mechanism that helps translate organizational goals into human resource goals to ensure that the organizations have human resource required to fulfil or adapt to future business plan (Kane & Stanton 1991, p. 5; Kramar, Hollenbeck & Wright 2008, p. 219; Oyler & Pryor 2009, p. 431). Shortage of young labour may lead to new employment patterns of ageing workforce management in attracting and retaining older people. As the number of older persons is growing especially in the developed regions and is expected to exceed the number of children in the near future due to the reductions of fertility (World Population Ageing 2009 2010, p. xxiv). Organizations will require older workers to stay in employment longer due to the shortage of younger workforce. Ageing workforce will cause major consequences and implications for organizations in several ways. Although, this may help preserve and maintain the important skills and knowledge within the firm, new challenge of age diversity in workplace is faced by the organization. The age diversity has created a generation gap within the organizations. In addition to age stereotyping and prejudices confronted by the older of not as healthy as younger employees, inflexible, unable or slow to learn new skills (Belout, Dolan & Saba 2001, p. 207; Streb, Voelpel & Leibold 2008, p. 2). Organization must be prepared to the risk of losing knowledge through retiring workforce or increasing number of older employees with appropriate human resource practices such as knowledge transfer between generations. Further, it is necessary to provide suitable training and development as knowledge can easily becomes obsolete. Therefore, it is important to give older workers opportunity and access to development program to update their job skills and maintain their competence. As well, organization shall look into retaining policies, job arrangement, flexible work arrangements, and appropriate workplace design for the older employees (Streb, Voelpel & Leibold 2008, p. 2; Oyler & Pryor 2009, p. 439). In managerial practice, General Electrics (GE) had organized an intergenerational transfer by arrange meetings between junior managers and senior managers to exchange knowledge and experience for two to four hours every week. For older employees, the meeting provided them with an update on new information and skills. At the same time, the meeting helped introduced younger employees to the senior network which would have been impossible to achieve under normal working conditions (Streb, Voelpel & Leibold 2008, p. 4). Increased in ethnic diversity in societies leads to broad customer base. As the population structure has changed and composed more ethnic/racial diversity, so as the workforce composition. Change in workforce composition has introduced the challenge of managing cultural diversity of labour force in organizations. The organization must understand that cultures play and important roles in many human resource activities which include selection, training, performance appraisal, and promotions. The organization may require developing strategic initiative in attracting, motivating and retaining employees from various cultures backgrounds in order to meet the needs of diverse customer base. Similarly to age diversity in workforce, researchers found that racial biases permeate with negatively effects. However, some researches argue that multiculturalism can benefit organization to better performance in terms of 'increased creativity, improved decision making, and broader markets for products and service' (Stone, Stone-Romero & Lukaszewski 2007, p. 152; Oyler & Pryor 2009, p. 434, 439). Consequently, human resource practices adopted in organization must be sensitive to the culturally diverse employees and applicants otherwise it may result in negative consequences for individuals whose differ from that dominant culture (Stone, Stone-Romero & Lukaszewski 2007, p. 163). Principally, the challenge of managing different group of employees and their values so they can work together effectively. For multinational corporations, it is equally important that the organization aware of the diverse of the culture and norms that have developed within the geographic region in which they operate. More women have entered workforce. As more women had more access to higher education and changes in family structure of dual income or single parent in addition to the adopted practice of equal employment opportunities in many countries, more women have participated in workforce which introduced gender diversity challenge to the organization. In order to attract and retain these diverse talents, organization cannot neglect human resource policies that address these issues of recruitment, training and development, compensation, and equity to fit the needs of women workforce. Organization should develop human resource practices which help reduce work-life conflict and to satisfy diverse workforce such as compensation practices, flexible benefits plans, or family-friendly benefits (Belout, Dolan & Saba 2001; Oyler & Pryor 2009, p. 435, 440-441). Human resource practices must be in compliance with employment legislation. Human resource management field is greatly influenced by the legal environment in several areas especially recruitment, selection, compensation and training. However, there are also legislation in the areas of workplace relations, health and safety, and job security of the employees. Employers are responsible and must comply with the legislation set forth by the country in which they operate. The main purpose of the legislation is to prevent employers from abusing their workers and promote fairness in the area of human resource practices (Smith 1991, p. 55; Kramar, Hollenbeck & Wright 2008, p. 23). To simplify, the Commonwealth legislation in Australia is observed here. The key Commonwealth Acts are Racial Discrimination Act 1975 which bans discrimination against employees or potential recruits based on race, colour, religion, and national origin. Subsequently, Sex Discrimination Act which bans discrimination based on sex, marital status, or pregnancy then Affirmative Action Act 1986 which encourage equal employment opportunity for women. Finally, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986 which include all of the Acts with an addition of banning discrimination against age; medical record; criminal record; impairment; physical, mental, intellectual, and psychiatric disability; nationality; sexual preference; and trade union activity (Smith 1991, p. 55). The idea of equal employment opportunity is to encourage and embed equity within employment practices in addition to raise the organization's awareness of the importance of diversity. Organizations may foster diversity in employees through education and training as well as ascertain discrimination policies are in place to reduce discrimination. Furthermore, human resource management in multinational corporations must aware have different legal requirements and framework set forth by different countries in which these operate. Ethics in workplace help enhance organization's image and reputation thus create competitive advantage for organizations. As reputation will attract talents, many firms have recently promoted and implemented more ethical approach in doing business (Buckley et al. 2001). Ethics in organization is the concern 'with moral judgments and standards of conduct' in workplace (Buckley et al. 2001, p. 12) that serves the similar function as do laws and accountability mechanisms in the society. Ethics in organization helps encouraging managers and employees to appropriate behaviour and decision making at work (Buckley et al. 2001, p. 12). The lack of ethics in organization may lead disenchantment, lack of commitment, dissatisfaction, and cynicism especially among diverse demographic workforce. Unethical culture can lead to various consequences such as antithetical behaviours of employees to organizational objectives as well as cynicism which employees mistrust of the system thus uninterested in helping the organization progress. Cynicism and lack of loyalty occurred when employees believe that they are taken advantage of and mistreats, they may take actions to this unfairness which will ultimately result in negative organization's performance. Further, unethical may lead to biases in workplace (Buckley et al. 2001, p. 21). As well, the human resource management is becoming more important particularly as a new strategic role, the developed human resource practices must be able to react and prevent the ethical dilemmas in workplace. The area of human resource practices those potentially relevant to unethical practices are staffing and selection, employee and career development, labour relations, compensation and benefits, safety and health, organization development, HR planning, and performance management (Wooten, p. 170-171; Buckley et al. 2001, p. 18-21). It is essential that HR practitioners shall come about innovative approaches or solutions to improve and implement ethic human resources practices. The ethical considerations HRP are such as ensuring that no exclusion of particular parties from consideration of high potential evaluation and no misrepresent data so as to give advantage or disadvantage to particular groups. However, top management plays a critical role in encouraging ethical consciousness and practices throughout organization. Strong ethical cultures in organization implies that the firm is well managed and sees important in its human capital in addition to researchers found the positive correlation with the mitigation of dysfunctions in stereotyping and misallocation of scarce resources (Buckley et al. 2001, p. 22). This will help increase diversity in the organization's workforce. Human resource planning is a fundamental step of securing and maintaining the kind of human capital required by an organization to execute its strategy in a constant change of environment. Strategy defines 'how the firm will compete to achieve its mission and goals' (Kramar, Hollenbeck & Wright 2008, p. 57) or the firm's direction to grow (Pollock 1980, p. 16). HRP supports business strategies in terms of allocation and deployment of the human and other resources of the organization in a way that provides the organization with a completive advantage over other firms. As widely recognize that firms with better utilization of human resource are likely to yield better performance. Boxall (1998) affirmed that sustained competitive advantage can be achieved through highly productive human resource as it is difficult to imitate. In order to attain more effectiveness in organizations, top management has recognized the necessary of human resource management to be more proactive in the resolution to more organizational effectiveness. Accordingly strategic human resource planning was developed in order to link HRP with strategic business planning (Kane & Stanton 1991, p. 6; Oyler & Pryor 2009, p. 430). However, Boxall (1998) argues that the human resource does not give sustained competitive advantage to the organizations if it lacks of value or exceptional value. Subsequently, HRP comes in to ensure that the workforce are equip with appropriate skills. Besides, the difficulty to imitate of such valued human resource is another key to sustained advantage. As labour services are traded in free labour markets, firm must be able to restrain its talents from its competitors from induce its key skills workforce to resign. Organizations must be vigilant and for any kind of changes through the use of strategically human resource planning to main a sustained competitive advantage over rivals. Koch and McGrath (1996, p. 338) stated that properly implemented human resource planning will "creates the kind of lead time necessary to ward off potential problems that might otherwise threaten the company's competitive position." However, HRP approach requires commitment to develop such plans from the top management as well as equal priority comparing to other human resource management concerns. As there are changes in demographic creates diversity in workforce, organization must be able to respond and support to the emerging issues or the organization will fall short of its goals and objectives. Further, to maintain sustained competitive, firms must be able to attract and retain worker with diverse backgrounds through proper human resource planning that target minorities and tailored to diverse population. Ethics in workplace is also an essential element of maintaining organization's reputation. Additionally, organization must properly align its HRP with the corporate planning strategies to ensure continuous flow of staff distribution in order to achieve the organization's goals. Lastly, Koch and McGrath (1996, p. 338) furthered suggested to implement HRP as firms with HRP 'are likely to succeed in securing the right amounts and types of the right human resources.'