Traditional HR Planning

Traditional HR Planning

HR planning has its roots in military personnel planning. Initially, the U.S. military faced the challenge of ensuring stable staffing levels as some people concluded their tours of duty and left the military and others advanced through the ranks. The goal at that time was to determine the quantity of people sufficient to meet replacement needs and thereby maintain staffing levels in different job categories, at different levels of the organization, and in different locations.

Defense contractors adopted this military focus on head count. They carried over the philosophy of equating head count to production levels and, in turn , linking production levels to competitive success as measured by achievement of the organization's measurable strategic goals and objectives. This approach seemed to work well until the 1960s. At that time, three trends began to emerge that affected the success of traditional HR planning:

1. Changing technology: Technology is continuously changing. Organizations often undergo technological change in the hope of achieving breakthroughs in productivity. With cutting-edge technology, fewer people may be able to produce the same or greater outputs as were produced with traditional means.

2. Decreasing correlation of head count to outputs and success: A widening gap began to develop between the number of people employed by an organization, the output levels achieved by those people, and the organization's competitive success. There has never been an easy or particularly effective way to correlate the organization's head count with productivity and, in turn, with competitive success in a dynamic marketplace .

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   Increasing inaccuracy of labor forecasts: Labor forecasts based on historical ratios between head count and competitive success have been growing less accurate. Traditional forecasting bases predictions of the future on the past or present. But as most businesspeople are now keenly aware, tomorrow's workplace may be radically different from the workplaces of yesterday and today. We should note, too, that individuals are not machines. One person's production level is not necessarily the same as another's. Hence, historical forecasts not only are often useless in predicting outputs or competitive success but may mislead decision makers by presenting them with inaccurate conclusions. ^{[ 1]}

^{The traditional approach to HR planning begins with an assessment of the current supply of people at each level and of the current demand at each level and then proceeds to balancing supply and demand. The HR function performs balancing through such actions as recruitment, hiring, development, and reduction. The traditional focus of HR planning, however, has been on taking action with people rather than on achieving results.}

^{To make the point more dramatically, and perhaps controversially, many organizations operate as if they were simply recruiting to "fill slots" or maintain the head count as vacancies occur. Recruiters concentrate on sourcing people whose perceived competencies appear to match the qualifications in job specifications and whose work experience and education make them appear qualified to carry out the work activities listed on a job description for a targeted job opening.}

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