ASSIGNMENT OF HRM

Topic

DEFINITION, AIM AND LIMITATIONS OF

HUMAN RECOURSE PLANNING AND
RECRUITMENT.

Total number of words

2500

Made by

ZUBAIR AHMED PHULPOTTO

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 Contents

Introduction ..............................................................................…1

1. The definition of HR planning and Recruitment ....................2

2. The aims of the HR planning and Recruitment

2.1The aims of HR planning................................................................................2

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2.2The aims of recruitment ................................................................................4

3. The limitations of the HR planning and Recruitment

3.1 The limitations of HR planning ............................................................................4

Overcome the limitations of HR planning..............................................................6

..........................................................................................................................................

3.2The limitations of Recruitment..............................................................................7

Overcome the limitations of Recruitment..............................................................8

Conclusion....................................................................................9

Reference ....................................................................................10

Introduction
The management of the employees is the key factors in the coordination and general management

of work organizations .Human resource management present significant issues for the analysis and

operation of employment relationships. (Beardwell, 2006:27) HR planning is an important part of

the human resource management for it is the plan before the implement. The recruitment is also

the necessary part of the human resource management. This easy will analyze the aims and

limitations of them and pointed how to solve problems.

1. Definition of HR planning and Recruitment

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Human resource planning, as a conception which is developed from the “manpower planning”,

emerged at about the same time as “human resource management”. Bramham argues there are

particular difference between the HR planning and manpower planning in terms of process and

purpose .In HR planning the manager is concerned with motivating people –a process in which

costs, numbers, control and systems interact to play a part while in manpower planning manager is

concerned with the elements of forecasting, supply-demand matching and control, in which people

are a part. (Bramham ,1989:147). Beardwell summaries the HR planning which include both the

soft and hard aspect of the planning process as fallows: HR planning is the process for identifying

an organization’s current and future human resource requirements, developing and implementing

plans to meet these requirements and monitoring their overall effectiveness. Also the HR planning

is an important and necessary part to the business strategy, at the same time the making the human

resource plan is according to the business strategy.

The recruitment process is concerned with identifying, attracting and choosing suitable people to

meet an organization’s human resource requirements. (Beardwel&Wright, 2004:190) .It is

obviously that the recruitment is highly related to the HR planning .The need of recruitment is

derive from the HR planning.

2. The aims of HR planning and Recruitment

2.1 The aims of HR planning

In the traditional approach to HR planning, the most important thing is to balance the demand and

supply for the human resources. By contrast, the Armstrong (2001) outlines the aims of human

resource planning which reflect the contemporary circumstances as follows:

“Attract and retain the number of people required with the appropriate skills, expertise and

competences

Anticipate the potential surpluses or deficits of human resource

Developed the well trained and flexible workforce to adapt to an uncertain and changing

environment

Reduce dependence on external recruitment when key skills are in short supply by formulating

retention and development strategies

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Improve the utilizations of people by introducing more flexible system of work”

These aims different from the traditional HR planning for they are highly related to the “soft”

human resource planning while still considered the “hard” approach.

Form the traditional and contemporary approaches; it can be make a conclusion about the aims of

human resource planning.

*On the level of whole organization : the HR planning is a part of organization strategy and the

goal of HR planning is meet the demand of business strategy and HR planning strategy is

according to the business strategy . HR planning also aimed at reducing the cost of the human

resource, increasing the productivity and creating intangible value which is produced by stable and

harmonious workforce team and so on. All these can help the organization to acquire the

competitive advantage in the market.

*For the detailed aspects in human resource management processes: the aims of HR planning

will be as follows:

 To balance the supply and demand of organization, for the proper number

 To recruit the right employee with the skills, different experience and competence who is suit

for the job

 To manage the employee turnover and retain the human resource to keep the stability of the

employees

 Developing the employees by training and learning which can make a contribution to the

development of the organization and meet the changing scenarios.

 Creating a harmonies work environment which is suitable for the organization culture.

 Reduce the dependency of the external recruitment in the key skill process

2.2 The aims of recruitment

The recruitment, as an accessorial process after the human resource planning, also has the

same objectives as HR planning: to attract and select the right employees in the right position

during right time, support the allover organization strategy, monitor the internal flow of personnel.

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On the other hand, the process of recruitment is also a way of introducing and advertising

the organization into the society. The applicant can get to know the organization structure,

mission, and culture and management style via the selection processes. So the process of

recruitment also has another function of establishing the organization figure in the market. Giving

the P&G for example; it has the annual campus recruitment in the universities in china. (Career in

P&G, 2006)

During the recruitment processes, the company will give an introduction lecture to the all

graduates. So even if they only select minority of them, but the company is well introduced during

these activities .and this is a way of marketing the company.

3. The limitations of the HR planning and Recruitment

3.1The limitation of the HR planning

The survey found 54 per cent of sample of fortune 500 companies did some HR planning ,only 15

percent did so in comprehensive way suggested in their literature .(Rothwell,1995:177) The HR

planning doesn’t appear to be given high priorities in practice . The HR planning is hard to put

into practice for the following limitations:

 Hard to control for the external factors: labor market, consumer market

The labor market is hard to estimate for it is changing quickly for many factors such as the

government policy, the changing opinions of the manpower, age structure, the gender proportion,

the level of education and so on. For example, in China, there is a lot of labor from the countryside

who are always engaged in the agriculture .these years China’s booming economy creates a need

for more labor in urban areas to meet the demands of development of industries. Since the income

is higher than the agriculture, more and more farmers are leaving the farm to make their fortune in

the big city.(China’s Changing Agricultural Policies,2005) But last year, the government changes

the policy, the new policy give more allowance and protection for the price of the crops, and the

direct influence is the part of farmers return to the countryside and creating the shortage of the

urban labor. The supply of the human resource changed.

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In contemporary world, the globalization also influence the labor market .the labor from the other

countries will compete with the local labor .and for the companies, they have more choice for the

labor but at the same time these labor is unstable and hard to control.

For the gender and sex aspect, if the career of the women and men traditional family patterns are

not taken as the planning norm .patterns of working time ,of training ,of promotion and of benefits

may all need to be changed.(Rothwell,1995:183)

So these factors will influence the labor market and to an extend they are hard to be estimated.

For the consumer market, the company will plan the human resource for the company

development. If the product in the market is in high demand, the seller and the worker in the

production line will be consequently in high demand. But the consumer market will be influenced

by many turbulence factors such as competitor, supplier, and attitude of the consumer. Hence it is

also a hard estimating factor.

 Hard to control the HR planning processes for the nature of human.

The human being is too complicated to anticipate .they change frequently without any prediction

for different reasons. So for the HR planning, although the plan is adequate and perfect but if the

employees have some unpredicted reasons to fail to sustain the plan, the whole plan will be

unavailable and useless. So the HR planning is limited by the difficulty of predicting the influence

of the mutable human being.

 The neglect ion of the human resource planning

The reason for that is the outcome of HR planning is not obvious as the marketing strategy,

operation planning which are recognized directly relating to the benefit of the organization. The

value of management is intangible and will be found after a long period. So when the resource is

limited in the organization, the HR planning will not have the priority to obtain the adequate

resource to operate the complicated processes.

 The workload is huge during the HR planning processes;

Hence the comprehensive and accurate information of the employees is required. If there are not

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computer-based database of the employees’ information, the beginning process is hard. For

example: the ERICSSON CO, in 1998, has 4000 employees who allocated in 24 branches and 10

joint venture companies in china. Each branch has the HR manager who must deal with the

personnel files in different ways. Some of them used the computer in the primary way but some

still stayed in the paper –recording period .one manager said even if a simple statistic of the

employees’ education level is a huge project. (A case study from a Chinese website)

 The flexibility of the plan is low once the HR planning is made.

Because the HR planning strategy is highly related to the organization strategy but it can’t

participate in the decision –making process of the organization strategy .so when the organization

objective change for the changeable market environment, the HR planning can’t respond quickly

for that to help organization gain the competitive advantages.

Overcome:

Consider the changeable internal and external environment in the short-term HR

planning .Internal environment is related to the change of sales, development decision, the strategy

and so on .for the external environment, HR planning should make a good analyze for the

consumer market ,the labor policy of government and the change of labor market .

But for the long-term HR planning, Mintzberg (1994) pointed that two or three months maybe

“reasonable”but three or four years is “hazardous”. this is because predictions are based on

extrapolation from the past,adjusted by assumptions about the future so there is considerable room

for error in both .although the long-term HR planning is hard but it is also important for the

changes take time .(Beardwell.2004: 185) The scenario planning is useful in the long-term plan .it

is “predict on the assumption that if you can’t predict the future then by speculating on variety of

them ,you might just hit upon the right one” .(Mintzberg ,1994,248) Although it can help to

broaden perspectives and consider a number of future options but it is costly for each decision. For

the long term plans, today is more likely to concentrate on what skills will be needed in the future

more than provide a broad indication of the numbers required in the long-term. (Armstrong,

2006:366)

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The technology is also important for the HR planning to avoid the trivial affaire of

HR planning processes. The management information is required in the process of the HR

planning. And the computerized information systems can play a vital part in management of

information for HR planning. By doing so, the efficiency of HR planning will be higher and the

cost of human resource will be lower. In the case of Cragill, this company consider the HR

information system as an important part of the HR strategies (what is called ‘improve transaction

processing’).This commitment is underscored by the use of such statements as “the role of

technology is key to responding effectively to the business needs”. Human resource information

system is seen as vital in the provision of the right information at the right time, so enabling

managers to do their job effectively and efficiently. (Tansley, 1999:55-60)

Another way is outsourcing .the company can outsourcing some traditional functions of

HRM such as the recruitment, training and salary design to increase the efficiency. By outsourcing

the daily tasks to the specialized human resource company or institution, the company can pay

more attention to the more rational and suitable HR planning strategy in the general level.

3.2The limitations of Recruitment

 One is the limitation of the recruitment methods.

The most common predictors are interview, the test, the application forms and references obtain

from the previous employers. Each method has its drawbacks. Interview, for example, has the

following weakness:

Can’t convey the particularly accurate or realistic information of the job, which result in the high

turn-over rate

There is much information about the experience of good interview, so person has a good

presentation during the interview may not have the real ability for the job. (Beaumont, 1993:60

61)

For the other methods there are also many drawbacks to list. So if the organization just adopt one

method or two, there is a risk to recruit the wrong person .but if there is a multiple system include

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many ways, the cost of selection will be high.

 The other limitation of recruitment is it is hard to avoid the personal biases

and irrationality and the conflict between the decision-making processes.

The assessor has to make sense of the data that is accumulated about the candidate and this sense-

making process is inherently subjective. The subjective processes which contain selective

attention, personal judgment and interpretation will affect the decision. For example: the halo

effect which means that we tend to draw a general impression about an individual on the biases of

a single characteristic.(Newell&Shackleton,2001:30 37 38)

The other is the different assessors will represent the different stakeholders who may hold the

conflicting goals .so the selection will be difficult and complicated for these struggles

Overcome:
The methods of selection should be considered not only the situation and the ‘really need ’of

the organization, but also the unique character of the organization, then make a systematic way to

make the recruitment to avoid the limited evaluation of the candidates.

Improving the low validity of the interview by increasing the structure of the interview, so that at

least all candidates will be asked the same sort of questions and all interviewers use the same

dimensions to assess candidates. Research shows that this structured interview can improve the

validity.

For the biases and conflict between the assessors during the selection, it can be

improved in the following ways:

Ensuring the assessors are well trained and in relation to understanding the dimensions and

categorization schemes used.

Use only a small number of conceptually distinct criteria which is highly related to the job. And

the systematic observation, evaluation and integration procedures are necessary which means

providing the assessors with observation aid including the several key behaviors related to the

criteria.

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Conclusion
The HR planning and recruitment are all aim at to improve the human resource management and

help organization implement the strategy well and achieve the high performance to get the

competitive advantages. But the limitations of them make the theory of the HR planning and

recruitment hard put into practice. So how to overcome this limitation can’t be neglected. And the

advise in this easy about that just from the recent research and the cases which lack of the research

of the practice. All the improvement should be take consideration since the different situation need

different solutions.

Reference:

1. Armstrong, M. (2006) A handbook of human resource management practice 10th edition

Kogan Page

2. Beaumont, P. (1993) Human resource management: key concepts and skills SAGE

3. Beardwell, J. (2004) “human resource planning” in Ian Beardwell, Len Holden, Tim Claydon
(2004) Human resource management: a contemporary approach 4th edition FT

4. Bramham , J. (1989) Human resource planning .IPM

5. Career in P&G http://www.pg.com.cn/job/index.asp

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6. China’s Changing Agricultural Policies, 2005
http://impact.typepad.com/articles/2005/07/chinas_changing.html

7. Mintzberg, H. (1994) the rise and fall of strategic planning PH

8. Newell, S & Shackleton, V (2001)‘Selection and assessment as an interactive decision –action

process’ in Wilkinson, A & Readman, T. Contemporary Human Resource Management :Text and
Cases FT

9. Rothwell, S. (1995) ‘Human resource planning’ in Storey, J. Human resource management: a

critical text. London: Routledge

10.Tansley,C ‘Human Resource Planning :Strategies ,systems and processes’ in Leopold, J. Harris,
L.& Watson, T Strategic Human Resourcing: principles, perspectives and practices FT

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