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How to Prepare for Human Resource Planning in 2021

Human Resource Planning

By Pradip MohapatraPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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The pandemic has demonstrated the need and importance of strategic HR planning in leading an organization. HR leadership played an important role in the primary pandemic response and enabled HR leaders to work on the frontlines to ensure that their workforce had the much-needed knowledge, tools, and skills to meet the changing industry demands. In the coming years, the need for such planning will only rise!

Why do you need Human Resource Planning?

A key facet of an HR career, this ensures the right quantum and skills in human resources to attain the organizational goals and maintain smooth operations. HR planning helps a company in many ways:

● Analyzes existing HR policies and assess workforce performance

● Acknowledges where your business stands and where it needs to go further

● Improve team cohesion, flexibility, and adaptability.

● Ensures that the workforce acts in synchronization with the business objectives even when the future turns out to be different (think 2020)

● Ensures that each employee remains productive, engaged, and works on the same page

Now, let’s walk you through the steps to prepare for human resource planning in 2021.

Steps of Human Resource Planning

Determine HR role in attaining strategic goals of company

Discuss with management teams about the strategic goals of the company, including expansion plans, targeted revenues and profits, and likely competition. The direction the company plans to take will help understand the current and future requirements for knowledge and skills, and accordingly create job descriptions and evaluate applicants.

Evaluate HR supply

Without assessing the current landscape of workforce performance, creating an HR plan will be of no use. The foremost step towards creating an effective HR plan involves identifying and evaluating the talent that your organization already has and formulating a skill index. To do so, it's important to study and understand the human resource capabilities of the organization in the context of factors such as skills, competencies, numbers, qualifications, age, tenures, talents, and compensation. Once you recognize the current skill capacity and performance of your organization, you can begin with forecasting the future requirements.

Forecast HR demand

The second crucial step in HR planning involves the evaluation of prospective workforce requirements through various factors such as layoffs, anticipated vacancies, promotions, retirement, and other disruptions. Since external business conditions like new technology, competitive forces, and abrupt resignations also contribute to the labor demand, they should also be considered during HR analysis.

Balance labor demand and supply

Formulate a gap analysis that specifies the requirements to balance the current supply with the future demand for labor. The gap analysis will help the HR team to identify the hiring and upskilling requirements.

Formulate and implement an action plan

This step of formulating an HR plan is further divided into some sub-steps which include talent management, recruitment, outsourcing, conducting internal meetings, revision of organizational policies and objectives, employee reskilling and training, talent acquisition, and relocation. The plan is subsequently implemented with the help of executives and managers to ensure a flexible and seamless execution within different teams.

Monitor progress

No plan can be effective without constant measurement and monitoring. This helps to compare outcomes of the HR plan with strategic goals of the company, and tweak plans if and as needed.

Essentials of a strategic human resource plan

To formulate a good human resource plan, HR leadership should make use of the following:

Employee engagement survey: Conduct employee engagement surveys to measure the alignment of employees with that of the organization.

HR Analytics: Track and analyze performance data for the development of effective strategies to boost output as well as improve retention and engagement.

Skill Gap Analysis: Identifying the skill gap is important to plan reskilling and upskilling requirements as per the strategic goals.

Investment in Skill Training: This is important to ensure the filling up of skill gaps in an organization.

How can HR certifications help you with HR planning?

HR professionals play a key role in building, managing, and enhancing the workforce and culture of an organization. To secure new opportunities in an HR career by learning the right skills to execute an HR plan, the best HR certifications can give you the authority to claim the prize and gain the skills and industry knowledge.

In a nutshell, the best HR certifications can help a talent professional upgrade and nurture existing skills and planning capabilities, showing the way to a bright HR career.

To sum it up…

Now that we are entering a whole new era of remote work culture, companies have already started investing in digital tools and other technological advancements to measure employee productivity and enable seamless virtual monitoring. Another key emerging HR priority in 2021 is companies prioritizing the mental health of employees and redefining employee experience. These and other significant considerations are important mile markers for planning your HR strategy in 2021.

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About the Creator

Pradip Mohapatra

Pradip Mohapatra is a professional writer, a blogger who writes for a variety of online publications. he is also an acclaimed blogger outreach expert and content marketer.

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