Planning and managing human resources strategic planning for human resources management, 2nd ed.

Abstract

This book is intended for human resource (HR) practitioners,HR or personnel managers, specialists in HR planning, and students interested in this field.We saw a need for a book, designed for practitioners, that would go beyond traditional and heavily quantitative approaches to HR planning. This book is focused on HR as a tool for implementing organizational strategic plans. We define strategic planning for human resources (SPHR) as the process of anticipating long-term HR supplies and demands relative to changing conditions inside and outside an organization, and then crafting HR programs and other initiatives designed to meet the organization’s needs for knowledge capital. The broad goal of this book is to help practitioners improve their skills in strategic thinking and planning. Top managers want HR practitioners who anticipate problems, rather than merely react to them. Some authorities in the HR field believe that the future career success of practitioners will increasingly hinge on how skilled they are at strategic thinking and planning. Others note that firms that develop and implement workforce strategies consistently outperform their more short-term, crisis-driven competitors. The approach we have taken is to (1) describe a simple but generalizable model of SPHR and (2) derive practitioner “roles” from each step in the SPHR model. Some readers might object that the model and the roles we describe are not found in practice. In part, at least, they are right. The reader seeking practitioners who bear job titles like “HR Scanner,” “HR Policy Formulator,” or “HR Organizational Coordinator” will not find them. Nor will it be easier to pinpoint specific organizations using all steps in the SPHR model.