4 - Human Resources Planning and Recruitment Flashcards
Strategic planning involves a set of procedures for making decisions about the organization’s long-term goals and strategies. Typically strategic plans have a strong ______ orientation that covers major portions of the organization. The plans especially focus on how the organization will position itself relative to its competitors in order to ensure its long-term _____, create value and grow.
Human resources planning (HRP) is the process of anticipating and making provision for the movement of _______ into an organization, during their tenure within the firm and their movement out of the organization. Its purpose is to assist managers deploy their human resources (HR) as effectively as possible, where and when they are needed, in order to accomplish the organization’s goals.
external
survival
people
Strategic human resources management combines ______ planning and ________ planning. SHRM can be thought of as the pattern of HR deployments and activities that enable an organization to achieve its strategic goals.
strategic
human resources
HRP and strategic planning are linked. HRP relates to an organization’s strategic planning both in terms of its formulation and also in terms of its implementation. HRP provides a set of inputs into the strategic formulation process in terms of what is possible; that is, whether the types and numbers of people are available to pursue a given strategy.
HRP also is important in terms of ______ implementation. Once a firm has devised this, the company’s executives must make resource allocation decisions to implement it, including decisions related to the firm’s structure, processes and human capital.
All the available evidence suggests that the integration of HRP and strategic planning tends to be most effective when there is a ________ relationship between the two processes. When this occurs, a firm’s top management team recognizes that strategic planning decisions affect—and are affected by—HR concerns. In the best of companies, there is surprisingly little ________ between strategic planning and HRP. The planning cycles are the same, and HRP issues are viewed as being integral to the management of the business.
strategy
reciprocal
distinction
There are several steps that should be included in a planning process that integrates strategic planning and HRP. Among these steps are the following:
- Step One. _____, _____, and ______:
- Step Two. _______ analysis:
- Step Three. _______ analysis:
- Step Four. Formulating ______:
- Step Five. _______ implementation:
- Step Six. __________ and assessment:
Mission, vision and values
Environmental
Internal
strategy
Strategy
Evaluation
Six external issues frequently monitored by HR managers are:
- (1) ______ factors and development information, including general, regional and global conditions
- (2) Industry and competitive ______, including new processes, services and innovations
- (3) ________ changes, including information technology, innovations, and automation
- (4) _______ and _________ issues, including laws and administrative rulings
- (5) ______ concerns, including child care, elder care, the environment and educational priorities
- (6) _________ and labor market trends, including the age, composition and literacy of the labor market, and immigration.
- Economic
- trends
- Technological
- Government / legislative
- Social
- Demographic
Depending on their roles within an organization, individuals can be mapped into the following four groups:
(1) _____________: This group of employees has rm-speci c skills directly linked to the company’s strategy, and these employees are given considerable autonomy and discretion to perform their jobs. These employees are dif cult to replace. Companies make long-term commitments to these employees. Typically these workers would include research and development (R&D) scientists in a pharmaceuticals company or computer scientists in a software development company.
(2) __________: This group of employees has skills that are quite valuable to a company, but not particularly unique or dif cult to replace. These employees are hired to perform a prede ned job. Salespeople in a department store or truck drivers for a courier service would be examples of these types of workers. Managers’ commitment to them is of a short-term nature. Generally managers make less investment in training and develop- ment and tend to focus more on paying for short-term performance achievements.
(3) ____________: This group of workers has skills that are of less strategic value and generally available to all rms. The scope of their duties is limited and there is little commitment from the company. Their employment relationships tend to be transaction based, focused on rules and procedures, with less investment in development. Examples of these types of workers would be clerical workers, maintenance workers, and staff workers in accounting and human resources. These types of workers are often hired from external agencies on a contract basis to support the strategic knowledge workers and core employees.
(4) ____________: This group of individuals has skills that are unique, but not directly related to a company’s core strategy. Examples of these types of workers would include attorneys on retainer, consultants and research lab scientists. Companies tend to establish longer term alliances and partnerships with these individuals and nurture an ongoing relationship focused on mutual learning.
- Strategic knowledge employees
- Core employees
- Supporting workers
- Partners and complementary skills
Firms that view their employee-oriented cultures as critical to their success undertake cultural audits to examine the attitudes and beliefs of their workforces as well as the activities they engage in. At one level, this analysis focuses on whether a firm’s critical ______ are embraced and demonstrated by employees throughout the organization. Via cultural audits, companies have found ways to get the most from their employees by linking their values and ideas to ______.
values
profits
While internal analysis of the three Cs (capabilities, composition and culture) may reveal a great deal about where the organization is today, things change.
In an important sense, strategic planning is about managing that change. Managers must continually forecast both the needs and the capabilities of the firm for the future in order to do an effective job at strategic planning. Managers focus on (at least) three key elements:
(1) forecasting the _____ for labor;
(2) forecasting the _____ of labor; and
(3) balancing _________ considerations.
- demand
- supply
- supply-and-demand
There are two approaches to human resources forecasting—quantitative and qualitative.
The quantitative approach involves the use of statistical or mathematical techniques, including _____ analysis and ______ or multiple predictive techniques.
The qualitative approach to forecasting is less statistical. _______ forecasts and the ______ technique are two of the methods that can be used in the qualitative approach.
- The first is the opinions (judgments) of supervisors, department managers, experts or others knowledgeable about the organization’s future employment needs.
- The other attempts to decrease the subjectivity of forecasts by soliciting and summarizing the _________ of a preselected group of individuals.
trend
modeling
Management
delphi
judgments
________ are organized data banks prepared on employees other than managers. They list each individual’s education, past work experience, vocational interests, specific abilities and skills, compensation history and job tenure. These tools can be used to quickly match job openings with employee backgrounds.
When data are gathered on managers, these inventories are called ________ inventories. They are essentially the same as skills inventories except that the data relate to management employees.
Skills inventories
management
Human capital readiness is the process of evaluating the availability of ___________ in a company and comparing it to the firm’s supply. Any difference between the quantity and quality of employees required versus the quantity and quality of employees available represents a gap that needs to be remedied.
One company’s executive team identified eight key job “families” which comprised about 100 employees of the firm’s 1,500-member staff. For each of these critical job families, managers identified the critical knowledge, skills and behaviors necessary to build core capabilities. The team then determined the number of people required for these positions, as well as the number who were currently qualified. A ________ was determined showing human capital readiness.
critical talent
percentage
Emerging and growing companies execute their strategies differently than mature companies or those in decline. As companies grow, their strategic choices tend to focus on geographic, volume and product expansion. HR planning is a vital input to these decisions. Growth hinges on three related elements:
- (1) increased employee _________,
- (2) a greater number of ________
- (3) employees developing or acquiring ________.
Thus, a firm’s staffing, training, employee motivation efforts, and the like can either enable the company to grow or limit its potential. As companies diversify into new businesses, managers inevitably are faced with a “_________” decision. that is, should they develop the capabilities in-house or contract externally?
productivity
employees
new skills
“make or buy”
While corporate strategy involves domain selection whereby an organization identifies and selects the markets in which it will compete, business strategy is concerned with domain _______. It is more focused on how the company will compete against rival firms in order to create value for customers. ________ is what the firm adds to a product or service by making it, the amount of benefits provided by the product or service once the costs of making it are subtracted.
navigation
Value creation
Do low-cost strategies inevitably require cutting labor costs?
NO.
A common misconception about low-cost strategies is that they inevitably require cutting labor costs. On the contrary, there are several good examples of companies that pay their employees “top dollar,” but gain back cost advantages because of excellent productivity.
In addition to formulating corporate and business-level strategies, managers also need to “translate” strategic priorities into _______ areas of the organization such as marketing, manufacturing, human resources and the like.
________ (or vertical alignment) focuses on the connection between the business objectives and the major initiatives in HR. For example, if a company’s strategy focuses on achieving low cost, its HR policies and practices need to reinforce this idea by reinforcing efficient and reliable behavior on the part of employees, enhanced productivity, and the like. in addition to vertical alignment, or fit, managers need to ensure that their HR practices are all internally aligned with one another to establish a configuration that is mutually reinforcing. the entire range of the rfim’s HR practices—from its job design, staffing, training, performance appraisal and compensation—needs to focus on the same workforce objectives.
functional
Vertical fit
