Chapter 4 Flashcards
What is HR forecasting?
A way of determining the net requirement for human capital by assessing the demand and supply of Human Resources
What are the main advantages of HR forecasting?
-reducing HR costs
- increase organizational flexibility
- ensuring a close linkage to macro business forecasting process
What is human capital theory?
It takes time for investments in human capital to produce financial or productivity based returns
Generic human capital
Competencies and KSAOs that are held by individual employees and valuable to any company (so they are priced in the labour market)
Firm specific human capital
Competencies and KSAOs employees possess through mentorship and/or experience at a company
Human capital flow
Change in stock of human capital over time
What is strategic forecasting?
Concept: human capital needs flow from how to solve the businesses problem
Human capital requirement categories
- specialist/technical/ professional workers
- employment equity (designated group membership)
- managers and executives
- recruits
Specialist/ technical/ professional workers
In high demand or require lots of training
-hard to plan for supply and demand of these workers
Employment equity - designated group membership
Underrepresented groups
Four designated groups for employment equity?
- people of aboriginal descent
- women
- persons with disabilities
- members of visible minorities
Managers and executives
Hard to find ones that can make a positive impact on an org
Recruits
Important for bringing new ideas and trends to the org
Forecasting process
1 determine staffing needs by skills, skill levels, or jobs
2 perform analyses to determine number of required employees
3. create a budget to determine cost for fulfilling stated org requirements
4. Put HR programs into place to meet supply and demand requirements
Categories of forecasting methods
- Survey the business line for anticipated needs
- norm based rules
- time series and regression based models
- mathematical and economical models
- qualitative models
Types of forecasting horizons
- current forecast: forecast used to meet the immediate needs of an org
- short term forecast: 1-2 years beyond current forecast
- medium run forecast: 2-5 years beyond current forecast
- long run forecast: 5+ years beyond current forecast
Forecast horizon predictions
Single numerical estimate of HR requirements for a specific horizon and set of assumptions
Forecast horizon projection
Several HR estimates based on a variety of assumptions
Forecast Envelope
Range of plausible values of a prediction based on a given set of assumptions
Forecast Scenarios
Proposed sequence of events with their own assumptions and program details
- tend to be alternative scenarios as well
Contingency planning
Plans to be implemented when severe changes to org or enviro factors render existing HR forecasting moot
