Advantages & disadvantages of human resource planning

Businesses grow based on the work performed by the employees of the company.

Companies rely on their human resource departments to build the workforce that will drive the business in the future.

Human resource planning involves recruiting the best employees, training those employees and developing those employees for the future. Human resource planning requires the department to consider current and future business needs. Companies that want to implement human resource planning need to consider the advantages and disadvantages before proceeding.

Human resource planning takes a proactive approach to meeting the company's needs, an advantage to the company. With a proactive approach, the company anticipates future needs, evaluates the company's current workforce and determines what actions to take to prepare for the future. The human resource department enjoys the ability to consider all aspects and the potential implications of different actions before acting. Companies without human resource planning react to employee needs without allowing enough time to consider all the options.

Another advantage of human resource planning involves employee development. As the human resource department identifies potential employees to move into future management positions, it can implement actions that will develop those employees' management skills. Human resource planning allows the company to review performance appraisals to see what skills an employee lacks and provide training opportunities to that employee.

One disadvantage of human resource planning relates to the current cultural thinking of the employees. Many employees work in the same manner they were originally trained. These employees learn to perform their work efficiently and take pride in their ability.

When human resource management decides to take a new approach and implement human resource planning, these employees feel threatened. Their current skills may not transfer to the new processes and the employee would need to learn a new system.

A company must invest time and money for human resource planning to become fully functional, a disadvantage for cash-strapped businesses.

Understanding human resource planning requires employees to research alternative approaches to planning, evaluating which approach fits the company best and proceeding to implement that process.

The human resources manager needs to determine how the new process fits in with the current staff and assign new responsibilities to each employee. Once the responsibilities are assigned, each employee needs to learn a new role, which requires additional training.