What do HR Managers exactly do? Part Three - Resourcing and Talent Planning

The third instalment in a series of articles examining the work of the HR function

Resourcing an organisation is often described as getting the right number of people with the right skills into an organisation at the right time, and although this is a useful working definition, in the sophisticated and complex world of contemporary business, there’s often a lot more to than this!

Again, the CIPD HR Profession Map is helpful in its definition of Resourcing and Talent Planning as, “ensuring that the organisation is able to identify and attract key people with the capability to create competitive advantage, and that it actively manages an appropriate balance of resource to meet changing needs, fulfilling the short and long term ambitions of the strategy.” The CIPD also makes it clear that Resourcing and Talent Planning is not just about recruiting people into an organisation, but also concerned with succession planning (who, for example will be immediately available to do the Finance Director’s job if he dies on his annual mountaineering expedition?), induction, and redundancy execution (unfortunate phrase perhaps!)

So, following the framework that we’ve already established, what does this mean that he HR Manager will need to do, and what will he need to know in order to do his job?

Typical activities of an HR Manager involved in Resourcing and Talent Planning will be:

•Leading the analysis of current resource and talent levels, taking into account factors such as current and future demand, demographics, attrition, capability by discipline, geography, critical and scarce skills.
•Developing short term and long term resourcing renewal plans by appropriate use of development, hiring, performance management and retention.
•Leading the development and ongoing management of an organisation-wide succession planning process and methodology that integrates fully with other critical processes such as performance management and talent identification.
•Developing an external recruitment strategy to manage expected and unexpected attrition and the acquisition of required new skills and capabilities, with reference to recruitment source, career stage, entry point, timing of need, and so on.
•Implementing and managing the organisation-wide succession planning process and methodology, ensuring data from other sources such as performance appraisal, 360 feedback and so on is reliably used.
•Leading the identification and implementation of appropriate and fair selection and assessment methodology.
•Developing and leading the processes to manage people out of an organisation or a role, either as a result of a formal redundancy programme or on an individual basis when the individual’s ambitions and capabilities are mismatched with those of the organisation.
•Leading the development of an organisation-wide induction and transition management methodology to minimise the time it takes to get ‘on top of the job’.

What will a senior HR Professional need to know and understand in order to do these activities?

Again, the skills and knowledge demanded of the HR professional in this area are almost identical to those that will have been put to use in Organisation Design and Development. Additional areas of unique understanding would be:

•Knowing how to assess current resourcing and talent
•Knowing how to develop and deliver a strategic resourcing plan taking into consideration current and future demand, demographics, attrition, capability by discipline, critical and scarce skills, renewal, sustainability.
•Knowing how to develop a recruitment strategy for several talent groups, from multiple sources and over an extended time frame.
•Knowing a variety of assessment and recruitment techniques and their relative contributions to selection processes.

Questions for discussion
The above information contains some specific HR terminology. What’s meant by 360 feedback, induction, capability, attrition, demographics.
As a manager in a medium-size business, what avenues would be open to you to either increase or decrease the size of your team?
The possible end to the recession may lead to many recruiting organisations scrabbling for the same resource. Look at the tips contained in the HR Case Studies article “Recruiting in challenging times” and answer the accompanying questions
Hint for teachers: clicking on the Developing an Effective Workforce label on the right hand side of the HR Case Studies website will bring up a number of recent media reports of organisations responding to the challenge of recruitment

Recruiting in challenging times