Hr Management

Human resources strategy: focusing on issues and actions.

Organizational Dynamics

 | June 22, 1990 | Schuler, Randall S.; Walker, James W. | Copyright

Human Resources Strategy: Focusing on Issues and Actions

Changes in the business environment demand a faster-paced approach to human resources planning. The authors' research shows that leading firms are already making adjustments.

Increasingly, such organizations as General Electric realize that the best way to win is to be there first. According to John F. Welch, Jr., chairman of GE, "The indispensable additional ingredient [for competing in the 1990s] will be speed: getting there faster, getting there first." As speed and the need to react quickly become valued competitive weapons, the formal strategic analyses, justifications, prototype productions, extensive market testing, and the like become more streamlined -- even eliminated.

HUMAN RESOURCES PLANNING EVOLVES

As business goes, so goes the area of human resources planning. It, too, is becoming more streamlined and more focused on immediate issues. This contrasts significantly with earlier descriptions of human resources planning. Researcher Eric Vetter once characterized human resources planning as the process by which management determines how the organization should move from its current to its desired human resources position. Through planning, management strove to have the right number and the right kinds of people, at the right places, at the right time, doing things that resulted in both the organization's and the individual's maximum longrun benefits.

Flowing from this conceptualization were five stages: (1) identifying organizational objectives and plans; (2) forecasting gross human resources requirements; (3) assessing in-house skills and other internal supply characteristics; (4) determining the net human resources requirements; and (5) developing action plans and programs to ensure the right people at the right place. Within this...