{"id":96334,"date":"2021-04-04T06:11:26","date_gmt":"2021-04-04T04:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jedox.com\/?p=96334"},"modified":"2026-03-22T11:43:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T10:43:28","slug":"human-resource-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jedox.com\/en\/blog\/human-resource-planning\/","title":{"rendered":"Human Resource Planning: 5 Critical Steps to Keep in Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

The process of ensuring that an organization’s human resource requirements are\u00a0<\/span>identified,<\/span>\u00a0and plans are established to meet those requirements is known as human resources planning.<\/span> Defining\u202fHR planning\u202fis one thing; having the process run smoothly and efficiently is quite another. For HR planning, there are two approaches to responsibility: one is central planning, where the HR department or human resources manager takes responsibility for the entire division or organization; the other is distributed planning, where team heads or members do the planning for their groups within the organization.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

What is Human Resource Planning?<\/h2>\n

Human Resource Planning is the process of evaluating what needs a company has when it comes to manpower and planning to achieve the optimum employee deployment. The goal is to have qualified employees for every job and avoid shortages and surpluses of staff. The underlying economic concept is the one of demand and supply which can be applied to HR.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Importance of Human Resource Planning<\/h2>\n

In both cases, the function is not typically a C-level one because the process is usually bottom-up and not planned for a multi-year perspective. Yet make no mistake \u2013 the practice is incredibly important. Ideally, HR planning should serve as a link between human resources management and the overall strategic plan of an organization. Aging worker populations in most industrialized countries and growing demands for qualified workers (i.e., the so-called \u201cskills gap\u201d) have moved the importance of HR planning up in organizational practice, and this development is likely to increase further in the immediate years ahead.\u202fAccording to\u202fGartner, rapid changes and business transformation initiatives require chief HR officers and HR leaders to invest in workforce planning technologies to optimize their workforce\u2019s composition, cost, and productivity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This article examines the five essential steps in strategic planning and workforce management, explains the technologies that can support those steps, and offers case histories that show how the adoption of planning technology can streamline workforce management with considerable benefits to the organization.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Five Steps of Human Resource Planning<\/h2>\n

There are five principal process steps to effective strategic planning for workforce management<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1.\u202fLeverage Financial Planning to Establish Strategic Human Resource Goals<\/h2>\n

From our perspective, sales planning is the most important planning piece for a company. HR is the second. With sales planning, you as an organization determine the size of the company in the future. With HR planning, you determine how much to spend on the workforce based on the projected size and requirements of the organization.<\/p>\n

This is fundamental: sales planning develops an estimate of how many people you need onboard to meet your needs moving forward. This year there are X employees. Based on sales planning, next year you will need Y. This is always the starting point for HR planning: establishing a baseline.<\/p>\n

Finance and HR leaders can add strategic value to the corporate planning process and increase HR workforce planning effectiveness by extending collaboration and sharing additional data points between these plans.<\/p>\n

(Gartner)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How Jedox Leverages Financial Planning<\/h3>\n

Across each of the five essential HR planning steps that are going to be discussed in this blogpost, Jedox provides technology that speeds and streamlines the process steps.<\/p>\n

The Jedox HR planning tool<\/a> provides sophisticated yet simple-to-use online calculations, as well as a \u201csplashing\u201d function that allows users to modify inputs and have them break down along the established structure. For example, ordinary input into a consolidated cell is not possible to prevent users from doing so unintentionally and thereby corrupting data. Consolidated data are the result of base element data. However, Jedox allows users to enter a value intentionally with the purpose of \u201csplashing\u201d \u2013 to split the value automatically among the subsequent base elements. So, say, if a total is decreased by 10 percent, each of the individual categories decreases accordingly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This can be done by several factors (e.g., in a certain region or functional area, decreasing by 10 percent, while in another region decreasing less or more as desired). Further, having an OLAP database allows users to filter and view data from different perspectives, enabling a more sophisticated breakdown of strategic goals that is much better than having to use an overarching percentage. In this way, the goals may be applied more precisely.<\/p>\n

2. Prepare Human Resource Planning<\/h2>\n

The second step is to prepare the\u202fHR planning\u202fprocess to determine who will be involved, who should contribute, and so forth. As stated above, there are two basic approaches to this process: centralized, where the HR department or manager takes responsibility for the process across the organization or division; or decentralized, where each manager or designated team members contribute to the planning for their team. After you determine who contributes, you establish the number of lines to be planned for.<\/p>\n

The two most important lines are headcount and full-time equivalents (FTE). These terms should not be mixed up, but headcount is indivisible, while an FTE may be a percentage (e.g., 50 percent, 25 percent). In some cases, where the planning is very lean, HR planning only addresses these lines.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Human resource planning can be lean or it can incorporate hundreds of different planning parameters. There is no single approach for every company and every planning process.<\/p><\/div>\n

Consider that case:<\/strong>\u202fA company has 1,000 employees. Strategic planning has shown that costs need to be cut by 10 percent, so HR planning determines which organizational teams will have to cut staff to comprise the 10 percent. In other cases, many more lines are incorporated in planning. These could include wages and salaries, parameters by region (e.g., insurance plans, retirement plans, employee type), or non-wage labor costs (e.g., company cars, car allowances, transportation cards, social expenses).<\/p>\n

The point is there is no single approach for every company and every planning process. It could be appropriate for a company to have only two lines; another may have 30 lines. It depends on the fit within the individual company. One caveat: it is not having the highest amount of granularity (i.e., the amount of data) that is critical; it is having the right amount of data that is critical to having an\u202feffective HR planning\u202fprocess.<\/p>\n

How Jedox Supports the Human Resource Planning Process<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

Providing actual figures is about having interfaces to existing systems \u2013 getting access to enterprise databases. This is where the Jedox Integrator<\/a> comes into play. With this user-friendly and powerful tool, users can combine all database systems with the multidimensional Jedox OLAP server \u2013 and thus quickly and easily integrate BI\/EPM applications with Jedox into existing IT landscapes. This ability enables users to have important data wherever it is needed.<\/p>\n

Security is also an important issue here. Because HR data is typically confidential, companies do not want to give all employees access to the wages and salary information on individuals. So being able to define or restrict users is an important function that Jedox provides.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Easy data integration and security management in web-based human resource planning: You control the granular data security model and manage users, groups and roles so a cost center manager will only see their team\u2019s individual data.<\/p><\/div>\n

3. Collecting Data<\/h2>\n

The third step of the process is bringing in the actual data. Typically, when doing HR planning, a company knows most of the people working next year are resident this year, because staff is stable year to year. Over the course of a year, a company may lose several people, may add to fill those losses; but the majority of those who will be onboard are already there. So, the organization knows their names, wages, managers, etc. This data is the basis for planning.<\/p>\n

For people to contribute to the HR planning phase, they need to submit actual data in a useable form. Once the strategic goals are established, the planner must focus on individuals:<\/p>\n