You may ask how useful a human resource planning process can be today and how he process works. What is certain today s that we live in a discontinuous environment, where volatility conquers and the future is just really hard to forecast. It is really hard for a small business to plan ahead because everything changes quickly. But planning is not all about predicting the future but also helping in making strategies operational, working out their consequences and identifying that must be done to achieve them. It is only a tool for communication so that coordination and encouragement can be increased. In a few words, it shows the direction a small business should take. The steps for a successful human resource planning process include analyzing the business environment, forecasting future human resource needs and analysing the current situation and projecting forward.

Analyzing the environment

The environmental analysis in the human resource planning process will involve the analysis of the business's competitors. What your competitors offer their employees in terms of wages or any non-liquid benefits like a career development, flexibility with child-rearing and training. Some businesses may also offer different perks like bigger offices or comfortable eating areas that can have a great impact on employee performance. All these benefits will also make sure that employees are happy with their current occupation and they are willing to stay with the business in the long term instead of pursuing alternative job opportunities.

A small business should be aware of the availability of potential employees with the right skills and also have an idea of what are the expectations of such employees. Businesses have to cope with the legislation system in their every decision in hiring or firing an employee. Such actions may have different advantages or disadvantages.

When analyzing the environment around the business, you should be focused on finding people that have the relevant skills and behaviours to the business's purposes. After considering what type of employees will be the best contribution for the business and relating what such employees receive from competitors, you will be able to form the right offers that can attract the right employees and at the right cost.

Forecasting future human resource needs
It may be hard to forecast exactly what future resource needs might be, but different business factors, work studies or subjective approaches will give an idea of what will be required in the future.

A great feature of the human resource planning process is that by looking at simple business metrics, like production, sales or the level of service, a small business can estimate future demand or supply. For example, bad economic periods like the ones we are living now will create future expectations of lower sales which may cause them to take actions such as decreasing the number of employees working for the firm, and decrease costs. This will occur in order to make sure that the right number of employees is utilised in relation to the required production.

Different work studies can be analyzed which can determine what are the required inputs, like the number of employees and work time, required to produce different outputs. This may prove more useful in production work and it needs to be checked regularly. This may give results related to the person hours needed per unit of output and help in developing standards for employee numbers and skill level requirements.

The final option managers have for the establishment of a human resource planning process is the use of subjective approaches. Subjective approaches require managerial judgment of the operational and technical staff. It relies on manager's estimates of demand based on past experiences. The problem with this approach is that it is difficult to cope with new changes that are different from past experiences. Also it is less precise but more comprehensive than statistical methods. Managerial judgment can be even more valuable when using statistical approaches.

Analyzing the current situation and projecting forward
A great way in analyzing the current situation is the use of questioners and interviews to staff, and managerial judgment. This approach can provide info on the employees' motivation, satisfaction, culture, attitude to minority groups and equality of opportunity, clarity of objectives.

Also, business reports like turnover figures, performance data, recruitment and promotion trends and characteristics of employees may provide relevant information. When considering these sources it is important to have a look both in formal and informal systems. By that we mean the distinction of what employees duties are based on the business's rules and what actually goes on between low level employees that have a distant connection to senior managers.

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