What is human resource planning?
In construction, assigning the right workers to a project is just as important as making sure you have the right materials and equipment. But with endless permutations of experience and skills across your people, making sure each project gets the most effective combination can be challenging. The most effective way to tackle this challenge is through human resource planning (HRP). Human resource planning in construction is the process of bringing together the right people to staff projects based on their capabilities, skillsets, and project requirements. HRP ensures best-fit employees are assigned to projects where they can have the most impact. It is about understanding each person’s unique skills and how they can contribute to positive project outcomes. This helps create an environment where capacity planning meets project needs, avoiding workforce shortages or surpluses.
At its heart, human resource planning is about nurturing the growth and potential of your team by matching it to the unique requirements of each project. A thriving staff appropriately assigned to work that is fulfilling and where his or her skills are best used is a surefire way to deliver better outcomes – meeting deadlines, staying within budget, and adhering compliance and regulatory requirements.
If you’re already aware that human resource planning is a gap at your company and you want to dive into solutions like workforce planning software, take a look at our free Buyer’s Guide for Workforce Planning Software. It provides an in-depth breakdown of workforce planning software, and how it can help your company maximize the value of workforce planning across all your projects. Or read on for a high-level overview of human resource planning in construction.
Challenges addressed by strategic human resource planning professionals
FINDING THE RIGHT EMPLOYEES TO FILL SKILL GAPS
Human resource planning identifies the right employees to fill skill gaps and project roles by matching their capabilities with the needs of the project. This process helps to ensure your company is right-sized at the right time and can include:
- Key performance indicators (KPI) – KPIs determine how a team member is or isn’t contributing to the organization. Using KPIs can help to identify any competency gaps in the workplace.
- Employee assessments – Regularly evaluating your team members will help to understand individual career progression, which can help identify who is ready to take on new challenges.
- Performance benchmarks – This is the process of benchmarking the performance of your highest-performing team members. This benchmark can then be used as a template to better understand which team members are operating at a high level and might be ready for the next step in their careers.
For insight into using your data to reduce skill gaps, read this article.
INCENTIVIZING EXISTING EMPLOYEES
Recognition is a fundamental human need in the workforce. Incentive programs keep your team engaged and encourage them to grow by challenging their existing skills. Deciding which incentives work best for your team can result in a significant improvement in your work culture and, like any other program, you should track the success of these programs. Incentive programs that work well include:
- Perfect attendance bonus – Ex. $600 for every six months of perfect attendance. This is an easy incentive program that keeps team members working and happy they get to line their pockets every six months.
- Unlimited sick days – Let’s face it, most employees would rather be at work than sick at home. Give your team the time they need to recover without feeling like their job is on the line.
- Recognizing work anniversaries – This is a very simple way to make your team feel appreciated. This helps foster a culture of comradery as senior team members are recognized for their contributions and the new team members have something to strive for.
These incentives can help bring recognition to the hard work of your team, and validate each person’s unique contribution. Payroll is taxed twice, and while pay increases are always a valid sign of appreciation, incentives can be written off as business expenses resulting in a win-win. Employers can write them off as necessary business expenses, and pass those benefits on to their employees.
DEALING WITH INTERPERSONAL CONFLICTS
The human resource planning team plays an important role in cultivating a healthy workplace culture. This includes developing and implementing workplace conflict policies and procedures to ensure a harmonious work environment. By fostering a sense of inclusion, equity, and fairness, you can create a culture of growth that directly benefits your employees and the quality of your work.
Most HRP professionals will have gone through conflict-resolution training throughout their professional development and are capable of either conducting training or sourcing external training resources for managers and supervisors. HRP should initiate employee communications and be able to track the effectiveness and cost of their conflict-resolution program.
Some examples of workplace conflict include:
- Inappropriate workplace behaviors
- Undefined roles in the workplace
- Poor communication
- Mismanaged organizational changes
TERMINATING EMPLOYEES
An unfortunate reality of human resource planning is offboarding employees. This requires policies and processes for compassionate transitions that maintain dignity and honouring the team member’s contribution. HR plays a significant role here threading a needle between being empathetic of the employees situation and following employment laws. With the right approach, HRP professionals can mitigate potential cultural and legal repercussions of termination while ensuring project outcomes are unaffected by staffing turnover.
HRP is involved in the process to ensure company policies and procedures are followed and that all actions conform to legal guidelines. However, it’s likely that a high-performing human resource planning team will be involved much earlier in the process and will have proactive training for managers and employees to provide guidance and training to avoid a termination altogether.
Steps involved in the typical human resource planning process
EVALUATING THE COMPANY’S OBJECTIVES
Strategic human resource planning aligns organizational goals with people-centered goals like team satisfaction, personal growth opportunities, and creating meaningful work opportunities. By understanding where the company expects to be in the next 1-5 years, HRP can develop strategies with the current workforce and build for the future by identifying skill gaps. As a rule, a strong company culture serves as the foundation for future growth opportunities.
Company goals will also help to inform a more effective training process for new hires. Once your human resource planning team identifies the capabilities required by the organization, they can define and create comprehensive training strategies for new employees. They can also develop workshops and seminars for existing team members to ensure that everyone is informed of company goals/objectives and how the company plans on hitting those goals.
EVALUATING THE CURRENT WORKFORCE
Evaluating the current workforce involves creating a 360 degree profile of the current workforce. This includes employee satisfaction, aspirations, performance levels, demographics, certifications, training, and competencies. Somewhat unique to construction, this profile should also include previous projects, since each project includes unique nuances that can provide opportunities down the road. This profile can exist at both a company level as well as an individual profile for each team member. For HRP, these profiles help to meet staffing requirements, pairing individuals with high degrees of competency or skills with projects that will most benefit the company
Once you have created your profiles, you can begin to establish measurable metrics related to your company strategies. These metrics can be used for further evaluations to track improvements over time and can include (but are not limited to):
- The quality of work and performance of new hires
- Defining the link between individual improvements and the overall company performance
- Key positions filled by internal team members that have participated in training or development programs
FORECASTING LABOR NEEDS
Forecasting team growth opportunities and labor needs is the process of forecasting what human resources will be needed to meet strategic goals. This links up the needs of upcoming projects to individual competencies to identify gaps and opportunities. Company goals, such as expanding to new regions or taking on specialized projects, benefit immensely from this view by allowing HRP to account for current and future requirements. For instance, instituting training programs or ensuring staff have requisite certifications up-to-date can provide a competitive advantage when bidding on projects. Forecasting should be flexible, so you can account for scenarios in which you win a high percentage of projects in the bidding phase, or how you’d approach workforce planning if fewer of the bids are won.
High level forecasting will also include understanding external forces that may affect your resource strategy. For example, how the construction community is expected to change in the coming months/years and understanding how the economy will affect future recruitment efforts.
CREATING AN ACTION PLAN TO ENSURE THE COMPANY’S WORKFORCE MEETS FUTURE LABOR DEMANDS
Thanks to their forecasting efforts, human resource professionals can clearly see how many people they’ll be needing to hire and for which positions. The resulting action plan should align with company goals and objectives to ensure you have the right people in place and clearly define:
- Which positions need to be filled – This will include an overview and detailed description of all the positions that need to be filled, including:
- Responsibilities
- Department
- Functions
- Timeline for when the position needs to be filled
- Define the ideal candidate – Here you’ll outline a profile for the best-fit candidate including (but not limited to):
- Education level
- Experience level
- Required skill sets and certifications
A HRP action plan should also determine compensation/benefits, performance review processes, and training programs for existing team members. It’s also important that an action plan links back to your company’s strategic goals and objectives.
IMPLEMENTING THE ACTION PLAN
Implementing an action plan can be broken down into a few key steps:
- Align with business needs – Business strategies will likely be focused on external goals and driving revenue. HR needs to align with company goals to ensure it has the resources needed to hit those goals.
- Communicate to stakeholders – When new initiatives are being implemented, informative and concise communication will help the larger team welcome the change. Start with leadership and management teams to garner buy in. This will help resolve any challenges with their support.
- Promote collaboration – When teams have contributed to HR efforts it can have a significant, positive impact on the business and workplace culture.
CONTINUALLY REVIEWING AND ADJUSTING THE COMPANY’S WORKFORCE PLAN
A great action plan can fall short if it isn’t being put into practice. Creating an action plan and making changes when necessary is a crucial step in making it a valuable asset for the business. An action plan should be a living, breathing document that evolves with the organization. Consider adding a mechanism for gathering feedback from team members about their experiences, and leverage their field-expertise to improve your plan.
The best action plans will also discuss what success means in specific, measurable terms. Rather than “meet the recruitment needs,” goals should be discussed in a way that clearly defines how successful the plan was. For example, “based on forecasting data, hire five project managers and three engineers to meet this year’s project demand.”
It can be difficult to create an entire plan for the year/quarter ahead. HR professionals should expect their plans to be iterative and be willing to adapt their goals and metrics. You may wind up hiring too many people, so it’s important to understand how that happened based on the data at your disposal in relation to the action plan. By monitoring successes and errors it helps keep the plan adaptive.
