There are two main tasks in human resource planning. The first is the assessment of the firm's future managerial and nonmanagerial personnel needs. The second is the choice of a feasible combination of personnel management and development programs that will enable the organization to accomplish its stated objectives.
Assessing future management needs is a two-step process. In the first step, a quantitative forecast is made of the number of managers needed to staff the organization for the foreseeable future. Subsequently a qualitative forecast is made of the skills these people will need to carry out their tasks. These forecasts permit managers to match managerial personnel to the future growth patterns of the firm.
In general, managerial work requires three categories of skills. 1
(1) Technical skills: an understanding of and proficiency in specific kinds of methods, processes, procedures, or techniques. Technical skills involve specialized knowledge, analytical ability within that specialty, and facility in the use of the tools and techniques of the specific discipline.
(2) Human skills: an ability to work effectively as a group member and to build cooperative effort within a team. Human skills are demonstrated in the way the individual perceives (and recognizes the perceptions of) his/her superiors, equals, and subordinates, and in the way he/ she behaves subsequently.
(3) Conceptual skills: the ability to visualize the relationship of the individual business to the industry, the community, and the political, social, and economic forces of the nation as a whole. An administrator must recognize these relationships and perceive the Significant elements in any situation if he/she is to act in a way that advances the overall welfare of the organization.
The most difficult task in forecasting is to predict the conceptual skills that will be needed in the future. Of the three categories of skills, conceptual skills are the ones most vulnerable to changes in both technology and culture. The problem is twofold. Not only will future executives face environments different from the ones today's executives have become accustomed to dealing with, but changes in the external environment will not be the same the world over. Thus whatever training an individual underwent in his or her attempt to keep up with domestic job demands may not be appropriate for an overseas job.
Most, if not all, of today's management training and development efforts concentrate on technical and human skills. Conceptual skills, on the other hand, are supposed to be "picked up along the way." But increasingly organizations will have the responsibility for removing impediments to the individual's growth in all three skills areas, as well as providing the appropriate opportunities for growth.
Though an individual can acquire technical, human, and conceptual skills through formal education, prior to joining the organization, it is experience that converts abstract and theoretical knowledge into practical know-how. For this reason, any forecast of the future skills of a manager must take into consideration his or her on-the-job experience. Rutenberg described the ideal "experienced cosmopolitan executive for the year 2010."
(1) She or he must have managed at least four different types of products (one competitively dominant and one competitively weak, each in a high-growth industry and in a stagnant industry).
(2) She or he must have assimilated the pressures of different managerial positions (line manager, project integrator, and staff analyst) and experienced different types of business relationships (mergers, joint ventures, divestments).
(3) She or he must be competent in accounting and treasury operations, manufacturing and labor relations, marketing and negotiating.
(4) She or he must have lived in at least five nations: exposure to different types of national behaviors, each affected by economic wealth, political sympathies, and cultural attitudes, is invaluable. 2
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