Nowadays, market competition has placed unprecedented pressure on organizations to operate the best and to be more responsive to customers’ needs. The key for developing and implementing strategic responses to these needs is an efficient Human Resources Management because employees are the most competitive factor.

Considering the Functions of Management, we can elaborate the term Human Resources Management as “the process of planning, organizing, leading and controlling the Human Resources within an organization to accomplish the organizational goals and objectives”. Hence, the first function of managing human resources within an organization is Planning.

Human Resources Planning is the process which links the organization strategy with its operational plans. It is a systematic analysis of the human resources needs which ensures that the right number of employees with right skills and abilities are available at the right time and place to achieve the organization’s overall objectives efficiently and effectively.

The main objectives of Human Resources Planning are:

• Proper assessment of future human resources and manpower needs
• Creating a highly talented workforce in the organization
• Proper utilization of human resources
• Coping with the change
• Expansion and diversification plan
• To manage the challenges of restructuring, re-engineering, downsizing, and modernization in future
• Employee turnover
• Planning for retaining the top employees in the organization

Through human resources planning, we analyze the gap between current skills and knowledge of the employees with the desired ones and we improve their capacities by giving them timely training and development opportunities. Human Resources Planning also helps to make strategic decisions in terms of attracting, selecting, training and retaining of best people in the cases of layoffs, terminations, replacement, etc.

In my conclusion, an organization’s success lies in the knowledge, skills, abilities, creativity, commitment, and motivation of its employees to effectively perform the duties and tasks. Successful planning for human resources is about planning necessary changes in the right time to result in advantages of an organization in the competition to satisfy customer demands.