Organizational Self-Assessment

Question

Why is organizational self-assessment critical to the strategic planning process? What does self-assessment reveal about a company's HR needs? What can HR managers do to take steps to address a company's needs once self-assessment results are produced?

Answer

Organizational self-assessment is critical to the strategic planning process because without it a company will not be successful. An organizational self-assessment allows business leaders to evaluate the organization as a whole to find out answers to questions such as, What is currently working well?, What isn't working well?, and What is hindering progress? The assessment should be designed to expose the cause of any problems or issues, so that business leaders can provide an appropriate and effective solution.

An organizational self-assessment helps to reveal a company's HR needs by identifying an organization's primary strengths and weaknesses and in turn create ways to capitalize on the strengths and improve or minimize the weaknesses (Mello, 2006). This process requires an organization to look at both its resources and its internal management systems. Resources inlcude financial resources, physical resources, human resources, technological resources, and capital resources. Management systems include company culture, organizational structure, power dynamic, politics, decision-making processes, past strategy and performance, and work systems (Mello, 2006).

Once the self-assessment results are produced HR managers will need to take the necessary steps to address the company's needs. This can be done by creating goals that are specific, flexible, and measurable, and by creating objectives. Both will help guide managers at all levels in their day-to-day decision making (Mello, 2006). Once the goals and objectives have been defined, management is then able to create a strategy for how they plan on reaching organizational goals.

Mello, J. A. (2006). Strategic human resource management (2nd ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.

Question

What are the objectives in HR planning? Why are these important? What is the consequence of not meeting these objectives?

Answer

According to Mello (2006), the objectives in HR planning are derived from the organization's consideration of the implications of its future plans on the nature and types of individuals it will need to employ, and the necessary skills and training they will require. Additionally, the organization will need to assess its current stock of employees as well as those that can be employed externally. Human resource planning is a proactive process. It is a process of planning ahead instead of reacting