Generally, human resource planners must make use, of a variety of techniques to project future personnel needs. There are four major forecasting techniques, they are:
1. Judgement and experience.
2. Budgetary planning.
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3. Work standards data and
4. Key predictive factors.
Techniques
1. Judgement and Experience:
It includes estimates made by people who are very familiar with the products, processes and jobs in the business.
Supervisors and managers of the various units of the business make estimates of future manpower needs by judgmentally converting information on short-term future business activity into numbers and types of people needed.
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2. Budgetary Planning:
A budget is a plan expressed in financial and numerical terms. It is both an instrument for planning and for managerial control.
For many organisations, the annual process of budget preparation and review constitutes the main mechanism for planning of manpower needs.
3. Work Standards Data:
Many organisations have established comprehensive sets of data for man-hours or unit times to perform a great many production tasks.
For each department the projected units of output are converted into man-hours, man-days and number of employees by applying the established time standards.
4. Key Predictive Factors:
The essence of’ key predictive factors’ technique is to locate key indicators with which total manpower correlates highly. To identify such a factor, the human resource-planning department must examine several business factors such as sales volume, units produced, clients served, and so on.
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This has to be done to find out which factor or factors yields a good historical correlation between number of employees and changes in the business factor.
A considerable amount of quantitative analysis may be necessary to determine relationships between fluctuations in the various business indicators and changes in manpower needs.