USING DEMOCRATIC SIMILARITY IN HUMAN RESOURCES PLANNING TO BUILD A COMMITTED WORKFORCE

Introduction There is little doubt that organisations wishing to survive in the increasingly competitive environment of the 1990s must have a clear plan for their acquisition and utilisation of human resources. The various activities carried out by the personnel function, such as selection, recruitment, development and assessment have a far greater impact on organisational excellence if they are part of a thought‐out human resources plan, rather than piecemeal, and perhaps disconnected outputs of the personnel department. Because of the realisation of the need for integrated planning, human resources planning (HRP) has become increasingly well accepted, but there is still a large gap between theory and practice in HRP. There is considerable lip‐service to the need for sophisticated HRP, but many practitioners continue to use simple HRP techniques and less frequently use the more powerful techniques that are available. This may be a function of the gap between theory and practice as practitioners are likely to prefer to work with the techniques that they understand and which they control, rather than having to make use of what they see as “sophisticated” planning models which typically require the help of a head office planning or computer department.