Behavioral Factors in Human Resource

Planning
By Jim Franklin, eHow Contributor
updated: May 27, 2010

1.

Human resource planning must strive to understand behavioral differrences in employees.

Human resource planning is concerned with the hiring, training and retention of
employees to satisfy the company's strategic objectives. But in order to hire, train and
retain quality employees and prepare future workforce requirements, human resource
planning must strive to understand certain behavioral differences. These differences
relate to an employee's situation and his personality. An employee's personality is
reflective of her values, attitudes and perception.

Personality
2. An employee's personality can be described as the characteristics that comprise his
normal or consistent behavior. These characteristics relate to the employee's psychology
and manifest themselves in several ways. A person's extroversion/introversion,
conscientiousness, emotionality and overall agreeableness are related to her personality.
When considering the organization's staff, human resources must consider personality
differences when hiring, transferring and promoting. Choosing a personality that works to
the benefit of an organization can be a difficult task. Many organizations use tools such
as personality tests to screen and match job-candidate personalities.

Attitudes
3. Attitudes can be considered synonymous with opinions. They are often the result of past
experiences. An individual may view a particular person or situation based on previous
occurrences. Attitudes are particularly difficult to change because they have evolved as a
result of a person's environment and past situation. Negative attitudes can take form as
criticism, anger, dislike or disdain. While human resource planning cannot alter an
individual's previous experience, it can affect future attitudes. This is accomplished
through hiring, training and retention efforts that focus on employee satisfaction.
 Communication is an important factor for preserving employee relations. It can be
spoken or unspoken in the way employees are treated. Orientations, training programs
and recognition programs such as rewards, promotions and raises focus on experiences
that keep employee attitudes positive.

Values
4. Values refer to to needs, wants, interests, moral obligations, likes and dislikes. They
comprise what matters most to employees. Values are often learned and can be subjective
(good or bad). Human resource planning must work with managers to consider what
values employees have and how they align with the organization's own values. By pairing
employee values to that of the organization, strategic objectives are better achieved.
Employees are also more likely to find satisfaction in the workplace.

Perceptions
5. Employee perception relates to attitude in that it is the result of past experience.
Perception takes information from various senses and combines it with a person's needs,
past experience and expectations. The result is how an individual or employee perceives
or sees his external environment.

Employee perception is vital to human resource planning. If a job candidate perceives an

organization in a negative way, she is probably less inclined to work for that company.

Retaining employees becomes difficult if their view of the company has changed. Human
resource planning must continue to attract and retain workers by keeping an affirmative
perception. This is most easily achieved if the organization's actions take into
consideration employee needs and expectations. This shows the organization values its
employees. Employee safety training, rewards, company-sponsored activities and
recognition efforts such as raises, promotions and announcements can display this value
and keep employee perceptions of the organization high.

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