Human Resources Planning
What the domain tests
Human Resources Planning (人力资源规划) tests whether you can convert a business plan into a quantified workforce plan: demand, supply, gap, and a costed action plan. China-specific questions often involve 定岗定编定员, labor-cost budgets, and the wage-total control that applies in state-owned enterprises.
Core rules
- Demand forecasting uses trend analysis, ratio analysis, scatter plots, Markov transition matrices, Delphi, and managerial judgment. A bottom-up build from workload standards is more defensible than one top-down percentage.
- Job analysis comes first. Without validated job descriptions and workload standards, 定编 is guesswork.
- Supply has internal and external parts: promotion pipelines, transfers, succession, retention, and external availability.
- Gap = demand − supply. Actions include hire, train, redeploy, outsource, reduce overtime, freeze hiring, or manage natural attrition. Each action needs an owner, timing, and cost.
- Cost includes salary, social insurance, housing fund, overtime, and recruiting cost. Headcount and FTE are not interchangeable.
Worked example
A retailer has 120 stores, each with one manager and eight staff. It will open 15 stores next year. Manager turnover is 12%; staff turnover is 30%. The internal pipeline can supply 6 managers.
Manager demand = 135. Separations = 120 × 12% = 14.4; plus 15 new-store managers = 29.4 vacancies. External hires = 29.4 − 6 = 23.4, so plan 24 with a small buffer. Staff demand = 1,080. Current staff = 960; separations = 960 × 30% = 288; plus 15 × 8 = 120 new positions; total external staff need = 408. The costed plan then multiplies 24 and 408 by fully loaded cost per hire and per head, not base salary alone.
Traps that cost marks
- Forgetting turnover in demand, so the plan covers expansion but not replacement.
- Treating headcount as FTE, which overstates capacity when part-time and shift workers are used.
- Setting 定编 without workload data, or letting departments self-declare quotas.
- Presenting a gap without actions, owners, timing, and budget.
- Ignoring social insurance and housing fund in labor-cost estimates.