7.

6 Process and design

Regarding the process and design of HR Planning, departments express mixed feelings which stem
from the lack of the following:

 Central support centres that provide timely advice and that collects and shares HR Planning
best-practices across the public service.

 Responsive and flexible tools that have been developed and shared within the public service.

 Strategic advice and policy inputs to management as full partners in departmental and HR
Planning from the dpsa.

 Inadequate and inappropriate HR Planning consulting support to departments by the dpsa.

 Independent capacity to develop own HR Plans.

 Understanding and recognition of qualitative and quantitative aspects of HR Planning and its
impact on developmental outcomes.

 Communication of HR Planning processes, roles, responsibilities, and benefits to line

managers, supervisors, human resource specialists, employees, and organised labour.

 Well-designed, integrated, and institutionalised processes based on good management,

values, and principles.

7.7 Information management

Data verification by departments has been cited as one of the challenges which stem from multiple
departmental system, i.e. PERSAL, BAS, and VULINDLELA. Departmental access to VULINDLELA and
PERSAL systems

does not provide adequate HR Planning data and information and cannot be relied upon as valid.
This has an impact on the authenticity of the HR Planning information sourced from these systems.

Departments also feel information on HR Planning is not shared amongst departments and is also
not easily accessible. This has resulted in best- practices not being shared amongst departments.
Good demand and supply forecasting capacity is also not available within departments because they
have no capacity to do so and to continuously improve HR Planning-related information systems and
processes.

Besides the aforementioned information systems, departments need to be sensitised on other

systems available to assist them with their HR Planning processes. These could be sourced from
STATSSA, where demographic information is available, and the Department of Labour, where
information on the labour force survey can be found.

7.8 Training and development

There is a need for a major review and evaluation of the current training and development
approaches, and in particular as they relate to HR Planning. Some of the training and development
challenges that departments are faced with are listed below.

 There’s inadequate HR Planning communication and structural mechanisms to bring

together HR Practitioners as a community.

 Human resource professionals, and not only HR Planners, are unable understand and apply
HR Planning concepts and practices to their work.

 Competency profiles for HR Planners are not widely used and understood.

 Adequate and practical training on HR Planning is not readily available within the public
service.