201 PART III People resourcing Pa r t I I I co n t e n t s 17 18 19 20 21 Strategic resourcing Workforce planning Resourcing practice Talent management 203 209 219 Recruitment and selection 239 255 introduction People resourcing, often called `employee resourcing' or simply `resourcing' is the term used to cover employment activities that ensure the organization has the people it needs, and deals with employee turnover and absenteeism issues. The employment activities comprise workforce planning, recruitment and selection, attracting and retaining people, man- aging employee turnover, absence management, and talent management. It is associated with learning and development programmes that provide for the organization to have the skills and talented people it requires. Resourcing is a vital organizational activity that recognizes that the strategic capability of a firm depends on its resource capability in the shape of people (the resource-based view). This is the strategic approach to resourcing, as explained in Chapter 17. From this emerges the workforce planning aspect of resourcing covered in Chapter 18, which deals with what sort of workforce the organization requires now and in the future and what steps should be taken to meet those requirements. The core resourcing activities of recruitment and selection and handling employment issues discussed in the next two chapters are transactional. There are some who are rather dismissive about them, implying that HR is primarily a transformational activity and that recruitment, while necessary, is inferior and best left to the sidelined inhabitants of shared service centres so that business partners can get on with their essential work. They could not be more wrong. If HR does not deliver the trans- actional services expected of it no amount of strate- gizing will save the function from being dismissed as a luxury. However, talent management as described in the last chapter of this part contains both transfor- mational and transactional elements. It recognizes that businesses with the best people win and that the way to transform the organization is to identify and develop those with talent, but it also involves transactional activities such as recruitment and the administration of learning and development events.