The Strategic Planning of Human Resources In the Palestinian Academic Institutes (An-Najah National University as a study case)

This study aimed to focus on addressing the subject of human resources strategic planning in the Palestinian universities. The study was centralized on questions such as: “is there a systematic approach for human resources strategic planning at the Palestinian universities?” and “to which extent this approach is implemented in all levels of human resources in these universities?”. The data which was collected through a survey and later analyzed showed that even the leadership of universities or human resources officials at the universities, who had responded to the questionnaires of the research, recognized the importance of human resources strategic planning, they indicated lack of implementation of such approach at these universities. For those who partially practiced human resources strategic planning, it was seen from the research results that there was no real benefit from this implementation, as the functions of the human resources management are not being executed based on the strategic directions for the institutions. According to these results, and based on the literature review executed for this study, a strategic human resources plan framework for An-Najah National University was proposed to be implemented during the years from 2012 to 2015. The strategic planning process was initiated by reviewing some international universities’ human resources strategic plans, and executing an environmental analysis for the human resources at the University, as well as reviewing the university’s Strategic Plan 2011-2015. Based on these, the human resources vision, mission and strategic goals were identified, then strategies were prepared and performance indicators were identified for each of these strategies. The study recommends that all Palestinian universities should adopt strategic human resources planning in a systematic approach to overcome all problems of human resources at these universities. The study recommends that all human resources management functions should be executed based on the strategic directions of the university in order to be consistent with the university strategies and to participate in realizing the strategic goals of the university. The study formulated a human resources strategic plan framework for An-Najah National University, proposed to be implemented in the period from 2012 to 2015. The study recommends that the methodology followed in preparing this strategic plan could be considered by the other Palestinian universities in preparing their own human resources strategic plans.