ABSTRACT
Business planning can materially enhance the capacity of a practice to manage its most valuable resource – its staff – more effectively. The quality of any organization depends crucially on the people working in it. The staff employed in a practice, and those attached to it, are the practice's most expensive resource. This chapter outlines the sequence of key stages in the process of using the business plan as a tool for developing effective staff management policies and procedures. It explores business planning strategies for effective human resource management. The chapter also outlines how a practice objective can be translated into concrete and realistic objectives for individual members of the practice team. It focuses on the activity of each individual towards the achievement of a specific aspect of the overall practice objective, yet each objective also reflects the individual areas of professional competence.
