Dynamic approach to human resources planning for major professional companies with a peak-wise demand

Human resource planning has always been a key issue to professional companies. To help professional firms cope with demands, a dynamic approach for planning human resources in a continuous time frame is proposed. We analytically determine an exact and globally optimal solution to a firm's human resources by explicitly considering its hierarchical structure, costs of recruiting and hiring, workload, contract delays, loss of revenues, and an over-capacity issue. Managerial implications of this study are also discussed.