Manpower Planning

 

Manpower Planning

 

Manpower Planning

Man power planning in Human Resource Management is a core factor. Human Resource Planning determines the human resources required by the organization to achieve its strategic goals. Human Resource Planning is based on the belief that people are an organizations most important resource. It is generally concerned with matching resources to business needs in the longer term, although it will sometimes address shorter term requirements. It addresses human resource needs both in quantitative and qualitative terms, which means answering two basic questions: first, how many people, and second, what sort of people? Human resource planning also looks at broader issues relating to the ways in which people are employed and developed in order to improve organizational effectiveness. It can therefore play an important part in strategic human resource management.

Meaning

Manpower planning or human resource planning is the process by which management determines how an organization should move from the current manpower to the desired manpower position. Through planning, a management strives to have the right number and the right kind of people at the right place, to do things which result in both individual and the organization receiving the maximum long range benefit.

Definition of Manpower planning

Stainer defines manpower planning as "strategy for the acquisition, utilization, improvement, and preservation of an enterprise's human resource. It relates to establishing job specifications or the quantitative requirements of jobs determining the number of personnel required and developing sources of manpower.

Objectives of Manpower Planning

• To determine future needs
  
• To recruit and retain human resources
  
• To improve standards, skills and abilities of existing employees
  
• To estimate cost of human resources
  
• To make best use of existing human resources
  
• To foresee the impact of technology
  
• To assess the shortcake or surplus of human resources
  
• To minimize imbalances
  

Need and Importance of Manpower Planning

• Understaffing loses the business economics of scale and specialization, orders, customers and profits.
  
• Overstaffing is wasteful and expensive, if sustained and it is costly to eliminate because of modern legislation in respect to redundancy payments, consultation, minimum periods of notice, etc. very importantly overstaffing reduces the competitive efficiency of the business.
  
• Manpower planning is a double edges sword. If used properly, it leads to the maximum utilization of human resources, reduces excessive labour turnover and high absenteeism, improves productivity and aids in achieving organizational goals.
  

  If not used properly, it leads to disruption in the flow of work, lower production, less job satisfaction, high cost of production and constant headaches for management personnel.
  

  Therefore for the success of an enterprise, manpower planning is a very important function.
  

Manpower Planning Procedure

1. Analyzing organizational plans
   
2. Demand forecasting
   

   Forecasting overall human resources requirements in accordance with the organizational plans
   

3. Supply forecasting- obtaining the data and information about present and the future human resource.
   
4. Estimating the net human resources requirements
   
5. Incase surplus, plan for redeployment, retrenchment and lay-off.
   
6. Incase deficit, forecast future supply of human resources
   
7. Plan for recruitment
   
8. Plan to modify or adjust the organizational plan if supply will be inadequate with reference to future net requirements
   

Planning staff levels requires that an assessment of the present and future needs of the organization be compared with present resources and future predicted resources. Appropriate steps then be planned to bring demand and supply into balance.

Forecasting Techniques

• Time and Motion Study
  
• Service based Study
  
• Managerial Judgment
  
• Ratio- Trend analysis
  
• Work study techniques
  
• Delphi technique
  
• Flow model
  

Time and Motion Study

This method is used in manufacturing industries where the attributes measured are quantitative in nature. Such as, the time required for each process and also the no of persons required for accomplishment of the task within the specified time frame.

Service based Study

This method is adopted for service organizations. Here the attributes measured are qualitative in nature and hence complex. These studies the number of personnel required to effectively carry out a particular service without compromising on part of the quality of such service.

Example: According to WHO in a hospital, the number of persons required per bed are four, which include nurse and helps. So this sets a standard for the manpower planning in Health industry.

KEY INFLUENCES OF MANPOWER PLANNING-CURRENT STATUS


The starting point for planning is to have proper records of existing employees. Basic records cover:

* Personal data including date of birth (age), qualifications, special skills, and training record

* Position data including current job and work history in the organization

* Financial data including current pay, how this is made up (for example, overtime and shift preemie), incremental scale, and pension rights.

Many of these details will traditionally be kept for payroll purposes.

*Headcount analysis, by age, service, skills, grades, and department. The overall profile of the workforce generated in this way is basic to any manpower planning system, and a vital aid to management decision making on things like redundancy. It can highlight impending problems, such as the retirement of a whole cohort of employees, and the need for fresh recruitment and training.

KEY INFLUENCES OF MANPOWER PLANNING--WASTAGES


*Employee turnover, using data on joiners and leavers over a year. Along with headcount analysis, this is basic to forecasting supply. It may also identify problems for example, particular jobs where there is high turnover and stimulate corrective action

*Absenteeism and sickness. This will be especially geared to alerting management to problems and the need for corrective action. It will interact with other indices concerned with productivity (such as the amounts of overtime that are incurred simply to provide cover for absenteeism and sickness). Like turnover data, this information clearly needs to be generated on an ongoing basis, as distinct from basic records (the 'inventory'). It is likely to be a natural product of payroll data and the subject of regular reports from line functional management.

*Overall structure of the paybill, including how salary costs will rise with increments and reduce with new entrants at lower points in a scale

*Actual paybill against budget, with areas of variance.

Analysis in these various ways can identify significant issues of performance and productivity, and imbalances that may need to be corrected. It underpins the shift in manpower planning from macroforecasting towards the more problerncentred approach.

KEY INFLUENCES OF MANPOWER PLANNING - labour utilization

The audit activity described above may be supplemented from time to time by data from other sources concerned with how efficiently people are being used. Whether this is part of a normal auditing process will depend from company to company. Data on analysis of manning ratios ('directs' to 'indirects') is a case in point. This may come under review only when cost pressures or the example of a competitor cutting indirect staff focuses attention on labour costs. Many large organizations have permanent staffs using work study and O&M (organization and methods) techniques to undertake periodic reviews of working methods and the efficiency of staff levels.

Forecasting the demand for labour


At first, forecasting the demand for labour might seem straightforward. Unfortunately, it is not. The problem is how to convert volumes of work into numbers of people. Two of the favored means for doing this are ratiotrend analysis and the use of work study standards. The Process of estimating future people required is also planned on the basis of annual budget and long term corporate plan.

Factors considered here are:

• External factors
  
  • competition,
    
  • change in technology,
    
  • laws and regulatory bodies
    
• Internal Factors
  
  • Budget
    
  • Organizational structure
    
  • Production levels
    

Ratiotrend analysis


The basic principle here is to say if it takes six people, for example, to perform an existing amount of work, it will take twelve people to do twice as much. Organizations measure activity levels in a variety of different ways. The ratio between 'directs' and 'in directs' in manufacturing is a classic one.

Individual departments in an organization also will have their own rule-ofthumb measures. A sales department, for instance, may have an idea of the number of customer calls a salesperson should make in a week, and, indeed, use this as one criterion for monitoring sales efficiency. If the business plan projects an increase in the number of new customers, this can be translated into a proportionate increase in the sales force.

The problem with measures like these is that they are crude. They take no account of economies (or diseconomies) of scale which affect efficiencies; nor of local conditions; nor of the potential of new methods and technology to increase efficiencies.

What ratiotrend analysis can do is to provide ballpark figures, which then focus attention on ways of improving efficiencies and a closer look at the underlying implications.

Work study


Work study is a more systematic method, but limited to manufacturing, certain other areas of manual work, and large clerical functions. For it to be worth while and doable in the first place, an activity has to be repeated sufficiently often to generate a reliable standard and justify the cost of measuring it.

KEY INFLUENCES OF MANPOWER PLANNING - Forecasting supply


Forecasting supply has two components, internal and external. Forecasting external supply means understanding the impact on recruitment and retention of such factors as:
Existing human resources

• Potential losses to existing resources through employee wastage
  
• Potential changes to existing resources through internal promotion
  
• Sources of supply from within the organization
  
• Sources of supply from outside the organization
  

•Demographic patterns
•Levels of unemployment
•Developments in the local economy like transport, education, and housing
•he pay policies of other employers, locally and nationally, and their plans for growth and contraction.

Factors which affect the efficiency of labour
1. Inheritance: Persons from good collection are bound to work professionally. The quality and rate of physical as well as mental development, which is dissimilar in case of different individuals is the result of genetic differences.
2. Climate: Climatic location has a definite effect on the efficiency of the workers.
3. Health of worker: worker's physical condition plays a very important part in performing the work. Good health means the sound mind, in the sound body.
4. General and technical education: education provides a definite impact n the working ability and efficiency of the worker.
5. Personal qualities: persons with dissimilar personal qualities bound to have definite differences in their behavior and methods of working. The personal qualities influence the quality of work.
6. Wages: proper wages guarantees certain reasons in standard of living, such as cheerfulness, discipline etc. and keep workers satisfy. This provides incentive to work.
7. Hours of work: long and tiring hours of work exercise have bad effect on the competence of the workers.