Dear Jagadish,

Personnel management is productive exploitation of manpower resources. This is also termed as ‘Manpower Management’. Manpower Management is choosing the proper type of people as and when required. It also takes into account the upgrading in existing people. Manpower Management starts with manpower planning. Every manager in an organization is a personnel man, dealing with people.

Definition and importance of manpower Planning:
Planning is nothing but using the available assets for the effective implementation of the production plans. After the preparing the plans, people are grouped together to achieve organizational objectives.

Planning is concerned with coordinating, motivating and controlling of the various activities within the organization. Time required for acquiring the material, capital and machinery should be taken into account. Manager has to reasonably predict future events and plan out the production. The basic purpose of the management is to increase the production, so that the profit margin can be increased. Manager has to guess the future business and to take timely and correct decisions in respect of company objectives, policies and cost performances. The plans need to be supported by all the members of the organization. Planning is making a decision in advance what is to be done. It is the willpower of course of action to achieve the desired results. It is a kind of future picture where events are sketched. It can be defined as a mental process requiring the use of intellectual faculty, imagination, foresight and sound judgment.

It involves problem solving and decision making. Management has to prepare for short term strategy and measure the achievements, while the long term plans are prepared to develop the better and new products, services, expansion to keep the interest of the owners.

Advantages of manpower planning:
Manpower planning ensures optimum use of available human resources.
1. It is useful both for organization and nation.
2. It generates facilities to educate people in the organization.
3. It brings about fast economic developments.
4. It boosts the geographical mobility of labor.
5. It provides smooth working even after expansion of the organization.
6. It opens possibility for workers for future promotions, thus providing incentive.
7. It creates healthy atmosphere of encouragement and motivation in the organization.
8. Training becomes effective.
9. It provides help for career development of the employees.

Steps in Manpower planning
1. Predict manpower plans
2. Design job description and the job requirements
3. Find adequate sources of recruitment.
4. Give boost to youngsters by appointment to higher posts.
5. Best motivation for internal promotion.
6. Look after the expected losses due to retirement, transfer and other issues.
7. See for replacement due to accident, death, dismissals and promotion.

Factors which affect the efficiency of labor:
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 behaviour 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.

Downsizing of manpower:
Downsizing of manpower gives the correct picture about the number of people to be employed to complete given task in the predetermined period. It is used for achieving fundamental growth in the concern. It can work out the correct price by the resource building or capacity building. It aims at correct place, correct man on a correct job.

Thus manpower planning is must to make the optimum utilization of the greatest resource available i.e. manpower for the success of any organization.

Hope these details shall clear your queries on the manpower planning function.

Regards

tesmian

Dear jagadish,

Manpower Planning should always be organization based.

First have have the whole work structure defined:

- Job Description
- Job Specification
- The roles performed in each job

Accordingly, have an idea of the existing manpower in your organization.Create an inventory - profile wise, age wise, skill wise - technical, non technical and experience wise too and any other parameters organiztion specific.

Then forecast a future demand and supply of manpower.And also calculate the number of existing employees, persons leaving the organization during the year, the attrition rate, the no. of people who will retire etc and the types of movements of the employees in the orgn in and out.

And accordingly ur business forecast wise you have to calculate the future manpower requirements and plan out the manpower.You have to calculate the manpower requirements the job wise.

Above is the very basic way of manpower planning.There are more to it. I just wrote whatever came to my mind.

Any other queries, please revert back.

Regards

Professor Mamata

I have taken the liberty of answering your question, with a broad approach , in order to give a complete picture .

At this stage, I am not sure whether your organization is IT or Non - IT, -START UP co or CO. with expansion plans or status quo.

MANPOWER planning is a simple process, and consists of

five essential elements:

* Analysing the current manpower resource

* Reviewing employee utilization

* Forecasting the demand for employees

* Forecasting supply

* Developing a manpower plan

BUT IN REAL LIFE, you need a lot of base information to work with . If you are doing it for the first time yourself and the company, you need to collect / collate the database,
before you could a meaning exercise.

The manpower planning is interlinked with Organization planning and the HR planning , and one cannot be planned without the support of the other two.

Whether it is a
-organization with no expansion plan or
-organization with major expansion plan or
-organization start up,

the conceptual approach is the same. You may not consider all the elements in all cases.

Other important factors that need to be considered are
-investment dimension
-time frame
-product plan / range
-nature of operation [ mfg. marketing or mfg only or trading only etc]
-geographical coverage
-distribution / channel plan etc etc.

These factors plus the corporate planning objectives / strategies plus the consequences of the inbalances from the ANALYSIS & INVESTIGATIONS would dictate the creation of MANPOWER/ HR planning strategies/ tactics [ policies/ procedures/practices etc]

The inbalances could come from
-organization circumstances
-opportunities and expectations
-requirements and availability
-behavioural consequences
-policy on organization structure
-policy on individuals

OBJECTIVES AND NATURE OF MANPOWER MANAGEMENT

Manpower and HR plannings involves applying the basic planning process to the human resource needs of the organization. To be effective any MP/ HR plan must be derived from the CORPORATE strategic plan of the organization. The success of the MR/HR depends largely on how closely the HRdepartment can integrate effective people planning with the organization's business planning process.

Corporate business planning seeks to identify various factors critical to the success of the organization.It also focuses on how the organization can become better positioned and equipped to compete in the market. This provides

-a clear statement of the organization's mission.
-a commitment from senior management to the mission.
-an explicit statement of assumptions.
-a statement of objectives / strategies.
-a plan of action in light of available or acquirable resources , including human resources.

MP/HR planning contributes significantly to the corporate business process by providing the means to accomplish the outcomes desired from the planning process. In essence
the HR demands and needs are derived from the corporate strategic business plan and then compared with HR availability.

MANPOWER SYSTEM

Once the corporate objectives , strategies and plans are outlined, the directions are filtered down to the business units and departments, involving all levels of management in the organizational planning process.

The business units management and departments management work closely with the HR management to determine the people requirements to achieve their objectives.

Manpower planning has five essential elements:

* Analysing the current manpower resource

* Reviewing employee utilization

* Forecasting the demand for employees

* Forecasting supply

* Developing a manpower plan

While these can be seen as sequential steps, in practice thinking about manpower can begin with almost any of these. This is what makes manpower planning a dynamic process. For instance, a manufacturing function might want to introduce new machinery that will do a job to a better standard and more quickly. To justify the expenditure, the manufacturing manager will be expected to show a saving on labour, which may translate into fewer people. In another case, a downturn in business may provoke an urgent drive to reduce overheads and cuts in office staff. The point is that manpower decisions have been triggered outside the HRM function, and most certainly outside the hands of anyone who carries the title of manpower planner.

The other point that the two examples highlight is that planning can have a short­, medium‑, and long‑term aspect. The long term is necessary to provide a framework for managing broad trends. Long‑term planning should be done regularly and systematically, and plans kept under review. The short to medium term, however, is what matters to most managers.

KEY INFLUENCE ON MANPOWER PLANNING--INDICATORS

Analysing the current manpower resource

Analysis and investigation
Internal labour
Market
Turnover
Cohort analysis
Profiles
Skills audit
Succession
Manpower system
External labour Market
Quality
Availability
Sources
Price [rewards ]
Organization
Assessment
Performance
Productivity
Structure
Technology
Skill change
Rewards
Corporate Strategy
Growth/decay
New markets
opportunities
Objectives
Manpower system
Work methods

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 premia), 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 on‑going 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 macro‑forecasting 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 favoured means for doing this are ratio‑trend analysis and the use of work study standards.

Ratio‑trend 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 'indirects' in manufacturing is a classic one.

Individual departments in an organization also will have their own rule-of‑thumb 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 ratio‑trend 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 do‑able 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:

•Demographic patterns

•Levels of unemployment

•Developments in the local economy like transport, education, and housing

•The pay policies of other employers, locally and nationally, and their plans for growth and contraction.

I'm sure the reponse alongwith the response of the other esteemed professionals shall really be of immense help to you.

Hitesh

Hi,

I am doing Manpower planning for a manufacturing firm.

For the time being what i am doing is understanding the roles we need to forecast and understand the business of each sbu.

i also have to do benchmarking with other organizations.

can i get some inputs on how other firms do their planning for roles such as sales engineer, managers etc.