Steps Involved in Manpower Planning | Staffing | Management

The following points highlight the five main steps involved in manpower planning. The steps are: 1. Job Analysis 2. Skill Inventory 3. Personnel Forecasting 4. Employment Plan 5. Training and Development of Personnel.

Step # 1. Job Analysis:

Any manpower planning programme is knowledge about existing jobs in the organisation. The information is needed to develop hiring plans, to select and train employees, to provide appropriate compensation and to develop valid performance appraisals. Job analysis provides these information.

It is the identification of the specific activities to be performed in a job and characteristics of the person, the work situation and the materials or equipment necessary for performing the job effectively. Job analysis is the procedure by which the facts with respect to each job are secured, organised and combined.

Job analysis may be defined as a process of discovering and identifying the prominent information relating to the nature of a specific job. It is the determination of tasks which comprise the job and of the skills, knowledge, abilities and responsibilities required of the worker for the successful performance of the job. It essentially deals with data collection and then analysing the data.

Job Analysis:

The main purpose of this analysis is to describe and define the distinction among various jobs in the organisation and their relationships.

It provides the analyst with basic data pertaining to specific jobs in terms of duties, responsibilities, skills, knowledge etc. To quote William Spriegel, “Job analysis is the process of critically evaluating the operations, duties and relationship of the Job”.

Edwin Flippo. “Job analysis is the process of studying and collecting information relating to the operation and responsibilities of a specific Job.”

Job analysis basically seeks to provide information regarding seven major areas:

(i) Job Identification:

The title of the Job.

(ii) Nature of the Job:

This includes the characteristics of job, its location, physical setting, supervision etc.

(iii) Operations Involved in Performing the Job:

What the employee does, specific operations and tasks that make up the assignment, their relative timing and importance, the simplicity, routine or complexity of tasks.

(iv) Materials and equipment’s to be used in performing the job.

(v) Personal attributes required to do the job. This is related to education, training, physical strength, mental capabilities.

(vi) How the job is performed.

(vii) Relation with other Jobs.

(viii) Others like opportunities for advancement, patterns of promotion, relation to other jobs in the organisation.

The three immediate outcomes to job analysis are:

(a) Job description

(b) Job Specification

(c) Job evaluation.

(a) Job Description:

It is an organised factual statement of job contents in the form of duties and responsibilities of a specific job. This is to be prepared before a vacancy is advertised. It emphasises the job requirements. The document is descriptive in nature and constitutes a record of job facts in a organised way. The job analyst is to prepare the document in an objective way after getting reports from employees at various levels like workers, foremen an id supervisors.

The contents of job description are:

Job title, Job location, Job summary, Duties to be performed, Machines, Tools and materials, Relation to other jobs, Nature of supervision and work environment.

(b) Job Specification:

This is a document which specifies the minimum acceptable human qualities necessary to perform a job property. It sets forth requirements sought in a person who is to be selected or appointed to perform the job.

It is a measuring rod of personnel and it combines the qualities required for acceptable performance of a job like formal education, psychological attitude, physical measurements, etc. The assessment of these qualities is recorded on job specification document. This may involve an element of subjectivity. The proper assessment of these qualities depends on the value judgments of many people.

(c) Job Evaluation:

It is an analytical and systematic method of determining pay rates for jobs. It is an attempt to determine and compare the demands which the normal performance of particular jobs make on average workers, without taking into account the individual abilities of performance of workers. It is the task of determining the demands in terms of efforts and ability which the normal performance of a job makes on a normal worker.

Dale Yoder defines job evaluation, “as a practice which seeks to provide a degree of objectivity in measuring the comparative value of jobs within an organisation and among organisations.”

The purpose of job evaluation is to measure the relative worth of different jobs in the organisation. It rates the job and not the man. Once the worth of the job is determined, it is easy to determine and fix the wage or salary level that will be fair and executable.

So job evaluation does three things:

(i) It provides standards which enable a company to act uniformly in all matters pertaining to salary and wage administration.

(ii) It yields an orderly management of all jobs in the company in terms of their contributions.

(iii) It gives considerations to market rates by comparing the community wage level with the organisation level.

So it facilitates the management in evolving a rational and consistent wage and salary structure. It also provides the criteria for fixation of salaries and wages. It tends to eliminate wage inequalities within the organisation. Helps in proper selection and recruitment of employees.

Job evaluation involves the evaluation of various jobs in terms of certain factors.

Normally the important factors to be considered for job evaluation are:

i. Mental and manual skills,

ii. Experience,

iii. Efforts and initiative,

iv. Responsibility to be undertaken,

v. Working environment and

vi. Supervision needed.

There is no standard classification of factors to be considered for job evaluation. The list of factors to be adopted for evaluation will depend on the type of the job to be evaluated.

There are four basic methods to determine the worth of jobs.

They are:

(a) Ranking method

(b) Job grading method

(c) Factor comparison method

(d) Point method.

(a) Ranking Method:

In this method, the list of jobs in the order of importance beginning with the most important job to the least important job in the office is prepared. The importance is determined on the basis of factors discussed above. This method is suitable for small organisations.

(b) Job Grading Method:

Other name classification method. Job grading seeks to determine the grade of each job. The jobs are classified on the basis of predetermined levels of skills required for each class of job. For each grade or class there is a different scale of pay. It is a useful method for job evaluation. But the main difficulty arises in defining the different grades.

(c) Factors Comparison Method:

In this method a number of factors like mental requirements, physical requirements, responsibilities and working conditions form the basis of evaluation. These factors are listed on a sheet in a columnar form. The salary for each key job is allocated to different factors as related to each job. Each key job is evaluated with regard to each of the given factors and entered in the factor column against the appropriate salary index. The salary components for each factor are added to get the appropriate salary level for each key job. The jobs are ranked in relation to ranking of jobs.

(d) Point Method:

In this method a quantitative evaluation of different jobs in terms of various factors are made. Each job factor under consideration is assigned maximum point values. Each job is awarded points for each of the factors. The appropriate salary level for each job is fixed on the basis of total points scored by it.

Step # 2. Skill Inventory:

Every organisation must be conscious of its manpower potential within the organisation for its long term success. The organisation is to take systematic steps to ensure that the reservoir of talent must be continuous within the organisation.

For this purpose the management is to know the inventory of manpower resources, develop and appraise their executives, draw up management succession plans and calculate the replacements that will be needed because of retirement and other causes.

Skill inventory is needed for understanding the nature of recruitment and development problem. The management must try to develop in advance talented employees to occupy the managerial positions in future.

Step # 3. Personnel Forecasting:

Other name Manpower forecasting. This involves two aspects.

They are:

(a) Work load analysis

(b) Work force analysis.

(a) Work Load Analysis:

Workload analysis is used to determine how many employees of various types are required to achieve production targets. Similarly plans are made by each part of the organisation concerning the amount of work that is to be accomplished during the coming year. It is necessary to determine the work-load in some tangible units so that it may be translated into man-hours required per unit. This work-load analysis is suitable for short-term projections of man-power requirements.

(b) Work-Force Analysis:

This is useful for long-term projections of man-power requirements. This analysis focuses on capabilities of work-force and its problems. This will facilitate in knowing strength and weakness of the organisation. The focus is more on problem side of workforce with the object of improving performance. The major problems of the work-force are absenteeism and labour-turnover.

Absenteeism means the failure of the employee to report for duty. Excessive absenteeism involves a considerable loss to the enterprise as it affects the work schedules and results in delays.

To complete work on time this is to be curbed. Labour Turnover means the relation between the number of persons joining the organisation and leaving due to resignation, retirement or retrenchment to the average number on the pay-roll. Management is to control the high rate of labour turnover by reducing the avoidable causes of turnover.

Step # 4. Employment Plan:

This refers to the need to prepare programme of recruitment, selection, training, transfer and promotion that personnel needs of various departments of the organisation are met.

Step # 5. Training and Development of Personnel:

The preparation of skill inventory helps in identifying the training and development needs of the organisation. Training for learning new skills and for refreshing the memory is necessary not only for new employees but also for old employees. Executive development programmes have to be devised for the development of managerial personnel.