Manpower planning Significance

   Manpower planning works against all contingencies and provides a cushion to
managers for the effective utilization of human resources. It provides a framework
for many important decisions relating to human resources. The significance of the
manpower planning can be stated as follows.

Growth: An appropriate manpower planning provides information to the management
to undertake decisions relating to expansion of the existing operations or contraction.
For example in Retail Organization, if manpower planning shows surplus people
Organizations can make a planned expansion of its scale of operation to use the
existing manpower.

Talent management: Manpower-planning facilitates an Organization to develop a
reservoir of talent in the Organization. Organization may take appropriate decisions to
develop a list of available talents within the Organization. Having manpower, a plan
ensures planning programmes of training and development of employees in a proper
way.

Cost control: Manpower planning facilitates preparation of manpower objectives and
budgets. This ensures exercising control over various manpower costs.

Facilitates planning: Possessing an appropriate manpower plan provides a
background to plan various facilities required to promote welfare and well-being of
employees. Facilities such as canteen, housing, education, medical etc. can be
planned based on the labour plans.

Succession planning: Manpower planning prepares people for meeting all future
challenges. Organization can have a provisional list of employees who are ready with
qualifications and knowledge required for undertaking any future assignment. Based
on the requirement organizations can readily replace superiors in the case of
emergencies and eventualities.

Manpower planning Objectives

   Manpower planning is aimed at making an accurate estimate of number of personnel
required with certain skills. It provides significant information to the decision makers
to decide the number, time schedule and manner of recruitment and selection of
personnel. Other wise the Organization would face problems of inadequate supply of
human resources at the right time. The objectives of manpower planning can be
presented below.

• Manpower planning determines the future needs of manpower to meet the objectives of the Organizations.
• It enables the organization to meet the needs of programmed expansions,
  diversification and growth of the Organization.
• It aims at assessing the surplus or shortage of manpower and develops
  strategies to deal with them effectively.
• Manpower planning enables to foresee the employee turnover and guides in the
  development of retention strategies.
• It minimizes the dangerous caused by the non-availability of required manpower.
• Manpower planning makes it possible to use the existing human resources more
  effectively and productively.
• A sound manpower planning economizes wage and salary cost and other human
  resource cost in the end.
• It provides a framework to cope with the changes. A good plan enables the
  Organization to make available the quality manpower even in the time of
  changing market conditions and human resource changes.
• It provides a basis for planning the human resource training and development
  programmes in the future.
• Manpower planning provides a guidance to design and execute an appropriate
  promotion policy in the Organization.

MANPOWER PLANNING

   Manpower Planning is the process by which management determines how the
Organization should move from its current manpower position to its desired
manpower position to carry out integrated plan of the Organization. Future manpower
planning is directly linked to the strategic business plans of an Organization. The
estimation on manpower and budgets are governed by customers’ demands. Business needs are achieved from effective management of materials, machines, money and  manpower. Manpower needs, if planned properly, in terms of profile required,
numbers, time and place, will give the Company mileage over competitors in terms of
consistency in output. Effective manpower planning gives optimal productivity in
terms of timelines and quality of deliverables. It will not only improve the competency
of the people, but will also ensure that people grow with the Company. This helps
arrest the attrition rate. An Organization set on the growth path needs competent
people to achieve its objectives. Manpower planning is essentially forecasting the
right number of people required. It can be described as the process of establishing the
objectives of man power utilisation, assessing the requirement of manpower, analyzing
the existing manpower availability and finally determining the gap to lead to human
resource plans. Thus, manpower planning is essentially acquiring the right kind of
people into the right jobs and at the right time. It is a process of matching demand for
the manpower with the supply of available manpower. Thus, the following salient
features can be identified with manpower planning

• Manpower planning is a forward-looking function.
• It is a process not a single activity.
• It begins with the establishment of overall objectives and human resource
  objectives in particular.
• It is an integrated function.
• It is a managerial function.
• It leads to identification of gap in the human resources.
• It is qualitative and quantitative in nature.
• Manpower planning is launched to other functions of human resource
  management.

Thus manpower planning is forecasting the human resources and arranging the supply
of the required resources. In a broader sense, human resource includes skill,
knowledge, values, ability, commitment and motivation of all the employees.