Manpower planning.

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Human Resource         E2

Manpower planning

Manpower Planning (or Workforce Planning) is the process by which an organisation determines its human resource management needs and issues, and develops and implements plans to address them.

The starting point for any human resources planning will be the strategic plan of the business. This will give a long-term focus for Human Resources planning.

There are 4 logical stages to the manpower planning process.

  1. Situation Analysis

This defines the "world" in which the organisation is planning for its manpower both externally and internally.

  1. Manpower Demand

This is the activity, which links with the business and financial planning activities within the organisation. It involves determining the current and future requirements for key jobs.

  1. Manpower Supply

This involves analysing the numbers and skills (and development capability) of people who are likely to be employed by the organisation over a given time period. It should enable managers to understand what skills are available to them now and are likely to be available in the future.

  1. The Manpower Plan

The plan is constructed and developed from a thorough analysis of the demand and supply analyses in terms of the major manpower challenges and more local issues for attention. Risk analysis is the term used to describe this process of comparison because the conclusions reached should determine the extent to which the organisation's objectives are at risk due to any shortfall between the demand identified and the supply of skills available.

The table below shows the number of people who are in job as from march 2001

It may be useful for a company to know what the labour force of the country is by the different sectors. The table below gives the break down of the labour force in the UK for the different sectors. The first figure the number of people working in that sectors in thousands and then the second figure is given as a percentage. At the bottom is the total number of people employed in the UK as off March 2001

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Manpower planning is about the existing workforce and brings the external workforce into the internal.

External Labour Market

Whatever the size of the business, it will be affected by national costs and trends

The difference in wage levels is called wage differential. There are several factors that contribute to this

  • Where there is a shortage of workers with appropriate skills, there will be more competition and wages will be higher

  • Where there is a high demand for labour, there will be more competition and wages will be higher

  • Where there is little demand ...

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