Planning is something which is required everywhere and human resources is no exception because manpower Planning is an integral part of the human resource department of big companies, it basically refers to that process by which company estimates the number of employees required in various departments of the company so that work of the company is not hampered due to less staff and at the same time people do not remain idle due to excess staff. In order to understand more about this one should look at the advantages and disadvantages of manpower planning –
Advantages of Manpower Planning
No Risk of Manpower Shortage
The biggest benefit of manpower planning is that it makes sure that company does not have to face that situation where there is plenty of work but due to the shortage of manpower required to complete the work company loses that work to its competitors. Hence for example, if the company has 100 workers and each worker produces 10 units per day then the total capacity of the company is 1000 units now company receives an order for 1200 units and if the company has 20 workers in reserve due to manpower planning than the company will able to fulfill the order of 1200 units.
Better Allocation of Manpower
Another advantage of this planning is that it results in a better allocation of manpower to various departments because without manpower planning some department will be having more than required workers resulting in some workers of that department having no work while other department workers will be suffering due to lack of proper staff. In simple words, this planning helps in maintaining the balance between various departments by having a proper allocation of manpower to various departments in the company.
Good Human Resource Practice
Another benefit of this planning is that it is considered to be a good human resource practice because it is through this planning that company’s top management comes to know about the departments where the attrition rates are high and since this process also outlines training and orientation program for newly recruited employees a company is better prepared for handling its human resource capital.
Disadvantages of Manpower Planning
Expensive
The biggest drawback of manpower planning is that it is an expensive process because it involves careful planning and analysis of manpower situation of the company which requires experts knowledge or opinion and experts charge fees or salary from companies besides they need team for carrying out this planning successfully which again requires money on the part of the company.
Difficult to Predict Accurately
A company carrying out manpower planning cannot say with 100 percent surety that their estimates about the manpower will be accurate because sometimes the company recruits more employees than required and sometimes it recruits fewer employees than required. In simple words, if the company is expecting that after doing manpower planning it does not has to worry about the problem of excess or shortage of staff than the company is wrong as this planning can solve a majority of manpower problems but cannot eliminate all the manpower problems of the company.
Biased
It can sometime be biased in the sense that while one planner who is conservative can consider excess staff to be a headache and waste of money of the company and therefore he or she will always recruit fewer people than required while another planner who is aggressive can consider excess staff to be an asset and therefore he or she will always recruit more people than required. In simple words, manpower planners need to maintain a fine balance by recruiting an appropriate number of employees so that the company does not have too much excess or shortage of employees at any point of time.
As one can see from the above that manpower planning has benefits as well as limitations and that is the reason why any company thinking of doing manpower planning in the organization should carefully read above points and then take the decision whether to do this planning or not.