What Are the Phases of Manpower Planning?
- The existing manpower must be addressed, so the company knows how much additional manpower must be brought in to complete a given task. This is the first phase in manpower planning. The existing manpower is evaluated in terms of the number of employees available for the task, the skill set of the available employees in relation to the task and what each employee can contribute. For example, a customer service employee may not be able to contribute much for a marketing campaign. Knowing what is available and what is needed will help the project manager pinpoint what needs to be outsourced.
- The second phase of manpower planning is making a plan using the existing manpower identified in the first phase. The plan must identify when and where specific manpower is used, such as budget experts, construction workers and quality control experts to ensure an excellent result. The plan must also address the workload of each worker involved, address how trends have influenced previous but similar projects and address new methods that the company is not familiar with. This essentially means that outsourced work or third-party companies must be hired to complete parts of the tasks.
- The third phase of manpower planning is getting the resources required to complete the project in question. This includes hiring the workers needed to complete the project, finding third-party companies to aid in the production and training these new workers to meet company standards. This training process also applies to outsourced help and contract workers.
- The last phase of manpower planning is monitoring the plan to ensure each worker is performing as expected and the project is being completed on time. Although the planning occurs before the project is executed, an effective plan needs to be adjusted if unforeseen circumstances occur during the production of the project. This particular phase is continuous, so the production manager must analyze the plan on a daily or weekly basis.
