Manpower Planning, Recruitment and Selection

Ans.1) Manpower planning is a process of choosing and recruiting the right

workforce to meet organisational objectives. Also known as human resource planning
(HRP), the manpower planning process helps to ensure the optimum use of the
workforce. It helps organisations to identify departments with a surplus or shortage of
staff and balance these areas.

It aims to identify and analyse human resource requirements and plans to procure
human resource whenever required. The key goal of manpower planning is to
estimate and acquire the right no. of people having the required skills, knowledge,
expertise and competencies for the specified jobs at the right time. Therefore,
organisations must be aware of their human resource plans to realise organisational
goals. To make manpower planning highly successful, organisations should strive to
prevent the instances of under-staffing and over-staffing.

Every organisation has certain goals and objectives to be achieved within the
stipulated time. For this, an organisation needs to define various tasks and jobs to be
performed through different resources, such as money, machine, manpower, etc.
Among all the resources, it is the most crucial resource for achieving organisational
goals and objectives. It can be defined as the workforce of an organisation that
comprises individuals having knowledge, expertise and skills to perform the specified
jobs.

To ensure that efficient manpower is deployed, organisations need to implement

proper processes for recruitment and selection, orientation, training, skill
development, and assessment of employees. In addition, there must be a provision of
fair compensation and benefits, safety, welfare and health of employees, so that a pool
of efficient employees can be retained in an organisation. The key characteristics of
manpower are as follows:

 It possesses a particular set of skills used for creating wealth.

 It makes use of mental as well as physical abilities for earning profits.
 It encompasses unique traits, such as knowledge, skills, attitude and experience.
 It exhibits different behaviours in different situations.

An organisation must endeavour to polish existing skills of manpower and develop

the new ones. This helps in eliminating the stagnation of existing human potential.
Thus, an organisation must aim at maximising returns on investments made in
managing manpower while developing business strategies.

Now that we know the definition of manpower, let us understand the meaning of
planning. Planning involves developing a plan that defines a order of task performed
to achieve pre-defined organisational goals and objectives.
Planning is required at each level of management as it helps the management in
making the right decisions and achieving maximum productivity from minimum
resources. It’s generally followed by organising, staffing, controlling, and directing
functions. Through planning, organisations can anticipate uncertainties in the future
and take necessary actions to deal with them.

The goal of manpower planning is to estimate the required no. of human resource so
that the pre-defined goals and objectives of an organisation can be achieved
successfully. In this regard, manpower planning aims to meet the following
objectives:

 To predict the future human resource requirements: It makes plans for

identifying the required no. of personnel in the future. This forecasting helps an
organisation to fill vacant positions and hire the right people for the right
positions at the right time.

 To handle organisational changes effectively: It makes plans for managing

organisational changes related to the market, technology or govt. regulations by
preparing human resource for such changes.

 To use the existing human resource optimally: It aims to optimally use the
current human resource for meeting job requirements. The current employees are
more skilful than new hired employees. An organisation can save costs related to
salary and training, by using them ideally to fill up unoccupied positions.

 To promote employees in a systematic manner: It intends to evaluate current

personnel in an organised way. It communicates accurate information about
employees' skills to the mgt., which helps in promoting employees on a
reasonable basis.

The frequent troubles faced by IT companies related to manpower planning:

In today's rapidly changing business envt., IT companies face a no. of challenges

when it comes to manpower planning. These challenges include:

1. Difficulty in forecasting the future dd for IT services: Many IT companies find

it difficult to forecast the future dd for IT services. This is because the dd for IT
services is often influenced by factors such as economic conditions, technological
change and government policy. As a result, IT companies may find it difficult to
accurately predict the future dd for their services.

2. Difficulty in managing IT projects: Many IT companies find it difficult to

manage IT projects. This is because IT projects often involve a large no. of
people and can be very complex. As a result, IT companies may find it difficult to
 keep track of all the different aspects of a project and to ensure that it is
completed on time and within budget.

3. Keeping up with the latest technology: In order to stay competitive, IT

companies need to keep up with the latest technology. This can be a challenge in
itself, as new technology is constantly being developed. In addition, IT
companies need to ensure that their employees are trained on the latest
technology.

4. Hiring and retaining skilled employees: IT companies need to be able to hire

and retain skilled employees. This can be difficult, as there is a lot of competition
for skilled IT workers. In addition, IT workers often have a lot of choices when it
comes to where they work. As a result, IT companies need to offer competitive
salaries and benefits in order to attract and retain the best employees.

5. Planning for future growth: IT companies need to be able to plan for future
growth. This includes making sure that they have the right no. of employees with
the right skills. In addition, IT companies need to invest in training and
development so that their employees are prepared for the future.

6. Identifying the right mix of skills required: As the IT industry is constantly

evolving, it can be difficult to identify the precise mix of skills required for a
given project or position. This can lead to a situation where a company has too
many employees with the wrong skill-set, or not enough employees with the right
skill-set.

7. Training and development: The IT industry is constantly changing, which can

make it difficult for companies to keep their employees up-to-date on the latest
technologies and trends. This can lead to a situation where employees aren’t
properly trained and might not be able to perform their duties properly.

Ans.2) Performance appraisal is a mechanism that helps an organisation to analyse

the abilities and competencies of its employees and reward is competent employees.
It’s a process that measures and analyses the past performance and future potential of
an employee. It analyses the performance of an employee based on various
parameters, such as effort, quantity and quality of product, responsibility, initiative,
regularity, and punctuality. It’s also known as performance assessment, performance
evaluation, merit rating, merit evaluation and performance management. It’s used to
evaluate the performance of employees and acknowledges their contribution in
achieving organisational goals. It’s a steady procedure to secure necessary
information for making correct and objective decisions for employees.”
Performance appraisal basically helps in evaluating the job performance of an
employee. Its a continuous process aimed at obtaining, researching, analysing and
recording information about the worth of employees in an organisation.

The primary objectives of performance appraisal in an organisation are as follows:

• Performance Evaluation: Performance appraisal aims to evaluate the performance

of employees. This helps the organisation to make decisions on the pay or promotion
of its employees.
• Employee Development: Performance appraisal aims to develop employees. This
helps the organisation to find the strength and weaknesses of its employees so that it
can increase their strengths and reduce their weaknesses.

The other objectives of the employee performance appraisal are as follows:

 To review employee performance over a given time period.

 To evaluate the gap between the actual and the desired employee performance.

 To help management in exercising organisational control.

 To strengthen the interpersonal relationship between superiors-subordinates and

management-employees.

 To diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of employees and identify the training
and development needs for the future.

 To provide response to employees regarding their preceding performance.

 To provide information to employees for assisting in organisations decision-

making.

 To provide clarity about the expectations and responsibilities of the employees in

an organisation.

 To review the effectiveness of the other human resource functions like

recruitment, selection, training and development, etc.

 To reduce employee grievances.

There are several potential threats to the performance appraisal process, including:

1. Confusing Performance and Potential: Many rating systems that are alleged to
be evaluating performance fall into the trap of measuring potential as well. This is
 often a serious mistake that can unfairly punish workers as well as give credit
where not justified. Qualification of potential is usually an important feature of
any appraisal system, but the organization and the raters and the ratees involved
need to be totally clear on the variance.
2. Rating Game: Performance appraisal methods either compare employees against
each other, or compare employees against a typical. Within these 2 types there are
numerous methods of appraisal. Some are simple like straight ranking. Others are
more compound, such as behavioural scales trying to set up a success basis by
defining performance behaviours. Whatever could also be the method, the rating
procedure may become something sort of a game or contest. Again, these
technique lay importance on similarity and conformity of human performance
and ignore calculation of human values.
3. Halo Effect: Halo error occurs when a rater assigns ratings for several
dimensions of performance on the idea of an overall general impression of the
rate. The performance of single worker is totally evaluate on the basis of a
recognized +ive quality, feature or trait. The explanations of halo error are- a rater
may make an overall judgement about a worker and then conforms all
dimensional ratings to that judgement and/or a rater may make all grading
compatible with the worker’s performance level on a proportions that is important
to the manager.
4. Error of Central Tendency: Some raters follow play safe policy in rating by
rating all the workers around the middle point of the rating scale and they avoid
rating the people at both the extremes of the scale. They accompany play safe
strategy due to answer-ability to administration or lack of understanding about the
job and person he is rating or least attentiveness in his job.
5. Leniency: The leniency bias results when raters tend to be easy in assessing the
production of workers. Such raters see all worker performance nearly as good and
rate it positively. The rigidity bias is conflicting; it results from raters being too
ruthless in their consideration. Sometimes, the strictness bias results because the
rater wants others to think he or she may be a ‘tough judge’ of people’s
performance. Both leniency and strictness errors occur more often when
performance quality are unclear.
6. Stereotyping: It’s a picture the rater holds about rate due to rates of sex, age,
religion, and caste, etc. The rater generalizes the rates behaviour on the idea of
above characteristics and that leads to overestimation or underestimation of the
rates performance. For instance, a rate having Kshatriya caste is taken into
account to be aggressive in achieving the organization’s goals and usually gets
high rating.
7. Appraiser Discomfort: It’s been specified that many performance appraisal
reports neither inspire the appraisees nor provide successful advice to them.
Rather, the reports create dispute among the appraisees and appraisers that cause
dysfunctional organizational environment. It’s also seen that appraisers do that
job as mandatory duty. But they ought to treat them as a tool for organizational
development, enjoys, and like to do this. Organizational climate can effect this
 conditional change.
8. Recency Effect: Here the rater gives over importance on recent performance.
Many workers being cognizant about this struggling and knowing the date of
assessment, make their business to be clear and noticeable in many +ive ways for
several weeks beforehand.
9. Lack of Objectivity: Some human characteristics or factors like appearance,
attitude, and personality can’t be measured as these are subjective in nature.
Moreover, they need little to do with the performance of an worker. The
individuality poses problem to the appraisal method, though it can’t be totally
neglected. Worker appraisal based totally on distinctive characteristics may place
the authority and the company in unsustainable positions with the worker and
equal employment opportunity recommendation. The firm could also be hard-
pressed to show that these factors are job-related.
10. Judgement Error: The performance evaluation process becomes a failure thanks
to the occurrences of various errors committed by the raters. Hence organizations
try to help the raters to more precisely observe, recall, and report behaviour. This
needs proper instruction to the raters to manage effective performance appraisal,
influence the raters to use the system effectively, and providing chances to watch
their assistants’ execution attentively.

Ans.3)a) There is yet another form of employee appraisal called the 360° appraisal. In
this system, organisation use a combination of all the sources to evaluate an
employee's performance. An employee's performance is evaluated by taking feedback
from all sources such as employees, customers, colleagues, superiors and team
members. The feedback from these sources is kept anonymous. Wipro, Infosys, and
Reliance Industries use this technique for evaluating their workers. The 360° appraisal
is also known as the multi-source feedback and provides a comprehensive view of an
employee's performance. This feedback helps the employee to find his/her strengths,
and weaknesses and areas of improvement. It can give contestant the capability to
learn how to handle response without feeling upset by focusing on the chances to
grow in person and experienced.
360° feedback is an effective method of performance appraisal because it allows
employees to receive feedback from multiple sources. This type of feedback can
provide employees with a more well-rounded view of their performance and can help
them identify areas in which they need to improve. Additionally, 360° feedback can
help to create a more objective performance appraisal process by giving employees
the opportunity to receive feedback from a variety of sources. the 360° feedback
comes from so many different sources, the information collected is broader and
therefore has the potential to be more accurate. It can be possible to attend recurring
design and subject from the response. As the no. of respondents increases, there’s a
better idea of an employee's behaviour, work and relationships. Clients, customers,
colleagues and other sources of response provide details that wouldn't otherwise be
possible to know. Workers are more likely to take feedback into thought when it
comes from different sources instead of just individual person.
Reasons of how 360° feedback is an effective method of performance appraisal:

 Provides adequate rating because superiors know better about their subordinates.
 Provides immediate feedback to employees.
 Guides and motivates employees.
 Provides adequate and realistic information about an employee’s colleagues.
 Represents a more realistic view of employee performance.
 Helps in the development of the employees.
 Facilitates better evaluation of managers because the subordinates are in regular
and constant touch with their superiors.
 Makes manager more responsive towards their subordinates.
 Helps in identifying the development needs of managers.
 Remove the element of bias-ness.
 Helps in employee development.
 Helps to determine rewards.
 Lets employees know their strengths and weaknesses.
 Motivates employees to set goals for themselves.
 Increase employee participation in the review process.

b) There are a few potential difficulties that organisations might face when using 360°
feedback with their solutions:

1. Resistance to rate peers: Feedback collected during a 360° feedback cycle won’t
be valuable to employees or the organization if reviewers aren't prepared to provide
correct feedback. People may be opposed to give honest response if they haven't had
the right instruction or experience. If employees aren’t comfortable giving feedback,
especially if it’s negative, it could also cause them stress.

Solution: we must prepare reviewers to provide feedback. To top 10 challenges with

360° feedback reduce resistance to take part in the procedure, provide assets and
instruction to reviewers to help them issue precise ratings and useful, +ive comments.
It’s also important to choose the right questions and grading scales, focus on attitude
and soft skills rather than performance.

2. Employees reacting -ively to response: Receiving response, whether +ive or

constructive, may be a hard experience. This is normal and to be expected. No one
likes to hear -ive response, so you must make sure response is provided in a accurate
and +ive way - otherwise it could cause strain between your workers. In addition,
reviewees are likely to worry about how the response will be used and its impact on
future pay and promotion decisions.

Solution: The primary step to success is clearly defining the purpose of 360°
feedback and making sure people understand why you are doing it. Communicate the
aim of 360° feedback to all employees, the advantages to stakeholders and how the
results will be used. Prepare individuals to receive response, and provide response
training to reviewers. Encourage reviewers to leave constructive comments.

3. Concerns over anonymity: Peer reviewers often fear sharing uncensored peer
response with their colleagues. They’ll well have concerns over whether their
response will be anonymous, and be worried that the reviewee will discover what they
wrote.

Solution: To make sure success, all employees have to feel comfortable with the 360°
assessments. Don’t worry about over-communication, the more the better! Explain
how confidentiality and anonymity are going to be maintained. Educate all employees
about the method and provide proper training prior to execution.

4. Inaccurate ratings: Achieving a feedback culture are often tricky. The primary
round of 360° feedback isn’t always objective because evaluators are often very
lenient towards their peers. If this happens, the rating distribution are going to be
skewed and the results may be inaccurate. Additionally, like all other appraisal
processes there are natural biases which can affect the validity of the ratings.

Solution: To resolve this, make it clear to your employees what you would like to
achieve. Or perhaps the aim is to enhance collaboration and teamwork. If the
advantages are clear, employees will want to participate properly.

5. Doesn’t improve performance: Whilst response are often useful for performance,
360° feedback assessments are best when used for growth and development purposes.
It should give the worker an idea of how their colleagues perceive them, instead of
judge them on specific performance metrics which usually require input from their
manager. Peers often won’t have the necessary experience to rate their colleagues on
their performance.

Solution: Always link 360° survey inquires to development and not performance.
Cover skills that the worker can improve on in line with company values and desired
behaviours. 360° evaluations are often tied to performance appraisals, but it shouldn’t
be used to assess employees on job related metrics.