What is short term manpower planning?

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When does a firm does short term manpower planning?

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Short term manpower planning is made for a short period, say for one year. Short term plans are concerned with specific projects and programmes. Existing personnel can hardly match completely the requirement of a job. An appraisal of personnel may reveal that either they have less ability than desired or some of them have unused talents. In the short period it is not possible to change the personnel or to create or eliminate jobs to suit the manpower. Thus in short-term manpower planning, the basic problem is to match the existing jobs with existing individuals and filling current vacancies as best one can do with available manpower. Short term planning has to deal with three problems.

(A) The weak incumbent

(B) An unexpected vacancy

© The strong incumbent

The Weak Incumbent—The most troublesome difficulty is presented by a man who is already in the job but he is not according to the requirements of the job. In such circumstances, a personnel manager may adopt any of the following approaches for matching jobs and individuals.

(1) The first approach is to chance the present incumbent by improving his ability through education, training and counselling. This will make him suitable for the job.

(2) Another approach is to change the job contents to get them suited to the individual. This can be done by:

(i) With drawing a duty from one position and assigning it to another position.

(ii) Adjusting the degree of decentralisation and

(iii) Providing additional assistance where a man is weak.

(3) The third approach may be the removal of the incumbent. But this approach should be adopted only when the job cannot be changed to suit the individual or the individual cannot improved even by training and counseling.

Now the question arises which approach management should adopt. This question does not have an universally accepted answer. It depends upon individual circumstances while deciding any approach ^ management should consider following points.

(a) While changing a job, management should analyse how closely the job interlocks with other positions. The degree of interdependence between a given job and other jobs directly affect the case or difficulty of changing the organisation to fit a person.

(b) While changing the incumbent management should analyse whether personnel deficiencies can be removed promptly and fairly in short time by imparting training to him. Some personal deficiencies can be removed fairly promptly in short time while many others can be removed very little.

© While removing the incumbent from the job, the management should analyse how it affects others in the organisation and the morale of other employees in the organisation.

(d) Management should find out whether good replacement is available and then analyse the problems relating thereto.

(B) An unexpected vacancy — Another problem which management has to face in the short period is the filling up of posts falling vacant due to unexpected reasons like resignation, death or unanticipated transfer. These factors are not known in advance so that adequate arrangement can be made. Thus management faces the problem of matching jobs and individuals. Much can be achieved by changing the jobs recognisation or by changing the persons occupying this position through training. For the meantime some temporary arrangement can be made. A person holding some position in the organisation may be given additional charge of the vacant position on temporary basis.

© The Strong Incumbent — Some persons in the organisation may have greater ability than their present job requirements. This creates the problem of matching jobs and individuals because a portion of individual's ability remains unutilised. For the proper and full utilisation of the ability, the following approaches may be tried out.

(i) The strong incumbent may be assigned some additional but related duties beyond his assigned sphere. He may check and give advice to others who are poor in their job performance.

(ii) When any special problem arises, the help of the capable man can be taken to solve the problem.

(iii) Advice of the capable man can be sought for any problem for which he is supposed to be having a special knowledge or any activity can be made part of his regular duty which requires repeated advice of the capable man.

(iv) Any activity which is not being managed properly may be assigned to the capable man.