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Introduction
The human resource management (HRM) function is a key supporting element
in the management of organizations. From the perspective of corporate
objectives, HRM is responsible for ensuring that the right people are available
at the right places and at the right times to execute corporate plans with the
highest levels of quality. Such a role is also often referred to as manpower
planning. It is reasonable to say that manpower planning is the core of HRM,
supported by other aspects of HRM. Process and system improvements to
manpower planning imply benefits to the HRM function and to the organization
as a whole.
The extent of computerization in manpower planning in organizations is
typically limited to traditional database management systems which do not
take advantage of advances in computer technology in the 1990s. Such systems
serve the purpose of maintaining records on employee data and for generating
management reports on the state of the manpower establishment. Indeed, even
in large organizations which employ thousands of employees, a significant
technology gap may exist between the manpower planning function and other
(especially line) functions in the organization. Such a gap may be surprising,
but even more surprising is that the gap is rarely raised as an issue in corporate
planning. In fact, it is not uncommon to find manpower planning being handled
entirely manually in many large organizations.
Closing the manpower planning technology gap has significant long-term
benefits to the organization, above and beyond the support it can provide to
HRM. To this end, the crucial first step is to understand the different
perspectives in manpower planning, and the interactions among these
perspectives. By perspective is meant a particular view of information, which
leads to a particular set of decisions over the information. Major perspectives in
manpower planning include:
International Journal of Manpower,
Vol. 17 No. 1, 1996, pp. 26-46.
© MCB University Press,
• establishment requirements planning (at various levels of manpower
0143-7720 stock aggregation);
• career progression planning (at various levels); An integrated
• staff movement planning (at various levels); system
• personnel assignment; framework
• posting projection;
• succession planning;
27
• recruitment, retention, staff promotions, postings, and training.
Each of these planning perspectives has been well studied in the past. In
reality, these perspectives can interact with one another in intricate
(constructive or destructive) ways. Few insights have been reported on such
interactions and the impact of these interactions on the resultant manpower
plans.
In this paper, we provide an analysis of these interactions in the form of
decision and feedback loops. The synthesis of these interactions leads to an
integrated decision support system (DSS) framework for manpower planning.
To implement the DSS framework in organizations, a methodology for analysis
of the manpower planning business process and feasibility assessment of DSS
deployment is needed. In this paper, we propose the integrated system
framework and the analysis methodology. This framework-cum-methodology
package is used in applications deployment and consultancy undertaken by the
author’s institute.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. The first section defines
various manpower planning perspectives and their interactions. The next
describes the integrated system framework. The following section details the
process and system feasibility analysis methodology. The final section
concludes the paper.
Planning perspectives
The various manpower planning perspectives listed above may be defined as
follows:
• Establ ishment requirements planning (ERP). This determines
manpower requirements levels over a multi-year horizon, given
projections of the organization’s workloads and growth policies. ERP is
sometimes referred to as manpower requirements forecasting in the
literature.
• Career progression planning (CPP). This determines steady state
progression rates for each age-grade-stream combination (also called the
career prospectus) in the manpower stocks, and the change in career
International prospectus over time given the current age-grade-stream profile of the
Journal of manpower stocks. (The stream of a staff reflects his or her potential to
Manpower attain a certain grade by the time of retirement.) CPP is sometimes
referred to simply as career planning in the literature. An example of a
17,1
career prospectus is given in Figure 1.
28 • Staff movement planning (SMP). SMP determines the mix of various
staff movements (recruitment, promotions, attrition, retirement and
continuations) required over a multi-year horizon to transform the
manpower stocks from its current state towards various staff holdings
targets. A basic illustration of staff movements across an organizational
hierarchy, for a given snapshot in time, is given in Figure 2.
• Personnel assignment (PA). From the perspective of operational staffing
requirements of functional units in the organization, PA distributes new
recruits to units and handles job rotations across units for staff already
in service.
• Posting projection (PP). This determines, for each individual, the list of
posts that he or she can possibly move to which. The list may be sorted
in terms of suitability of posts and expected time needed before
movement to each post.
• Succession planning (SP). SP determines, for each post, the list of
potential successors. The list may be sorted in terms of suitability of
individuals and expected time needed before succession by each
individual.
• Recruitment, retention, staff promotions, postings and training. These
are well-known, basic operational activities of the HR function that
support manpower plans. Collectively, we refer to these as near term
events in manpower planning.
Grade 4 q3(t )
A42(t ) A43(t ) A44(t )
q2(t )
Grade 3 q1(t )
A32(t ) A33(t )
Figure 1.
Career prospectus
for a four-grade Grade 2
A22(t )
structure at time t.
Each horizontal slice is
a stream. Aij(t) reflects Grade 1
the promotion age
Age
w Appt level 4 An integrated
w system
p framework
w Appt level 3
w
p p w
29
w Appt level 2
w
p p w p w
Post x Person x
Weights Weights
Relative Relative
importances utilities
Figure 3.
Person Person Person Post Post Post Succession planning
1 2 n 1 2 n
versus posting
projection perspectives
Succession planning perspective Posting projection perspective
International long run of, say, ten to 20 years, these conditions can imply severe internal
Journal of constraints in the manpower establishment.
Manpower Top management should see the importance of understanding the macro
interactions among internal and external dynamics. To this end, system
17,1 dynamics provides the technology for mapping out the dynamics and for
analysing long-term effects of policies. There are two aspects to the use of
32 system dynamics. The qualitative aspect is an iterative process of mapping out
the dynamics using influence diagrams. The quantitative aspect is a simulation
process that provides feedback for qualitative evaluation of policies. Long-term
forecasts of political, economic and social indicators are fed into the model to
temper the simulated rates. A system dynamics model for macro manpower
policies is depicted in Figure 4.
Organization Retirees
retirement age +
+ + Work output
+ rate +
Establishment
requirements +
+
Establish Work
fill – Rate of + output
leaving
–
+ External
+ retirement rate
Recruitment
rate Leavers +
+ Rate of loss to –
+ competitors External job
market
Recruitment –
opportunity – +
+
+ Propensity
to join External
Organization competitors establishment
+ benefit requirements
competitiveness +
Propensity to +
join
organization +
+ +
Rate of + +
Labour Economic
labour market – exchange growth rate +
expansion
Death rate
+ +
**
Figure 4. –
Macro manpower –
Rate of
system dynamics + school + +
Schooling
perspective population registration Population Birth rate
Previous frameworks An integrated
Interactions among the various manpower planning perspectives have rarely system
been discussed in the literature. Comprehensive manpower planning system framework
frameworks have been discussed in the past, but with framework modules
treated separately in functionality, and probably executed by independent units
in the organization as well. This situation is readily discerned from published
surveys(Ashton and Ashton, 1988; Edwards, 1983a; Gass, 1991; Price et al., 33
1980; Purkiss, 1987; Smith and Bartholomew, 1988).
ERP models have been discussed in Bartholomew and Forbes (1991),
Bennison and Casson (1994), Lawrence (1980) and Verhoeven (1982). These
models use techniques such as extrapolation/regression, work/productivity
measurement, or econometrics. There is no discussion in these publications on
interactions among levels in ERP.
Analytical models for CPP have been studied quite extensively (Bartholomew
and Forbes, 1991; Bennison and Casson, 1984; Edwards, 1983a; 1983b; Edwards
and Morgan, 1982; Forbes, 1970; Forbes et al., 1980; Grinold and Marshall, 1977;
Keenay et al., 1977; McClean, 1979; McClean and Abordunde, 1978; Morgan,
1979; Purkiss, 1981; 1984; Tyler, 1983; Vajda, 1978) in particular in the UK,
where the classic “Camel” model (Keenay et al., 1980]) was created. Various
studies were conducted on steady-state and control-theoretic aspects of CPP
models. These models all treat grade-based CPP only and do not discuss
interactions with appointment-based CPP.
SMP models have also been extensively analysed in the past (Aronson and
Thompson, 1985; Collins et al., 1983; Cullingford and Scott, 1980; Edwards,
1983b; Eiger et al., 1988; Gaimon et al., 1987; Gass, 1991; Gass et al., 1988;
Grinold and Marshall, 1977; Holz and Wroth, 1980; Klingman et al., 1984;
Lawrence, 1980; Mehlmann, 1980; Miller, 1984; Niehaus, 1995; Price, 1978; Price
and Gravel, 1984; Price et al., 1980; Purkiss, 1981; Silverman et al., 1988;
Verhoeven, 1982; Young and Abodunde, 1979; Zanakis and Maret, 1981), in
particular in the USA, where the military services are major users of such
models. Most of these models use some form of linear programming or network
optimization. None of these models discuss interactions among levels in SMP,
nor discuss interactions between SMP and short-term events.
Interactions among ERP, CPP, and SMP that we have raised in the section
entitled “Interactions among ERP, CPP and SMP” have not been addressed in
the literature, either.
PA models have been studied in Charnes et al. (1985), Feiring (1993), Gass
(1991), Klingman and Phillips (1984), Klingman et al.(1984), Liang and Buclatin
(1988), Liang and Thompson (1987), Mensch (1970), Pinar and Zenios (1992) and
Steurer and Wallace (1978). Unfortunately, almost all of these models are
specialized to the needs of USA military services, and lack general industrial
relevance. Also, interactions of these PA models with PP models are not treated
anywhere in the literature.
We are not aware of any significant treatment of PP and SP models in the
manpower planning literature. On the other hand, these models are available in
International numerous commercial software tools. Most of these software tools perform
Journal of simple staff-to-job matchings based on a database of competences. The tools
Manpower mostly adopt the SP perspective and do not offer any insights on the
interactions between PP and SP.
17,1 Short-term events like recruitment, retention, promotions, postings and
training also lack treatment in the manpower planning literature, and unsur-
34 prisingly so since these events are normally beyond the scope of planning.
Commercial software is available that provide database management
capabilities to support these events.
The need for a macroscopic system dynamics perspective has been
suggested in Wolstenholme (1990) but has not been explored further in the
manpower planning literature.
In summary, previous developments of the various manpower planning
perspectives have been disparate, and can benefit much from an integrated
framework. Our proposed framework, which we describe in the next section, is
a concrete step in this direction.
Framework architecture
The framework is organized into six decision layers:
(1) Descriptive analysis. Provides support to strategic planning through
analysis of historical and future trends.
(2) Strategic planning (organizational). Derives long-term plans and policies
from an organizational (aggregate) perspective.
(3) Tactical planning (organizational). Refines and controls adherence to
strategic plans in the short term from an organizational perspective.
(4) Tactical planning (individualized). Translates tactical, organizational
plans into short-term plans from the perspective of individual staff.
(5) Operational planning (individualized). Refines and controls adherence to
individualized tactical plans.
(6) Execution (manual). Implementation of actions in view of individualized An integrated
operational plans. system
The system framework is illustrated in Figure 5. In the framework, additional framework
modules not discussed previously are also included. These modules interface
manpower planning with other key management processes in the organization.
There are several advantages in a hierarchical decision layer framework.
First, roles and responsibilities in manpower planning are clearly bounded and 35
distinguished. Second, data and decision flows among the planning functions,
as well as the feedback mechanisms, are also clearly structured. Third, the
relative impacts and frequency of usage of planning functions becomes
apparent and consistent. The conceptual design of each decision layer in the
framework is explained below.
The descriptive analysis layer provides capabilities for analysing internal as
well as external labour supply and loss trends, capabilities for projecting ahead
the effects of staff movement policies and simulating the behaviours of
A
Descriptive analysis
B
Strategic planning (organizational)
Corporate Establishment Career progression
requirements
planning planning planning
C
Tactical planning (organizational)
D
Tactical planning (individualized)
E
Operational planning (individualized)
F Figure 5.
Execution Manpower planning
Recruitment/retention/postings/promotions/training system framework
International individuals as they flow across the manpower establishment, and capabilities for
Journal of analysing the long-term dynamics of the manpower system at a macro level. The
Manpower information focus of this layer is on correlations among individuals, the organi-
zational hierarchy, and career prospectuses. Key planning parameters are the
17,1 types of movements and the behaviour of cohorts. In particular, the labour mar-
ket analysis module corresponds to the macro perspective discussed previously.
36 The strategic planning (organizational) layer provides linkages from corporate
plans to manpower requirements plans, which the layer in turn translate into
career prospectuses and staff movement plans needed over the next few years to
match staff availabilities with establishment demands and to sustain the health of
the manpower establishment. The information focus of this layer is on career
prospectuses. Key planning parameters are staff grades and career streams.
The tactical planning (organizational) layer translates staff movement plans
stipulated by strategic planning into finer decompositions of recruitment, pro-
motion and wastage flows in the nearer term. This layer also reconciles deviations
from strategic plans which resulted from uncontrollable factors in the near term
(for instance, staff performance or vacancies which warrant movement patterns
which were not foreseen in the strategic movement plan). Specific recruitment
and training needs for the work year are also established. The information focus
of this layer is on the linkage between career prospectuses and the organizational
hierarchy. Key planning parameters are areas of specialization.
The tactical planning (individualized) layer proactively prepares individuals
for postings, within the guidelines stipulated by the career prospectuses and
organizational tactical plans. While the upper layers have addressed staffing
needs in terms of aggregate numbers, this layer examines the possibilities by
balancing the career development and potential of specific individuals in the
manpower system with the staffing needs of the organization. The information
focus of this layer is on the organizational hierarchy. Key planning parameters
are posts, jobs and/or areas of deployment.
The operational planning (individualized) layer confirms staff movements at
the points of need, for final approval by users for execution. Specific training
needs for individuals are also scheduled. Staff appraisal and ranking processes
are carried out that lead to changes in the status of individuals. The information
focus of this layer is on the linkage between the organizational hierarchy and
individuals. Key planning parameters are staff competences.
The execution layer supports reactions to actual happenings such as
recruitment, training, postings, promotions and retention. The information
focus of this layer is on individuals. Key control (instead of planning, since this
layer is reactive) parameters are events.
Analysis methodology
To examine system deployment possibilities in a manpower planning setting, it
is first necessary to understand the reasons behind the manpower planning
technology gap. This is discussed above. This understanding helps in the
execution of the system feasibility assessment methodology, which is also
explained above. Even after the needs for automated manpower planning have
been established and the system developed, the proper immersion of the
manpower planning system into the user environment remains a tricky problem
that cannot be overlooked. Such issues are discussed above.
Organization
study
Physical
processes
Decision
processes
Technical
feasibility
Economic
feasibility
Key
Overall
assessment
Figure 6.
Feasibility assessment DSS
methodology recommendations
Problem
An integrated
statement system
framework
Resources
41
Tasks
Objectives
Constraints/
policies
Key
Cost
models
Figure 7.
Procedural Decision process
rules analysis