Problems and Prospects of Manpower Planning in Nigeria

In this post, we discus the problems and prospects of manpower planning in Nigeria. This article is useful for policy makers in decision making and for academic purposes.

Manpower planning has played an important role in the socio-economic development of Nigeria. It is simply about putting the right resources with a specified requirement to a suitable place in order to achieve the overall blueprint of an organization.

In an organization for example, manpower inventory are often taken to ascertain what changes or improvement can be done, whether there is need for recruitment of new members of staff, make changes or plan for training programme. While projecting for the future needs of an organization, the current manpower has to be evaluated.

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The purpose for which the organization was established is taking into consideration including the need of each unit in the organization, and the type of staff expected to serve the need of all these departments within the organization.

Problems and Prospects of Manpower Planning in Nigeria

With all of these in mind, a manager in an organization can then successfully plan for the future and forecast for what and what kind of employee is needful to serve in every unit of the organization. After all said and done, these two should be taken into consideration:

Recruitment

Having put the present manpower inventory side by side with the future manpower forecast, then the procedures of employment can be effectively effected, that is starting from recruitment, then followed with selection and then finally with placement.

Training

As an organization, there is need for manpower development particularly, in this era of technology advancement. Staff is expected to be updated in knowledge of advanced technology. Training programmes for organization employees can help in updating knowledge, improving skills and developing capacity of workforce for greater productivity.

What is manpower?

Manpower is the whole workforce of an industry’s staff, made up of male and female staff to undertake different tasks.

When the number of workforce exceeds job vacancy, it is referred to as manpower surplus, but if the reverse is the case, more job vacancy than the available staff, such situation can be said to be manpower deficit.

The definition of planning:

Planning is a managerial activity of forecasting the future plan of action with a view to arrive at a desired goal through utilization of the available resources.

Steps are, you will ask yourself, what you want to achieve, and the available strategies put in place to achieve it, and having put your strategies in place, ask yourself what means you are using to achieve it, and when answers are given to the above questions, you can now implement those plans.

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Problems of manpower planning in Nigeria

1. Lack of adequate use of manpower:

One of the greatest challenges of manpower planning in an organization is the issue of under utilization of human resources.

The fact that companies are not making proper use of their human resources has hampered the very effort of manpower planning in an industry.

Many attempts in undertaking the manpower planning have been thwarted by some hurdles, such as utilizing human capital maximally. This is just one of the problems that have brought many businesses to their knees.

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2. Lack of training

Lack of initiating training and education programme is seen as major problem of manpower planning in most organization, the level of unskilled labour has slow down the pace of growth in business organization, there is no way one can expect growth in an organization, when the people are unskilled and the end result of this situation is either business closure or low productivity.

3. Lack of information on manpower

A good number of industries lack access to proper information on manpower lest alone to plan. Lack of adequate statistic on manpower in many organizations, data base complications, lack of integration of modern technology into organization’s development plan and computerized system has brought about inefficiency in manpower planning.

Infact, lack of integration of modern technology in manpower planning has hampered the very success of manpower planning.

Prospects of manpower planning in Nigeria

1. Good leadership

It is manpower planning that determined the extent at which every organization succeeds. When we talk about management and its functions, it is synonymous  with manpower planning because it is the human resource that will exercise the art of organizing, and directing, and controlling, as well as planning other material resources with a view to accomplished a task in the organization.

Therefore, it is a managerial tool in carrying out management functions in an organization.

2. Efficient service

Efficient management and planning of human capital is a crucial managerial responsibility which helps in driving an organization towards its expected goal.

Well planned manpower is what successfully drives some of the large conglomerates we have seen in our nation Nigeria, their growth and expansion requires the success of well trained professional and skillful experts to contribute their quota.

3. Incentive plan

Yes, manpower planning is all about employing the right set of personnel and training the workforce to update them with the imperatives of modern technological advancement. Much more important too, is the motivation programmes, the programme are planned into the mainstream of manpower development plan.

4. Increased productivity

This demonstrates the important of manpower planning in an organization. When there is manpower training, resources are well served by human personnel hence, the resultant effect is high productivity, where every energy, time, resources including money are utilized maximally.

That is why manpower planning allowed for work evaluation and economic reward.

Solutions to the problems of manpower planning

There is no doubt that some industries do not see manpower planning as a means to achieve an end in an organization. A good number of these companies do not consider planning their workforce either; while others do not even knows how to go about it.

This article has been put together to highlight the prospects and problems of manpower planning and some suggestions in guiding companies managers to embrace the practice of manpower planning, because business without manpower planning is business that plan to fail.

Moreso, to guide against low productivity in an organization, there is need to integrate the new modern information and communication technology into management programme, this will help managers to be able to access all the relevant information, such as the profile of all the staff in all departments within the industry with their respective task.

Advancement in technology has emphasized the important of adapting to the new modern technology of doing business, therefore, to move along with the technology trend, training programme should form the priority of company’s development plan, where staff will be updated knowledge wise, with relevant skills to better place them in the changing business world.

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