Education and Manpower Planning

Education and Manpower Planning

A sub-title of the book-Educational Management: New Perspectives

This sub-title has provided some reflections on how manpower planning is an inevitable phenomenon that has some impact on organizations. The benefits of manpower planning are multifarious. It primarily enables organizations to get the requisite human resources in appropriate jobs at the required time. It enables organizations to make use of their workers effectively and efficiently. The tasks of restructuring, reducing or expanding the workforce in an organization fall within the activities of manpower planning as it enables them to plan ahead and to keep afloat in the face of unfavorable business situations and competitive market conditions.

Manpower assessment and planning are not restricted to private investments alone as public enterprises are faced with similar problems. Private economic institutions also have the added pressure which is the demand to modernize its operations. The federal government’s initiatives in Nigeria have required local government authorities to demonstrate manpower planning capability and implementation. Educational and manpower planning were shown to be functionally interlocked. They are used to guarantee that adequate supplies of qualified manpower are produced by the institutions of higher learning for a country’s social, political and economic development. This explains the fact that education is a catalyst for sustainable economic, social and political development of any nation. A number of models and techniques that organizations employed to conduct manpower planning were discussed. Most of the models are generally similar. However, manpower planning is a long term strategic activity which is influenced by many other internal and external factors.