Manpower

Manpower plays an important role in realising the dreams of an organisation. There can’t be any fight for machineries since these are available for price from their manufacturers who in any case want to sell. Moreover, machines are pretty good followers of the instructions fed into their memories.

The real distinguishing factor in two organisations is brain power of their manpower. Human has unique ability of thinking not available to any species. Manpower makes machines work. They utilise organisation’s assets (land or capital or liquid assets like cash, inventory, etc.) to the optimum. They make processes work.

Visualise any large organisation with absolutely no person except entrepreneur; you can understand the power of people. The organisation is lifeless with no liveliness without its people.

Each person working in an organisation is important since he / she is adding some value to a process; be it a cleaning process or administrative process or production process or any other process.

Q: What consists of manpower?

A: Manpower consists of every person employed directly or indirectly (on contractual basis) for delivering the products to customers of an organisation. They facilitate conversion of raw material / services into finished goods / processed services. They support main functions through accounting, purchases, store, administration and other functions.

Q: Does having the large manpower make the organisations great?

A: No, but the team of best brains certainly does. Quality instead of numbers matters a lot.

Deliverables (i.e. expectations from the Manpower)

• Aligning personal goals with organisation goals → building the organisation for Excellence
• Continuous improvements in the processes for better quality and optimum cost so that customer is best served
• Utilising the existing assets in the best manner
• Peace and harmony at the work-place

Expectations of Manpower from Organisation

• Organisation taking care of their needs (financial, power, self-realisation, etc.) and providing them growth opportunity
• Peace and harmony at the work-place
• Un-biased atmosphere where persons with negative attitudes are not protected and skills & talents are valued.
• Organisation putting efforts in skilling / re-skilling the manpower (the knowledge is ever growing and needs to be transferred to manpower for their better working)

Important developments in the Manpower

• Development of robots and automatic machines requiring less manpower
• Outsourcing of work rather than full-time employment → Organisation enforcing excellence to outsourced agencies
• Global manpower working on projects using technology platforms with less human inter-face
• Manpower working from home requiring less of office space and saving on travelling

Traditional / Normal ways of working of Manpower

• Organising at office place → divided into departments → performing duties
• Field staff for Marketing, Purchase and resolving customers’ complaints
• Development of colonies by the organisation with infrastructure → manpower staying together and performing duties

Challenges with Manpower

• Negative and In-active state of mind

•  Human brain is versatile; no two persons think alike; Distinguishing factor is brain which visualises, thinks, plans, takes an action, etc. → brain can make the person think positive while it can also lead the person to be negative
• The person in negative state does not accept any positive thoughts and reject them → more prompting for taking negative actions → not happy with positive persons → they want to remain in limelight without putting any efforts → take advantage of good people to get their work done
• The person in in-active state does not react at all → the person is a follower of any popular approach (may be positive or may be negative) → person does not have any independent views
• Both the persons not good for any organisation → the negative creates negativity; in-active does not give any comment for improvements of a given process.
• Negativity is equally dangerous at the market-place also → Organisation wants to dominate the market-place some-how by any means (fair or unfair) at the cost of society and its social value.
• Ranbaxy paid fine of $ 500 million for faulty practices of staff, which requires “change in organisation culture” read on 

• Needs of the manpower

• Broadly needs have been categorised into:
  • Financial: Growth in terms of more money
  • Power / dominance / leadership: Growth in terms of more authority
  • Self-realisation: Growth in terms of internal realisation where money and power do not matter.
• The priority of needs change during the growth process of manpower; initial needs relate to Financial → Self-realisation
• The organisation needs to identify the domain where the person stands

Some of the Process Implementation for better Manpower

• Focus towards Organisation Goals
  • Regular reiteration of organisation’s mission statement and goals by the senior management in all meetings
  • Organisation goals are supreme than personal goals

• Grievances and suggestions
  • Organisation to act as care-taker of manpower when they are giving their best
  • To implement process of accepting grievances and suggestions → also resolve in time-bound manner
  • Brings transparency in the organisation
  • Whistle-blowers must be protected
  • Once out of the system of a person → he / she can better concentrate on the work →better health → better family

• Motivation
  • Goals realisation only when the person is highly self-motivated
  • Self-motivation is a habit → organisation can support to build that habit

• Training
  • Human brain is versatile and requires regular challenges UNLESS the person develops security and comfort in doing the present work
  • Ignorance brings insecurity
  • Training prepares the person in existing or new area → accepting new challenges

• Cross-functional training
  • While training imparts knowledge; cross-functional responsibilities give practical experience
  • Breaks monotony of work and brings newness in work
  • Organisation gains from large number of persons capable of doing the job → protection from staff turnover