ANSWER: 1

INTRODUCTION

Manpower comprises individuals having knowledge, expertise and skills to perform the
specified jobs in an organisation. The term manpower not only involves the people aspect of
an organisation but also comprises the total knowledge, skills, ability and behaviour of the
workforce in the organisation.

According to Koontz and O’Donnell,

Planning is deciding in advance what to do, when to do it, who is to do it and how to do it.

In the planning process, recognising objectives and goals is the first step to be accomplished.
After that, the management collects all the relevant data and evaluates it. Based on the
evaluation, the management develops a plan where best techniques are selected to achieve the
goals. After that, the management monitors the plan for deviations and devises corrective
actions to be taken.

According to Decenzo and Robbins,

Manpower Planning is the process by which an organisation ensures that it has the right
number and kind of people, at the right place, at the right time which are competent in
fulfilling tasks that will help the companies accomplish its overall objectives efficiently and
effectively.

Manpower Planning is a process of choosing and recruiting the right workforce to meet
organisational objectives which is also known as Human Resource Planning (HRP).
The manpower planning process helps to ensure the optimum use of the workforce. It
benefits companies to recognise departments with an excess or insufficiency of staff and
respectively stabilise these.

CONCEPT AND APPLICATION

Manpower Planning is used by organisations to estimate and deploy human resources

efficiently in an organisation. However, sometimes this process is ineffective due to various
common difficulties which are as follows:-

COMMON DIFFICULTIES IN MANPOWER PLANNING

● Vague and Ambiguous HRP Objectives:-

An organisation may fail to identify the need and importance of HRP. Many
organisations tend to consider the HR department as just a business unit dispensing
salaries to employees. However, the role of the HR department is much more than
that.
 Apart from this, there are many other organisations having a view that initiatives such
as career planning, succession planning, and employee satisfaction, are redundant
activities. Therefore, investment should not be made on such activities. All of these
events lead to ambiguity in the HRP objectives in organisations.

● Limited Role of Top Management:-

If the management is playing a limited role in the design and implementation of the
manpower planning process then the planning of HR programmes comes to a
standstill. In some cases, the top management is unable to communicate the exact
requirements of human resources to HR planners. To prevent such a situation and
make the manpower planning process successful the top management of the
organisation must support HR planners.

● Lack of HR Planning:-
If HR planning is inadequate, HR planners estimate inaccurate human resource
requirements. Sometimes HR planners fail to recognise the significance of job
description and specification. As a result, they select wrong and unsuitable candidates
for the job. Therefore, for a successful manpower planning the HR planners need to
analyse human resource requirements accurately.

● Ineffective Strategic Planning:-

An organisation must combine HRM with strategic planning as the skills and
performance of human resources play a significant role in achieving strategic
objectives. If an organisation fails to do so, the HRP process fails.

● Managing Remote Onboarding Process:-

The rising demand for skillful employees has entailed IT companies to recruit and
onboard new employees. To fulfil this, HR challenges in the IT industry need smooth
remote work support which can help remote onboarding procedures to tackle the large
amount of manual work that they come across on a daily basis.

● Restraining with Employee Turnover and Retention Rates:-

HR challenges in the IT industry have a fairly high employee turnover rate of 18%
worldwide.

Many Human Resources Management Systems in IT companies started to probe the

impact of personality type on long-term retention.

Many IT companies are seeking different workplace solutions to fulfil the employee
needs in regard to going beyond the "one size fits all" strategy.

● Learning and development (L&D) management:-

The challenge with hiring in IT companies is that everybody needs to hire only Top
5% of professionals.
 On the other hand, 95% of IT employees are outrageously underpaid due to absolute
lack of quality skills and training.

● Preparing for Artificial Intelligence (AI):-

The AI market is envisaged to increase to $190 billion by the end of 2025.
75% HR professionals are of the opinion that they have a major supporting role in AI
initiatives.

Integrating AI into the workplace states the HR professionals should develop certain
techniques to stabilise human creativity with machine learning.
On the other hand, shifting an entire workforce is no small feat. It is a process of trial
and error. And it will not happen overnight.

But the critical question in front of HR professionals is;

“Will HR teams be ready for this?”.

CONCLUSION

To conclude, Having the right number of manpower with the right skills is of paramount
importance to any organisation. This is because an organisation cannot envisage its success
with an efficient workforce. Therefore, an organisation needs to anticipate and plan human
resource requirements to gain a competitive edge

An organisation must endeavour to polish existing skills of manpower and develop the new
ones. This helps in eliminating the stagnation of existing human potential. Thus, an
organisation must aim at max- imising returns on investments made in managing manpower
while developing business strategies.

To perform manpower planning, HR needs to understand corporate objectives and ensure

consistency and accuracy of data required to formulate HR plans.

Manpower planning aims to identify and analyse human resource requirements and plans to
procure human resources whenever required. The key goal of manpower planning is to
estimate and acquire the right number of people having the required skills, knowledge,
expertise and competencies for the specified jobs at the right time.
Therefore, Organisations must be aware of their human resource plans to realise
organisational goals. To make manpower planning highly successful, organisations should
strive to prevent the instances of under-staffing and overstaffing.
 ANSWER: 2

INTRODUCTION

According to Dale Yoder, author of ‘Personnel Management and Industrial Relations’,

All formal procedures used to evaluate personalities and contributions and potentials of group
members in a working organisation are included in Performance Appraisal. It is a perpetual
action to secure confidential information for making accurate and unbiased decisions on
employees.

Performance Appraisal is a mechanism that helps the companies to analyse the abilities and
competencies of its employees and reward its competent employees.
Performance Appraisal is a process that measures and analyses the past performance and
future potential of an employee.
It analyses the performance of an employee based on various parameters such as effort,
quantity and quality of product, responsibility, initiative, regularity, and punctuality.
It is used to evaluate the performance of employees and acknowledges their contribution in
achieving organisational goals.

Performance Assessment, Performance Evaluation, Merit or Evaluation and Performance

Management are some other names of Performance Appraisal.

Performance appraisal basically helps in evaluating the job performance of an employee. It is

a continuous process aimed at obtaining, researching, analysing and recording information
about the worth of employees in a company.
The importance of performance appraisals is to measure and improve the performance of
employees and increase their future potential and value to an organisation.

CONCEPT AND APPLICATION

To know about the importance of “Performance Appraisal”, firstly one should have the
knowledge about the objectives of performance appraisal.

OBJECTIVES OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

Performance Evaluation:-
It aims to evaluate the performance of employees. This helps the organisation to make
decisions on the pay or promotion of its employees.
Employee Development:-
It aims to develop employees. This helps the company to find the strengths and weaknesses
of its employees so that it can increase their strengths and reduce their weaknesses.

Some Other Objectives of Performance Appraisal

* To evaluate the gap between the actual and the desired employee performance
* To strengthen the interpersonal relationship between superiors-subordinates
and management-employees
* To diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of employees

IMPORTANCE OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

Performance appraisal is an important function of an organisation as it helps to evaluate the

performance of employees.

Human Resource Planning (HRP):

Performance appraisal enables an organisation to gather information about the skills,
strengths, weaknesses and ability of its employees. This information is the basis for the
development of succession plans, future workforce planning and replacement charts.

Recruitment and Selection:

The performance standards decided during the performance appraisal process help in the
recruitment and selection of employees. These processes can be successful if the selected
employees perform their jobs according to the established standards and expectations.

Training and Development:

The performance appraisal process helps to identify the training and development needs of an
em- ployee. These needs help the employee to bridge the gap between the existing skills of an
employee and the desired job skills.

Feedback and Self-Development:

The performance appraisal process at the end of a stipulated period provides feedback about
employees’ performance on their jobs. This helps employees to identify their strengths and
weaknesses along with the areas of improvement.

Career Planning and Development:

The performance appraisal process provides feedback on the strengths, weaknesses and
potential of employees. The organisation uses this information to develop the career plans of
the employees. The employees can identify future growth opportunities by identifying their
potential.
Compensation and Reward:
The performance appraisal data helps an organisation to reward its productive and efficient
employees. Based on the employee’s performance, the organisation takes decisions related to
the compensation, rewards and incentives of employees.

THREATS TO PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

Delay of Appraisals:-
Managers make a major blunder that is waiting for the performance appraisal for giving
remarks on the employee's performance.
If the employee has to wait for a long time then the information is useless for the year as the
time to find out what he/she needs to improve, is doing wrong is quite long.

Bringing Up Personal Feelings:-

Personal feelings of any manager regarding an employee should always be set aside during
performance appraisal.
Manager should only focus on the performance of the employee to give an effective
evaluation.

Not a Two-Way Interview:-

An effective performance appraisal is a collective procedure between the employee and
manager.
Thus, it should not be a one-way conversation with the employee that he/she is not allowed to
ask queries or speak respectively.
Both of them should talk about the events of the previous year and work cooperatively to help
the employee be more productive in the upcoming year.

Too Narrow in Focus:-

During the evaluation period some managers only focus on one or two events.
Therefore, employees feel that our other achievements during the year were useless.

Comparing Employees:-
Employees believe appraisals are unfair and incorrect. Rather than their own past
performance they are compared with their coworkers.

CONCLUSION

To conclude these points proves the importance as well as the threats of Performance
Appraisal.

● The appraisal should be the time to summarise what was done during the year, and
what can be done to make it better.
 ● The appraisal comprises points that need to be upgraded or better. Companies often
frown on uniformly positive appraisals. As a result, managers may feel pressured to
find fault even if the employee is appreciable.

● If the deserved respect will not be given to the employees then they can get a feeling
of not caring about their review if it is wrong then also.

● An employee takes the appraisal seriously because an appraisal affects the course of
an employee's career and it can impact her salary for the coming year. Thus, the
manager needs to take the appraisal just as seriously by taking notes throughout the
year and coming prepared to the appraisal meeting.

Lack of objectivity in performance appraisal

Despite all others, one of the major performance appraisal matters is that the employees
believe that they are not evaluated accurately.

Employees feel that they are being evaluated on the basis of race, gender or how much they
and the manager get along rather than their performance.

ANSWER: 3a

INTRODUCTION

360 Degree Feedback refers to the development based on receiving feedback from various
sources. It is also known as Multi-Rater Feedback/Assessment.

To collect feedback, respondents are given an assessment where they express their
perspective of a leader’s performance.

Manager/Supervisor, Subordinates, HR Staff, Client, etc. can be the Respondents.

Components of a 360 Degree Training System

● Assessment: Respondents provide feedback concerning a leader on the assessment.

● Feedback: This should include a session for leaders to review the information with
the facilitator, their supervisor and a mentor.

● Training Program: This training is to develop the strengths and weaknesses that are
revealed via the assessment.
CONCEPT AND APPLICATION

Some points proving that 360 degree feedback is an effective method of performance
appraisal are discussed and stated below.

“360 Degree Feedback is an effective method of Performance Appraisal”

● Increases Self-Awareness
When colleagues give feedback from that, an individual gains a full view of themselves as the
feedback is less biassed and more accurate. Increase in self awareness will help people
become more aware.

● Creates a Culture of Openness

Before beginning, if the individual obtains a perfect training the process can boost
transparency. More productive people, teams and a more united environment can create a
culture of openness.

● Increases Accountability
Research shows that 90% of workers feel employee accountability is a must at the workplace.
On the other hand, 70% believed they could hold a coworker accountable when they did
something wrong.
So, this process can help in increasing accountability of an individual that is the responsibility
of holding others accountable in an effective or positive manner.

● Effective Professional Development

360 degree feedback is an ideal program for an individual to start. These programs aimed to
take out problematic areas in a positive manner. Without this, issues often become chronic
and boil over.

● Builds Confidence and Boosts Morale

A leader can gain confidence regarding their ability by obtaining positive feedback. On the
other hand, they will start to feel good in regard to the organisation also. It also boosts morale
within the workplace.

If the feedback is specified in a constructive manner then only it will play an important role
here.

● Full Perspective of Strengths and Weaknesses

As a matter of course, employees receive feedback from managers only, which gives a
“One-Dimensional” perspective.

A primary goal of 360 feedback is for the “blind spots” to be revealed in a safe way. These
blind spots are the weaknesses.
Also, uncovering unknown strengths can be highly beneficial for the leader and the company
as the leader is unaware of these and they need to be brought to light in a constructive
manner.

CONCLUSION

Various organisations around the globe take advantage of the 360 degree feedback process
because one can use it for various enterprises, easy to put in place and one of the major points
is that it is very affordable. Also, for improvement and performance management it is
especially effective.

Whether one is an entrepreneur with a small organisation or an HR Director of a fortune 500

organisation, one will always likely to benefit from 360 degree feedback.

360 assessment tests can be bought for scaling up or down and for certain applications as it is
the most affordable way to get begun with this.

ANSWER: 3b

INTRODUCTION

360 feedback is a feedback system where employees are rated by different members of their
organisation, across different levels of seniority, on certain competencies or behaviours.

360° feedback is a must-have for organisations looking to encourage growth and

development.

Can one get a full picture of an employee’s performance with a 360-degree appraisal?
When applying 360 degree feedback this is the question many organisations want to know.

So, it is something one shouldn't rush into. It is important to carefully consider how HR will
run the 360 evaluations before they kick off the project.

CONCEPT AND APPLICATION

There can be some potential drawbacks, here are some of the downsides of using the
360-degree performance appraisal evaluation technique with their solutions respectively.
 DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTION (360 DEGREE FEEDBACK)

(I) Not Always Positive:-

Manager’s have the temptation to use 360-degree feedback to focus on the negative aspects
of employee performance rather than develop and encourage the positive aspects.
Feeling of bitterness or indignation can arise from too much negativity.

Solution:
Clearly defining the purpose of 360 feedback and making sure people understand why we are
doing it will encourage reviewers to leave constructive comments.
Managers should always beware that this situation can arise and focus on stabilising both
negative/positive feedback.

(II) Resistance to Rate Peers:-

Feedback collected during a 360 feedback cycle will not be valuable to employees or the
organisation if reviewers are not ready to give candid feedback.

Solution:
Give training to reviewers to help them obtain a brief idea of the process and how it can be
done. Also, to select the right questions, rating scales, focus on attitude and soft skills are the
major significant points to keep in consideration.

(III) Insufficient Participation of Reviewers:-

The most major element of 360° feedback is that it gets many different points of views or
perspectives. Particularly for smaller industries this may cause some problems as it will be
more difficult to gather a full 360° view.

Solution:
To overcome this situation use software that supports the number of evaluators needed in the
process. For 360° feedback to work minimum 5 reviewers are needed and should be from
different departments of the company.

(IV) Anonymity:-
It has been observed that employees are more comfortable to give feedback anonymously as
by doing this they are able to give their viewpoints more freely.
On the other hand, the opposite can happen as well like highly cruel and negative feedback.

Solution:
It is the responsibility of the HR to make sure that confidentiality and anonymity will be
maintained and employees can give 360 degree feedback without any hesitation or we can
say more comfortably.
(V) Time Consuming:-
One major problem with 360 degree feedback is that it is time consuming both for HR and
employees.
Time is consumed in planning, designing and implementing the process from an HR
perspective. It also takes time to answer or fill up the assessment.

Solution:
The most effective way to short out this time consuming problem is to use a feedback
software vendor. This will help the HR and the organisation in its unique requirements to
speed up the process and streamline the 360 degree feedback.

CONCLUSION

If the participants feel like the 360-degree feedback was just busy work or a useless exercise
then there may not be any tangible growth or positive change, trust in leadership may deplete
and engagement may go down.

If a lack of trust exists among employees, they may not offer honest feedback and if the
feedback is not honest then it is likely to be inaccurate which will not be very useful.

Prevent these situations by setting up clear guidelines and being transparent about
expectations with 360-degree feedback.

Despite these challenges, it is a great development tool to use when trying to generate
authentic, honest and balanced feedback. It provides a complete picture of employee
performance and gives valid viewpoints to help them improve and be more productive.