I am working with a conglomerate. Currently, we are in a situation where we need to determine for one of our business what parameters should be looked into to determine whether the HR Department is overstaffed or understaffed. Also I would like to know how to approach the situation ? Mere calculation of HR: Employee ratios will not be of much use. Due to time constraints, a time & motion study is not being considered. The objective of entire exercise is to have optimum allocation of manpower, especially at the plant/factory level. Please guide. Thank you.
From India, Pune
From India, Pune
Dear member,
You are seeking advice on staffing of the HR Department of your company. However, you being a HR professional, members of this forum would have expected your post to have better information. What is your designation and as of now how many persons work in HR department? In many manufacturing companies, erstwhile personnel department is labelled as HR Department. Is it the same case in your company too?
You have not given information about total employee strength, whether your company has labour union or not and above all, how sincerely you wish to implement various systems and processes, what type of processes will be outsourced, whether administration activities have been separated from HR or whether it is clubbed with it and so on.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar
From India, Bangalore
7736You are seeking advice on staffing of the HR Department of your company. However, you being a HR professional, members of this forum would have expected your post to have better information. What is your designation and as of now how many persons work in HR department? In many manufacturing companies, erstwhile personnel department is labelled as HR Department. Is it the same case in your company too?
You have not given information about total employee strength, whether your company has labour union or not and above all, how sincerely you wish to implement various systems and processes, what type of processes will be outsourced, whether administration activities have been separated from HR or whether it is clubbed with it and so on.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar
From India, Bangalore
What are your observations, is the HR employees feeling overworked or do they feel otherwise. If you see the HR department only from the establishment point of view i.e. wage and salary administration, compliances, HR informatics, recruitment or promotion etc the requirement would be limited but view it as a business partner then your emphasis shifts to PMS, Career planning, etc and other sunrise fields of HR, s well as grievance management the most neglected area of HR. If you feel understaffed, probably you can think of outsourcing some of the traditional functions like attendance system, compensation, HR data management, compliances etc
From India, Mumbai
From India, Mumbai
Dear colleague,
Parameters for staffing of HR dept:
1. What are the routine and specialised functions to be handled? Like, recruitment, induction, attendance and leave, payroll , employee records to performance management, compensation design, learning and development etc.
2. No of employees to be served
3 whether unionised or not, if yes , IR content will get added
4. Labour laws compliance requirements.
5 use of internet and communication technology in HR functions
The above functions /factors and some others, will go to determine the number and specialist HR person's requirements inHR dept.
Regards
Vinayak Nagarkar
HR-Consultant.
From India, Mumbai
Parameters for staffing of HR dept:
1. What are the routine and specialised functions to be handled? Like, recruitment, induction, attendance and leave, payroll , employee records to performance management, compensation design, learning and development etc.
2. No of employees to be served
3 whether unionised or not, if yes , IR content will get added
4. Labour laws compliance requirements.
5 use of internet and communication technology in HR functions
The above functions /factors and some others, will go to determine the number and specialist HR person's requirements inHR dept.
Regards
Vinayak Nagarkar
HR-Consultant.
From India, Mumbai
Hello members,
Sorry could not respond earlier. The prior post was to give an idea about the exercise. And I thank all the fellow members for their value adding response.
As advised, I am able to collect manpower related information for two factory/plant:
Plant A:
Managerial Cadre :70
Supervisory Cadre:70
Workmen Cadre : 240
Contract Workers (for Regular jobs): 160
Contract Workers (for specific project/ one time activity) : 70
To handle the same, in the HR department (inclusive of Personnel & Administrative functions), 8 people are deployed. Apart from Head of HR, the manpower distribution for Plant A is as follows:
T&D + Recruitment : 1
Industrial Relations : 2
Administration : 1
Time Office : 1
Security : 1
Occupational Health Centre : 1
Plant B:
Managerial Cadre :85
Supervisory Cadre:150
Workmen Cadre : 430
Contract Workers (for Regular jobs): 670
Contract Workers (for specific project/ one time activity) : 60
To handle the same, in the HR department (inclusive of Personnel & Administrative functions), 16 (14 Permanent & 2 Temporary) people are deployed. Apart from Head of HR, the manpower distribution for Plant B is as follows:
T&D + Recruitment : 2
Industrial Relations : 2
Administration : 3
Time Office : 0
Security : 2
Occupational Health Centre : 3 (+2 Temporary)
CSR : 1
Both the plants are unionised. But the exact number of trade unions is not readily available.
There is still data to be obtained from nearly 5-7 more locations. But these two locations shall suffice for making a broad framework for distribution of HR manpower.
I request inputs from all the fellow members regarding the following:
1. In these plants, I observed that manager:supervisor ratio is somewhere between 1 & 1.8, which indicates that the "average" span of control of managers will be around 3. Is the managerial span nearly this figure only in manufacturing (metals) locations ? [I am concerned with managerial span because though the work of immediate subordinates of a manager may (or may not be) be specialised, the span is usually expected to be around atleast 5-6 ]
2. What all factors should one look at while deciding the manpower deployment under:
a) Security - No. of Security guards, etc
b) Administration - No of workmen, No of workmen/contract workers working in canteen,etc
c) Industrial Relations - No of trade unions, etc
d) Occupational Health Care
e) T&D
f) Recruitment
3. W.r.t. the existing HR manpower deployed, what all metrics should be looked at under the different heads to ascertain the productivity of HR Function ? From my discussion with concerned personnel, few inputs I received were like:
For T&D, No of trainings conducted, No of training hours,etc
For IR personnel, %age of grievances resolved, etc
The sole purpose of my exercise is to try to make some model that shall help my organisation decide how the HR staffing for any new location be done & that whether some locations are overstaffed or understaffed. I acknowledge that such a model will never provide some "exact" number, but will help the organisation get an approximate idea of how much manpower might be required and then the actual staffing may be done.
Thanks and Regards
Prakhar Gupta
HR Officer
Organisational Design & Effectiveness
From India, Pune
Sorry could not respond earlier. The prior post was to give an idea about the exercise. And I thank all the fellow members for their value adding response.
As advised, I am able to collect manpower related information for two factory/plant:
Plant A:
Managerial Cadre :70
Supervisory Cadre:70
Workmen Cadre : 240
Contract Workers (for Regular jobs): 160
Contract Workers (for specific project/ one time activity) : 70
To handle the same, in the HR department (inclusive of Personnel & Administrative functions), 8 people are deployed. Apart from Head of HR, the manpower distribution for Plant A is as follows:
T&D + Recruitment : 1
Industrial Relations : 2
Administration : 1
Time Office : 1
Security : 1
Occupational Health Centre : 1
Plant B:
Managerial Cadre :85
Supervisory Cadre:150
Workmen Cadre : 430
Contract Workers (for Regular jobs): 670
Contract Workers (for specific project/ one time activity) : 60
To handle the same, in the HR department (inclusive of Personnel & Administrative functions), 16 (14 Permanent & 2 Temporary) people are deployed. Apart from Head of HR, the manpower distribution for Plant B is as follows:
T&D + Recruitment : 2
Industrial Relations : 2
Administration : 3
Time Office : 0
Security : 2
Occupational Health Centre : 3 (+2 Temporary)
CSR : 1
Both the plants are unionised. But the exact number of trade unions is not readily available.
There is still data to be obtained from nearly 5-7 more locations. But these two locations shall suffice for making a broad framework for distribution of HR manpower.
I request inputs from all the fellow members regarding the following:
1. In these plants, I observed that manager:supervisor ratio is somewhere between 1 & 1.8, which indicates that the "average" span of control of managers will be around 3. Is the managerial span nearly this figure only in manufacturing (metals) locations ? [I am concerned with managerial span because though the work of immediate subordinates of a manager may (or may not be) be specialised, the span is usually expected to be around atleast 5-6 ]
2. What all factors should one look at while deciding the manpower deployment under:
a) Security - No. of Security guards, etc
b) Administration - No of workmen, No of workmen/contract workers working in canteen,etc
c) Industrial Relations - No of trade unions, etc
d) Occupational Health Care
e) T&D
f) Recruitment
3. W.r.t. the existing HR manpower deployed, what all metrics should be looked at under the different heads to ascertain the productivity of HR Function ? From my discussion with concerned personnel, few inputs I received were like:
For T&D, No of trainings conducted, No of training hours,etc
For IR personnel, %age of grievances resolved, etc
The sole purpose of my exercise is to try to make some model that shall help my organisation decide how the HR staffing for any new location be done & that whether some locations are overstaffed or understaffed. I acknowledge that such a model will never provide some "exact" number, but will help the organisation get an approximate idea of how much manpower might be required and then the actual staffing may be done.
Thanks and Regards
Prakhar Gupta
HR Officer
Organisational Design & Effectiveness
From India, Pune
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