Planning human resources: Methods, experiences and practices

Introduction

It is evident that the purpose of education and training, in the widest sense, is not merely to

prepare young people for employment. Education must first and foremost help to develop the

individuals personality and enable him or her to fit into society. It should also, as far as possible,

help to provide equality of opportunity. But this does not mean that it doesnt take into account

the occupational future of young people. This aspect is of prime importance in establishing the

direction to be taken by occupational training.

Traditional planning methods

With effect from the 1940s, the adoption of a centralized planning system in what was then the

Soviet Union, and the aim to meet the manpower needs of industry led the authorities to extend

planning to include the evaluation of the manpower requirements of the economy and to relate

these requirements to the output of the education system. This was the emergence of the

manpower approach, which was adopted in the 1950s by the satellite countries of Eastern

Europe which took the Soviet system as their model.

For many reasons, the manpower approach as an instrument of forecasting and planning was

abandoned practically everywhere, but without being really replaced by anything else. Nowadays

a more pragmatic and reserved view is generally taken. Attempts at forecasting are confined

more to a given sectoral or regional level. The trend is towards obtaining more reliable and

useful information and the improvement of instruments able to provide better short-term

guidance and a better management of the training system.

Recent trends in human resources planning

Hardly any countries today practice the type of planning described in Chapter I, in which a

deliberate effort is made as a part of a comprehensive economic planning process to achieve a

certain balance between education and jobs based, among other things, on forecasts of manpower

needs. Such methods are being abandoned due to both the methodological difficulties described

in Chapter I and the increasing uncertainty that hangs over modern economies as a result of

globalization, which is making countries increasingly interdependent. At the same time, the

failure of the centrally-planned socialist economies and the ascendancy of free-market economic

ideology have combined to discredit the very concept of planning.

The lessons of experience

The experiences reviewed in Chapter I show that planning is not an exact science and that there

are no ready-made solutions to the problems posed by forecasting. Furthermore, the divergences

between what is forecast and what actually happens are not solely due to methodological

inadequacies, but more to the difficulties encountered when it comes to taking action. What

conclusions can be drawn from this? Can one confine ones self to criticism and skepticism?

That is the easy way out often proposed by outside observers and theorists; but those responsible

for the planning and administration of education and training are faced with difficult practical

problems which have to be solved. They cannot afford not to make decisions, especially in the

least developed countries, where these matters are of particular urgency and difficulty by reason

of the shortage of resources of all kinds.