People represent the most important resource for a business and industrial organization because it is actually they who run the business and industry. The problems of selection, placement, and several other related problems now form a very important area of Industrial Psychology known as manpower planning.The latter is very broad in its scope and we are here concerned with only a few aspects of it.
Occupational Information in Industrial Psychology
Manpower planning is defined as a strategy for acquiring, utilizing, improving and maintaining the human resources of an industrial organization. It aims at optimum use of presently employed manpower, to assess and predict the skills of the human beings required by an organization, now and in future.It is also to see that the necessary human resources are available when such needs arise.Here we are mainly concerned with that aspect of manpower planning which is related to the selection of personnel by keeping in view the requirement of an organization and finding an optimally suitable person for these requirements.
The great strides made in recent years due to the phenomenal growth of industrial and technological sciences have not at all reduced the importance of the process of selection and placement. However, it has actually resulted in increasing awareness among industrialists and businessman of the great importance of the processes.
Selection
Selection, as the name implies, involves choosing or picking up a group of workers from the largest set of workers available for hire at any given time.Selection is thus a non-random process because, those selected have been chosen on the assumption that, they will make better workers than those who have been rejected or eliminated in the selection procedure. 0f course, how far this assumption is valid obviously depends upon, how objective and scientific all the procedures and the techniques that have been used for selection. It should be pointed out here that’s no industry or business however crude or old fashioned it be, is not completely devoid of some process of selection.
What distinguishes an industrial psychologist’s approach to selection is that it is a scientific and objective process based on constant research and improvement of techniques and the procedures of selection.Secondly, it aims at higher validity that is, the good workers chosen by this approach are really good workers, who are capable of manning the job and carrying it on efficiently.This validity is completely or partly absent in the random process of selection that is so commonly used everywhere. Aptitude test for placement critical analyses the aptitude and sees to the fact how capable a candidate is in handling situations and performing job tasks.
Placement
The process of selection does not end simply by choosing or picking up a bunch of good workers but goes a step further in which the workers are handpicked and are assigned to the job that is available in the organization- this is the process of placement.Placement is thus fitting a worker to a job or matching the abilities of the workers and requirements of a job.
