Recruitment Effects on Manpower Structures

Recruitment is one of the dynamics of manpower systems that can usually be most effectively controlled, always assuming that there is at any time an adequate supply of recruits to a system. In this situation, recruitment can be fixed to meet immediate demands, or it can be part of long-term planning programmes designed perhaps to alleviate a skewness in the length of service profile without reducing the strength of the system greatly. In general, recruitment levels will necessarily be connected with wastage and promotion in a system as well as with the desired growth of the system. The process of determining manpower-planning policies, hereunder recruitment levels, is open to a variety of options with regard to the underlying assumptions that are made: observed experience can be assumed to continue; promotion policies can be adjusted and the consequences estimated; recruitment levels can be allowed to meet immediate demands but with the restriction of some maximum level; or recruitment levels are pre-fixed on the basis of some perhaps even arbitrary management desires. Each of these options and each accompanying recruitment policy will affect the internal structure of the system, with regard to both rank and length of service profiles. This paper employs established projection and promotion models for hierarchical manpower systems to consider recruitment policies and their effects on internal structures. Various policy models are outlined and results presented for a particular application.