This step of staffing process requires the organisation to encourage woman and persons with special abilities to assume responsible positions in the organisations.

Estimating manpower requirement

The correct answer is option 1- Estimating manpower requirement.

Pl refer to the given NCERT text "While designing the organisational structure, we undertake an analysis of the decisions and the decision-making levels, activities as well as relationship among them with a view to evolving the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the structure. Thus, various job positions are created. Clearly, performance of each job necessitates the appointment of a person with a specific set of educational qualifications, skills, prior experience and so on. Thus, understanding manpower requirements is not merely a matter of knowing how many persons we need but also of what type. Given that we need to encourage women, persons from backward communities and persons with special abilities (such as physically challenged, visually and hearing impaired) to assume responsible positions in our organisations, there is a need to understand, and if the need be, to redefine manpower requirements accordingly. Can you think why should we encourage such a diversity in the workforce? Operationally, understanding the manpower requirements would necessitate workload analysis on the one hand and workforce analysis on the other. Workload analysis would enable an assessment of the number and types of human resources necessary for the performance of various jobs and accomplishment of organisational objectives. Workforce analysis would reveal the number and type available. In fact such an exercise would reveal whether we are understaffed, overstaffed or optimally staffed. It may be pointed out that neither over-staffing nor under-staffing is a desirable situation. Can you think why? In fact this exercise would form the basis of the subsequent staffing actions. A situation of overstaffing somewhere would necessitate employee removal or transfer elsewhere. A situation of understaffing would necessitate the starting of the recruitment process. However, before that can be done, it is important to translate the manpower requirements into specific job description and the desirable profile of its occupant — the desired qualifications, experience, personality characteristics and so on. This information becomes the base for looking for potential employees."

• The passage clearly discusses analyzing workload and workforce, deciding how many and what type of people are needed.

• It emphasizes redefining manpower requirements by encouraging women, persons from backward communities, and persons with special abilities to assume responsible positions.

• This process happens while estimating manpower requirements, before recruitment, placement, or promotion stages.