AbstractThe paper describes a technique which has been applied in practice to predict the movements of the staff of a large undertaking over the next 20 years. The exercise shows the future promotion pattern and the recruitment required to fill the posts which become vacant as a result of promotion or wastage.By feeding in alternative assumptions about the future demand for staff in each department, corresponding to different levels of business activity, it is possible to see in advance which situations are likely to give rise to the greatest staff problems.It is thought that the same basic technique could be used for manpower planning in other firms.