Human Resource Development | Assignment Help
Introduction
In today’s management, Areas of Human Resource Development (HRD) is considered as a sub discipline of Human Resource Management (HRM). In the context of HRM, HRD is defined as a collection of systematic and planned activities prepared by an organization to give the opportunities to its employees, to learn necessary skills so that they can meet current and future job requirements (Werner & DeSimone, 2011). In other words, HRD refers to a process of enhancing the knowledge, the skills, and capabilities of the people in an organization in order to improve human capital. Thus, it is a gateway towards modernization (Haslinda, 2009). The activities planned under HRD include integrated use of organizational development, career development, and training and development to boost individual, group, and organizational effectiveness and efficiency (McLagan, 1989). The HRD professionals suggest that when HRD is linked with only the long-term strategies of an organization, it will result in controlling top management’s attention, capturing management support, and bringing in additional resources (Rothwell, 1998). From the past decades, a great improvement in HRD programs has been made in order to enhance productivity, which is discussed below.
Old Human Resource Development Techniques
In old times, organizations used “classroom” and face to face delivery mechanisms for human resources development very frequently. Although these mechanisms fulfill the purposes for which they are made, but they have a large number of disadvantages, which overwhelm their benefits and purposes. For example, classroom based training or education courses are developed to provide focused and interactive knowledge relating to any topic, but these courses reduce the capabilities of employees to perform job function effectively because the theoretical information is not based on how to apply it in the practical workplaces. Even though the interaction between teachers and learners is very high, but still it is one-way knowledge communication technique because the problems discussed by the students are not incorporated in the program. Similarly, this technique is useful for only small firms and not global level enterprises as they can only be taught to a fixed number of employees rather than all employees present in different countries.
In order to spread information to all the employees in different countries of the world, seminars, conferences, and workshops have been designed. This technique is a useful face-to-face mechanism, in which the problems of employees can be discussed in detail, and possible solutions are also searched out to improve the overall performance and productivity. The seminars, conferences and workshops can also be conducted through networking. Thus, a basic program is designed and implemented by the expert managers, and the inclusion of employees’ programs with respect to social and organizational needs is made thereafter. But gathering results is difficult if you conduct such programs online. It is found that there is only a little impact on the performance and productivity of the employees. Thus, it does not fulfill the basic purpose of Human Resources Development programs (Livingstone & Raykov, 2005).
There are a number of other interventions and development programs used in the past, which give similar results. The basic purposes of any development programs are to improve the performance and overall productivity level, and to cut down the extra cost in business operations. But, the results of old business techniques and methods are contradictory to the main purposes. Also the changes in global market, technology and the changing intensity of other external factors have forced many global organizations to develop more effective techniques for assuring their survival.
Change in Organizational and Employees’ Needs
With the recent expansion of global economy and rapid advancement of technology and innovation, organizations are confronted with a continuous need of employee learning and development. Today, knowledge has become a key factor for obtaining optimum productivity, and also a source of achieving competitive success (Livingstone & Raykov, 2005).
Livingstone & Raykov (2005) also maintained that the environment and culture of an organization can be greatly affected with the kinds and number of learning and development programs, and also with the job satisfaction level of employees. More oftenly, employees must be motivated to incorporate newly acquired knowledge into the workplace in order to design an effective culture and environment in an organization for work. Thus, it is important to understand the factors essential to Human Resource Development (HRD), rendering the benefits of organizational learning and its transfer to workplace environment.
A professor of Intercultural Management in France, David Weir (n.d) has also identified the needs of training and development. He maintained that proper training and development is needed in this challenging environment that would enable the individuals to perform their job work effectively, as it is needed to meet the challenges of the modern economy, with the help of learned skills and knowledge. Thus, there is a need to redefine the term HRD and the practices performed under this notion.
The modern Human Resource managers want to create a culture within their organizations, wherein the human resources competencies are attained, sharpened and utilized.
Modern Conception and Techniques of Human Resource Development (HRD)
Rao (1996) has explained the scope of HRD. He explained that on the one hand, HRD is used to develop capabilities of human resource by improving knowledge, building skills, and modifying attitudes and values of the employees. While, on the other hand, it helps in designing certain circumstances through organizational policies, development programs and all other interventions, that can help the employees to use those developed capabilities for their own and organizational benefits and in completing their jobs effectively.
According to today’s modern management concept, there are four stages of Human Resources development programs, including needs investigation, design, implementation and evaluation (Delahaye, 2010). These stages have been developed, because in the today’s turbulent and multifaceted environment, the old techniques of work practices and employees’ development may result in the failure of desired outcomes. So, the organizations need to incorporate the occurring changes of knowledge and skills, and they must communicate those analyzed changes to their employees, who use them in their work practices in order to ensure their healthy, on-going competitiveness and survival (Hyland, Becker, & Acutt, 2005).
Today HRD is believed to be integrated with career development. Career development refers to formal and informal, on-going and inclusive process of attaining and enhancing capabilities of the individuals through employer-employee relationship that contributes to the organizational success and assures the effective choices of individuals for the related work practices. Thus, career development is based on learning activities, which are also the basis of HRD. More comprehensively, if HRD is analyzed with the career development view, then one can analyze that the practices of HRD and career development are the same. The common practices include: (i) organizational-centric learning (such as training, job rotation and mentoring); and (ii) boundary-spanning learning (such as informal external source learning and community-based learning) (McDonald & Hitte, 2005).
In the modern world, the development techniques and practices used in HRD are explained by a number of different viewpoints according to different prospective.
In their article of “An Organizational Concept of Human Resource Development – How Human Resource Management Scholars View ‘HRD’”, Khan & Mahmood (2012) have constructed a Venn diagram that represents the organizational concepts of HRD. They include two opposite viewpoints of organizational HRM concept. The first one is the broader view, which includes the practices of empowerment, sensitization and conscientisation, social development, organization development, entrepreneurship development and the human resources planning and policies. The other is a narrow viewpoint, which includes the practices of intellectual development, education and skills enhancement, and training and development only.
