The Importance Of Human Resource Development And Organizational Development

The Role of Human Resource Development in Improving Productivity and Quality of Work

Development of human resource is important to every organisation which is growth oriented. Human Resource development (HRD) creates  a climate where the capabilities of people can be identified, brought to surface and nurtured. Human resource development is a part of human resource management which deals with training and development of employees. The concept of HRD was first used by Leonard Nadler in 1969 at a conference in United States. In this report, definition and role played by him/her in managing and conducting a learning program is discussed. Then organisational development’s relation with efficiency, productivity and quality of work life is explained. Finally, the report covers meaning of learning organisation.

HR developer conducts and supervises organisational learning and development activities. With growing competition and globalisation importance of HR developer role in developing skills and enhancing productivity and quality of work of employees is imperative (Heathfield, 2016).

If a HR developer wants to increase employees’ engagement and productivity he/she needs to become an active agent in their learning. HR developer understands the learning needs and is in a position to make an immediate and lasting difference in employees’ performance. Developing a learning program comprises of a series of steps and HR developer has an important role to play at each step as listed below:

• Need Analysis: First and the most important action for conducting a successful learning program is to identify the exact training need. Training need can be defined as identification of the gap between actual condition and desired condition of people aspect of organisational performance which can be addressed by changing knowledge, skills and attitudes(Biech, 2014). Need analysis is a method of determining whether training or some other organisational intervention can fill the performance gap. Organisational audits, assessment of present achievement levels, knowledge, skills and behaviours are some of the ways of assessing organisational training needs.
• Strategy of Training and Development: To get expected results from a learning program it is important to have clear goals and a strategy to achieve them. There are 4 key issues to consider while developing training strategy(Lynton & Pareek, 2012):
• Action perspective: Systematic attempt to develop the individual, group and organisational competencies.
• Setting training goals and objectives.
• Defining and planning the training specifications.
• Organising resources to ensure maximum effectiveness in an economic way.
• Program Design: Once the Need is identified another important action is to design the learning program. Following are the  steps:
• Setting training Objective: Objectives of training are directly deduced from the need analysis. It is the statement of outcome expected by training.
• Training Deliverables: Based on the type of training deliverables can have components: Deciding topics and their sequence, selecting delivery techniques and allocating time.
• Methods and Techniques: Once the material is ready it is important to decide the method or technique through which training will be delivered. For management development on the job and off the job techniques are used. On the job training is done on the work location job rotation, coaching, understudy and multiple management are some methods of on the job training. Off the job training is given at a place away from workplace.
• Training Aids: To conduct the training successfully selection of correct teaching aid is also important. For maximum impact training aids can be chosen from three categories: Audio, Visual and Audio-Visual.
• Training Materials: Along with training aids materials like workbooks, notes hand-outs etc. are designed to be distributed among participants.
• Deciding The Training Schedule and Budget: Another important action to be taken by HR developer is budgeting the learning program which is done by estimating the determining the volume of materials and other deliverables. Another important task is scheduling. Scheduling a training program would require preparing a list of training phases and then assigning a time limit to each phase(Oliver, 2017).
• Implementation:Delivery of learning program is the most important step as the success of training program directly depends on the success of training. A HR developer should decide the whether he wants to conduct the training in house or he wants to outsource it to a consultant depending on the objective of training, number of trainees and budget of the organisation.
• Training Evaluation:Organisational training concentrates on Return on investment and the leaders expect that the training will bring improvements that that will increase the value of organisation. Implementing an efficient training evaluation method is required to ensure that ROI is met and understood.  

Post training following are the activities of HR Developer:

• Ensuring that trainees get frequent opportunities to apply new skills in day to day activity.
• Reviewing the learning outcomes as perceived by employees’ post training.
• Doing follow-ups with employees at regular time intervals to discuss how are they applying the knowledge and skills and if they are facing any challenges in practicing these skills(Parsons, 2018).

HRD is focused at improving the knowledge, skills and behaviour of employees but when organisation is faced with challenges like technological advancement or global competition OD interventions work in tandem to come up with solutions. Organisational Development (OD) is a management discipline aimed at improving organisation’s effectiveness and productivity. It applies theories of behavioural science in order to improve individual and organisational wellbeing and effectiveness. The OD process begins when organisation recognizes a problem which impacts the efficiency of the organisation and change is required. In order to improve organisation’s effectiveness and productivity a set of planned actions are carried out, these actions are called OD interventions. HRD’s focus is on growth of individuals of organisations but OD accounts for overall organisational effectiveness (Schoenlaub, 2015).

Organisational effectiveness refers goal attainment- how well organisation is doing? Or to how it uses its resources to attain overall success. Productivity is the most widely used criteria of organisational effectiveness (Georgopoulos, 1957). OD interventions are done in effort to increase an organisation’s effectiveness. The purpose of these interventions is to improve productivity, performance or behaviour of individuals or groups through a series of activities.

Organizational Development and Organizational Effectiveness

OD intervention to improve organisational efficiency and performance is TQM. TQM can be defined as, an organisations efforts in pursuit of customer satisfaction through continuous improvement and contribution and involvement of people. TQM interventions emphasize on process improvement by establishing quality techniques and programs rather than emphasizing on quality of end product. Continuous improvement is an important concept embodied by TQM (Inc.com, 2018). TQM intervention uses the techniques like brainstorming, flowchart, benchmarking etc. along with the use of graphs and diagrams to analyse the data to help the organisation to improve the effectiveness of its processes and implement changes wherever required.

Productivity can be defined as the output produced per unit of work. Productivity is often used as an indicator of industry’s health and economic wellbeing of the nation. There are four factors which impact the productivity of an organisation: Environment, Organisation, management and employees. Most organisations whether producing goods or services have following goals in common: developing products and rendering services superior to other companies, improving market share and profit, eliminating waste etc. All these goals are interconnected and their central focus is to increase organisational productivity (Arthur, 2004).  Achievement of these goals lies largely in the hands of human resource because it is through their efforts at all levels that organisational effectiveness is determined. Thus, taking measures to improve the productivity of employees is HRD’s role.  OD intervention which aims at improving employee productivity is Training and development.

Training and Development is a planned effort by an organisation to facilitate employees’ learning of job related competencies like knowledge, skills or behaviours which are critical for their job performance. The aim is to make the employees proficient in knowledge, skills and behaviours they will need to perform their day to day activities (Noe, 2010). Training and Development is the key activity of HRD but when faced by a major challenges like completion or technological advancements employee Training and Development is performed as an OD intervention.

Human Resource development is often associated with implementing QWL in organisation. Human Resource Development Department in some organisations work in association with human resource department to impart training to employees and in other organisations it is the work of HRD department to bridge the attitude gap between managers and employees, hence ensuring employee satisfaction, lower absenteeism and turnover. Quality of work life (QWL) refers to the amount of satisfaction, motivation, involvement and commitment employees experience in their work life. From OD’s Point of view QWL can be achieved by incorporating Job enlargement and Job enrichment. This will improve the level of involvement of employees and thereby motivate them by making their job profile even more attractive. QWL is also considered an OD intervention when organisation is undergoing any change.

The Concept of Learning Organizations

The Concept of learning organisations was popularised by Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of Learning Organisation. According to (Senge, 2010) Learning organisation is one in which people continuously work towards expanding their capacity and make an environment where thinking is nurtured and learning is a continuous process. Although Senge’s definition is criticised to be vague, it reveals that an organisation where learning is an intrinsic feature of organisational life. Learning organisation model is critically important for organisations who wish to remain relevant and thrive in ever-changing environment (Serrat, 2009).

Training Evaluation has two purposes one is to improve the training process and another is to assess the impact of training. These purposes are described as Formative and Summative assessments (Scriven, 1991).

1. Formative Assessment: Formative evaluation concentrates on improving the effectiveness of training. It is an internal process adopted by trainers to assess their own work in order to make changes not. As the importance of training is increasingly being judged by the financial benefits emphasis on summative evaluation has increased(Philips, 2012).
2. Scoring: Scoring is an important aspect of learning program. Various scoring methods are used to score the employee performance at the end of the training program. Scoring quantifies the effectiveness of training.
3. For betterment of training process.
4. Summative Assessment: It is result oriented evaluation of training. It focuses on impact of training program to determine whether it meets the training objectives or Conclusion

To remain competitive in the age of globalisation organisations cannot afford to stay static. Investment in human resource is considered as important as investment in machinery for every organisation.  Development of techniques, like ROI and summative assessment help managers in determining the impact of HRD activities. The concept of learning organisations has also received great importance. Organisational feature of continuous learning is critical to its performance.  HRD is essential for growth and subsistence as it ensures optimal use of organisation’s resources. Organisations having advanced and updated human skills are ready to face competition. Once human resource with expertise and experience is acquired it becomes the responsibility of the organisation’s HRD function to involve them in continuous improvement of their knowledge and skills to keep them productive to meet organisation’s goals.

References

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Schoenlaub, N., 2015. 8 Steps for Organizational Development Interventions. [Online] Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/8-steps-organizational-development-interventions-nicolas-schoenlaub/ [Accessed 24 January 2018].

Scriven, M., 1991. The Methodology of Evaluation. 4th ed. California: Sage Publications.

Senge, P.M., 2010. The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization. New york: Crown Publishing Group.

Serrat, O., 2009. Building a Learning. Philippines: Asian Development Bank.q