Human Resource Development, Essay Example

Organizations have a department of human resources management which is involved predominantly in managing employees at the work place. This department deals with employee behavior, working conditions, welfare and policy setting responsible for organizational development. HRM defines the sphere of operations of employees located firmly within the organizational platform.  Organizations not only uphold human resources management, but, also human resources development. HRD can be referred to as a process of developing and unleashing expertise with the particular aim of improving individual, team, and work process and performance organizational system (Stead and Lee 1996).

This paper will define what human development as a field of practice, discuss its function at individual level, organizational level, and national level. It will also discuss its relationship with human resources management. It will as well discuss the benefits of human resources development, and lastly discuss the issues on HRD.

What is Human Resource Development as a field of practice?

Rouana Wendy and Gibson Sharon (2004) postulate that Human resource development (HRD) can be defined as planned learning experiences employers provide within a specific period of time to provide a good environment for performance improvement or personal growth. It entails there major areas of action namely; training, education and development. Training entails learning experiences focused on the current job of the learner, education entails learning aimed at future jobs of the learner, while development deals with learning that is not focused on the job whether present or future. HDR is unique from other human resource activities in that it adopts learning as a way of reaching organization and individual goals.Walton, (1999) defines HRD as an outcome of learning whenever undertaken’ (147).

Discuss the use/function of HRD

Human resource development (HRD) has got several functions which can be grouped into three categories

1. individual level
2. organizational level
3. national level

In this section we shall discus the functions of HRD in each category

Functions of HRD

1. I) individual level
   At the individual level HRD strives to make individual employees aware of the expectations other people have pertaining their roles. This helps individual employees to develop their skill and attitudes accordingly.HRD enables individuals to obtain knowledge and experience about the current job they are doing, about the job they might be involved in the future and personal knowledge not focused on job. Again, HRD provides individuals with a collaborative spirit and intergroup corporation. Individuals get enlightened on how to work with other employees at workplace as a team to produce good output.
2. II) Organizational level

At the organization level, HRD enables employees develop competences through self renewal mechanisms in the organization. This enables the organization to develop an adaptation to the environment changes. HRD ensures that organizations have human capital which is competent to achieve success. In addition, HRD increases the ability of human capital through increase in knowledge, skills, and change in attitudes. Further, HRD facilitates system wide changes in an organization. Interrelated aspects of an organization which include; strategy, structure, system, skills styles and shared values are facilitated by HRD. Change in one element necessitates change in the other element. Thus, HRD works to bring in harmony this system wide change elements and make them coherent.

Human resource development creates conducive environment in an organization for individual and organizational growth through replacement of traditional assumptions about human growth with more realistic assumptions about human beings.

National level

At national level, human resources development aims at training a national wide human capital for the development of government sector. HRD provides the citizens with an equal change for literacy development in many fields. HRD helps the nation to unleash, a team of workers to provide different services according to expertise obtained.

Discuss the relationship of human recourse development with Human Resource Management.

Human resource development is predominantly concerned with the training of an individual, providing an opportunity to learn, distributing essential recourses to employees work, and all other activities of development (Kuchinki Peter, 2009, 115-120). On the other hand, human resource management deals with training and development of employees.

From the two definitions it can be clearly seen that both HRD and HRM concern themselves in training employees. Both aspects of management deal with employee’s development and performance. human resource management deploys workers and trains them to improve their competence as well HRD trains already employed works to gain knowledge and skills on the current job they are doing or any future opportunities which may arise in their line of training. Both HRM and HRD evoke common sense thinking and actions through training. Both HRD and HRM use training and development, organizational development, and career development to improve individual, team, and organizational efficiency. Individual, group/team and organization use development as their primary focus.

HRD and HRM are operationally reactive, operationally proactive, strategically reactive and strategically proactive. Although they share the above operational activities, each one performs different function.

Theoretically, HRD and HRM posses the following strategies

Institutionalism

Resources dependence

Transaction cost

Strategic choice i.e. proactive managerial choice in internal and external relationships. behavior i.e. the role of employee behavior, open systems and contingency approach. And lastly both are resource based i.e. HR as competitive advantage.

What do you think benefits most from HRD?

The organization benefits a lot from HRD program. In as much as individual employees benefit from the training and education, the organization benefits a lot from the competence of its workers. When human capital is efficient organizational development and growth is high.

Issues on HRD

HRD has many dramatic issues which touch scholars and practitioners contribution to education and training of individuals at work. The manner in which executive can be advised on how to manage needed restructuring in a way that will honor employee commitment and responsibility and other stake holders not yet well developed. Ways of enabling employees to develop resiliency in times of economic crisis without losing hope is also an issue of HRD. Further, HRD is challenged when dealing with employees who are about to retire or who have began to see that their retirement is losing value and needing to work well past the planned age of retirement. Leadership facilitation is another issue of HRD (Walton 1999).

Works cited

Kuchinki K Peter Human Resource Development International Vol. 12, No. 2, April 2009, 115–116.

Rouana Wendy E. A. and Gibson Sharon K ‘The Making of Twenty-first –century HR: An analysis of the ~Convergence of HRM, HRD and OD in Human Resource Management Spring 2004, Vol. 43, No 1, Wiley Periodicals, pp 49-66

Stead V and Lee M ‘Perspectives on HRD’ in Stewart J and McGoldrick J (eds) (ibid) Ch.3, 1996.

Walton J ‘Strategic Human Resource Development’ London, FT/Prentice Hall , 1999.