Strategic Human Resource Development at Learning Organization - Literature review Example

Running header: learning organization Student’s name: Instructor’s name: Subject code: Date of submission: Learning organization Introduction A learning organization is an organization which helps in the acquisition of knowledge by its members while continuously transforming itself. For a learning organization, change does not occur just for the sake of it, but it is always well thought of before being implemented. It is an organization where the human resource is continually empowered to expand its capacity in order to achieve the desired results. It is an organization where new and expanded patterns of reasoning are nurtured. In such an organization, collective way of thinking is set free while people persistently discover to learn together. O’Keeffe, (2003, p.139) argues that as firms grow their ability to learn is lost since organizational structures and personalized reasoning becomes rigid. The firm’s solution to problems becomes short term since the problems re-emerge in future. For the firm to retain its competitiveness, it restructures itself with fewer employees. Therefore, the few have to be more effective. For a firm to have a competitive advantage, it has to learn faster than its competitors and also create a culture that is responsive to customers needs. The firm must therefore acquire and maintain knowledge regarding new products or processes. The firm must also acquaint itself with what is happening in its environment, and make use of knowledge of all its human resource to provide creative solutions to problems. Therefore, there must be co-operation and trust between all the stakeholders and reliable communication within a learning organization. In a learning organization, there is a shared vision which is agreeable to everyone. The individuals in a learning organization leave their old ways of reasoning and the normal routines of problem solving. Members of a learning organization see all the organizational processes, actions, functions, and environmental interactions as being part of the entire system. It is a system where people communicate openly with one another without fearing being criticized or punished. Private interests and disjointed departmental interests are forgone for the sake of the organizational goal achievement. Therefore, the achievement of a learning organization is only possible where the organization supports and promotes the development and empowerment of every employee. According to Senge (2004), human resource development should lead to the success of the whole organization. The human development strategy ought to maximize on the benefit the firm gets in investing in human resource. A learning organization achieves this by aligning the supply of capable and experienced workers with the existing human resource, the company’s current and prospected business plans and needs to increase return on investment and ensure continued existence and success. Human resource development should adequately address the organization’s human resources needs in a pragmatic manner. The strategy used in human resource development should be legal, ethical and try as is practically possible to secure the support and respect of the human resource. In a learning organization, human resource development leads to organizational success by allowing for personal development while gratifying the organizational goals. Human resource should be treated as an asset whose value should be enhanced by development. The human development policy should focus on the workers growth and development. It should aim at enhancing personal skills and potential hence boosting his performance for the benefit of the entire organization. A good human resource development strategy should prepare the worker to assume higher level of responsibility as time goes in order to provide the prospect of performance change. It should center on the organization’s competencies, training and developing the worker by educating him. Wang & Ahmed (2003, p.10) argue that this will ensure continued supply of the organization’s long-term needs while enhancing the workers value and achievement of his career goals. By upgrading the employee’s competence and attitude at all levels, the organization will maximize its effectiveness and hence its success. The human resources development should aim at enhancing the organization’s value at all the times. According to Argyris (2004), employee recruitment should also form part of the development strategy. This should ensure that the organization identifies and secures individuals required for the organizational survival and success both in the short-run and in the long-run.the strategy should be respond to the market competitiveness by securing suitable, qualified and experienced human resource at all areas. The company should also take advantage of internal recruitment. This is the cheapest source of quality employees especially if the current employees have been enhanced by training, adequate development and related performance enhancing activities. The development strategy should also incorporate performance appraisal and worker development centers that should review employee performance, their development needs and their potential to be promoted. This way, the organization will be able to maintain a motivated workforce eager to deliver on the overall organizational success. The policy should also focus on developing the employees into a workforce that places the organizational goals before the individual goals. Organizational success should be the major aim of the organization. The policy should also enhance individual freedoms such that employees are able to learn from one another. This will create a cooperative work force necessary for the overall success of the organization. If the organizations human resource and development policy will enhance the development of competent and motivated workforce, then this will lead to the overall success of the organization. As stated by Easterby-Smith, Crossan & Nicolini (2007 p. 787), One of the most important aspects of a learning organization is the strategic human resource development. Strategic human resources development incorporates human resource development with organizational strategy implementation. In other words, it is the long-term view of an organizations human resource policy. Strategic human resource development involves horizontal incorporation of the various human resource functions and also the vertical amalgamation of the organizational policy. Strategic human resources development if well planed becomes a valuable competitive advantage to a firm. According to Serenko, Bontis & Hardie (2007, p. 617), Strategic human resource development acts as a tool of managing change. As organizations restructure and downsize, it becomes necessary for workers to work in teams. There is therefore a need to develop new skills in various areas such as decision making skills and various interpersonal skills. Team effectiveness therefore becomes critical to the development of the organization. As these working relationships increasingly focus on task, workers stop working as functional managers. They work in a cross- functional manner with the aid of new technology in the quest for new knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge hence transforms human resource development by reducing the role of the training department and emphasizes on learning. In this way the organization is continually transformed by way of personal development and organizational development. The importance of strategic human resources development can not be ignored in today’s intensively competitive global market. The reason for this is that there is little difference between a market leader and a market joker. Therefore, emphasis must be put-on strategic human resource development since it is the difference between having highly qualified workers and having inefficient workers. Strategic human resource development is more than employing people and formulating work policies. It is about rapidly responding to the needs of the customer and the moves of the competitors. In all organizations, employees should be seen as a way of attaining competitive advantage over competitors. Human resource now plays an extremely vital role in an organization’s hierarchy than ever before. A carefully implemented strategic human resource development policy yields quality workforce which is a vital weapon in facing market competition. It enables the organization to act in response of market needs and also to become technologically innovative while emphasizing on product and service quality. Nowadays, many organizations are realizing the importance of strategic human resource development. ‘Strategic’ implies emphasizing on the long term results or the bigger picture. All experts.com (2007) has details that Strategic human resource development focuses on human resource policies with long-term objectives. Strategic human resource development does not just focus on internal employees’ issues but also focuses on addressing issues and problems that influence human resources development in the long run. This implies that the primary goal of strategic human resource development is increasing human resource productivity through focusing on obstacles that are found even outside human resource. Strategic human resource development makes use of strategies which help improve business performance. This encourages innovation and flexibility within the workforce. According to Resources.bhnet.com (2005), the human resources manager’s primary role is identifying major human resource areas where the strategies should be implemented in the long run in order to improve the workers overall motivation hence improving the overall workers productivity. Thus strategic human resource development leads to improved and quality performance of the work force. This leads to enhanced perfomance of the organization. Strategic human resource development aims at addressing the organizations internal weaknesses and strength that concern human resource. The strengths are emphasized while the weaknesses are solved. This prepares the organization for better performance in future. Therefore, strategic human resource development is important in preparing the organizations to face the future with confidence. Ucsfhr.ucsf.edu (2009) has stated that Strategic human resource development also identifies changing trends in the business world. Such changes include technological changes and changes in competition tactics. Therefore, the organization identifies the changes that will enable it become more competitive against its competitors. The human resource is therefore acquainted with these changes so that the organization is better prepared to face competition in the future. Decisions in this case would include workers acquisition of new skills caused by changes in technology. In this way the organization becomes competent and ready to face competition in future. Therefore, strategic human resource development enables a learning organization to strategically manage the organizations human resource in a way that will work for the overall betterment of the organization as a whole. If human resource development is well planned and organized, it should contribute adequately to career planning and development. As discussed earlier, human resource development is aimed at helping workers develop skills, knowledge and abilities both at individual and organizational level. According to Washington (2007), Career planning means planning one’s career path in advance and deciding in advance the career development activities that one needs to undertake to achieve his desired destination career-wise. On the other hand, career development is the continuous acquisition of relevant skills and knowledge, job mastery and also professional development which should be accompanied by career planning steps. Therefore, human resource development should incorporate career planning and development. The aim of human resource development is to acquire the best quality employees. Therefore, it should help the individual workers accomplish their career goals while satisfying the needs of the organization. One of the key responsibilities of a human resources department is to develop the organizations workforce. The department should facilitate career growth and development of the workforce through coaching. Coaching will help the employees discover their strengths and weaknesses. This will help them in career planning by setting realizable career goals. The organization should ensure that its policies and strategies help the staff in their continued career development. The human resource development function of the organization should also identify opportunities of growth for its work force. These opportunities should be availed to the staff at the right time so that they can make use of them. According to Danson, (2008), Human resource development should also identify the training needs of an organization’s work force. The organization should also provide training to its employees. By so doing, the workers will have been assisted in their career development both for their benefit and that of the organization. An organization’s human resource development should also have a feed back mechanism for its workers performance. There ought to be a means of ranking the workers according to their performance. This will motivate the workers and ensure that they are always conscious of their career development needs. An organization’s human development policy should also have a promotional mechanism where workers are promoted based on their performance and experience. This will facilitate in career planning where workers can set goals regarding what they would want career-wise. An organization should also help the staff to come up with tangible targets regarding their careers. This way the human resources development function of the organization will facilitate the workers in their career planning and development. If organizations are able to adequately develop and empower their employees, they will be able to attain organizational success. This is because they will have a competitive advantage over other organizations. Organizations should always aim at achieving, developing, allocating and applying knowledge to facilitate the overall success of the organization. References: O’Keeffe, T 2003, ‘Organizational Learning: a new perspective’, Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 130-141. Senge, P 2004, The Fifth Discipline, London, Century Business. Wang, C, & Ahmed, P 2003, ‘Organizational learning: a critical review’, The learning organization, vol. 10, no.1, pp. 8-17. Argyris, C 2004, On Organizational Learning, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing. Easterby-Smith, M, Crossan, M, & Nicolini, D 2007, ‘Organizational learning. Debates past, present and future’, Journal of Management Studies, vol. 37, no. 6, pp. 783-796. Serenko, A, Bontis, N & Hardie, T 2007, ‘Organizational size and knowledge flow: A proposed theoretical link’, Journal of Intellectual Capital, vol. 8 no. 4, pp. 610-627. All experts.com 2007, Human resources retrieved, viewed 24 April 2010, http://en.allexperts.com/q/Human-Resources-2866/role-HRM-career-training.htm Resources.bhnet.com 2005, Career planning, viewed 24 April 2010, http://resources.bnet.com/topic/career+planning+and+professional+development.html Ucsfhr.ucsf.edu 2009, employee development and training, viewed 24 April 2010, http://ucsfhr.ucsf.edu/index.php/pubs/hrguidearticle/chapter-11-employee-development-training/ Washington, B 2007, Principles of human resource development, Cambridge, Cambridge publishing house. Danson, B 2008, Human resources development in a learning organization, London, Prestige press. Read More