Human Resource Development Process in Organizations - Term Paper Example

Contemporary issues that confront HRD professionals and influence the HRD process in organizations (Author’s Name) (Institutional Affiliation) Introduction Human resource management have evolved in thinking and practice during the first decade of the 21st century. The issues and approaches that were seen by organizations as being peripheral previously have moved to the center stage of human resource development agendas and the agendas have been adjusted so that they can take into account the developments that take place in the business environment. This is what has created the shift to work life balance issues. Human resource development is an organizational process that comprises of skilful planning and the facilitation of a variety of informal as well as formal learning knowledge processes and experiences in the workplace. This is so in order for the organization to progress and be able to enhance the individual’s potential though adaptability, competence, collaboration, and knowledge creation activities for all the personnel who work for the organization. Literature review According to Stevens, (2001) the HRD activities should be able to focus on the learning outcomes and on making organizational contributions. This means that the HRD professional in a knowledge economy need to turn their attention to learning processes. This is the learning that can produce and also be able to disseminate knowledge to in the end be able to enhance the capability of the organization so that it can continuously improve and ultimately be radically innovative. From the definition of HRD above, it infers that the process is to add value critically to the knowledge economy. HRD functions are however preoccupied with the learning inputs that aim at improving the individual performance and also with training dominated activity (Raddon and Powell, 2001). This calls for the need for a fundamental shift from this preoccupation, the shift should give an immediate performance improvement which is able to strongly focus on lifelong learning and also work based strategies for the learning. Examining the challenges of human resource development in post global financial crisis, MacKenzie (2012) mentioned that HR professionals continuously play an active role in managing the organization’s human capital, he however noted that they have noticeably been absent from many of the critiques that explore the causes of the global financial crisis. HR professionals are frequently members of the senior management and are strategic partners too and they therefore play an important role in the driving of the business strategy (Peterson, 2008). Considering their knowledge and intellectual failures that have been identified as playing a central role to the global financial crisis, literature has it that the HRD practices and interventions should be given some focus see how they may have contributed to the global crisis. In the wider HR architecture, the role of HRD is the shaping of the organizational culture, leadership, developing organizational management and also managing organizational development (Gold et al., 2009). Moreover, the world uncertainties presents unprecedented challenges, needs and roles for HRD professionals. From Lynham, and Chermack (2006) findings, there are four major forces that will be affecting the future of HRD as well as the HRD flexibility and receptiveness and they found these to be; changing organizations, globalization, changing workforce, and technology. To further these finding, Marquarit and Berger (2003) were able to identify some of the key areas that were to be impacted on by the main forces of globalization extending their affect to HRD. The critical areas according to them were organizational and work learning, technology and knowhow, education and vocational training, and environmental sustainability. They furthered the identification of the challenges and came up with five challenges affecting HRD: Organization pressure and the lack of recognition Emphasis on evaluation and return on investment Pressure on HRD identity in spite of their difficulties in the identification of its competitive advantage and core competencies Need to identify the stakeholders which requires the definition of to whom the profession should serve Standards and professionalism emphasis which in turn professionalizes the field of HRD Considering that the main focus of HRD today is to identify the means of improving production with greater efficiency, they give very little regard to the organizational issues well viewed from a pluralistic perspective. Such political dimension then manifest through needs of employers and employees being contradictory and implicit power imbalances (Lynham, 2004). The explanation that comes close to explaining this situation further is that, the close alignment of the practices and interventions of HRD with the goals of the organization may detach the HRD professionals from their espoused values and thus the perpetuating of this power imbalance in organizations. The aligning of the HRD strategy closely with the strategy of the organization in pursuit of sustainability of a competitive advantage eventually results to the HR professionals being pawns who only reinforce power imbalances. According to Fenwick (2005), HRD practice today lacks to be founded on research based theories. It is instead based on something that looks like guess work which is somewhat an outdated thinking of what the clients want. Critical work by the HRD professionals should work toward reforms that are aligned with the purposes of justice, participation that has its focus on power issues, and equity (Fenwick, 2005). The human resource development have been changing over the years, but with the proliferation of technology as well as the changes in the business environment, the importance of human resource development in this modern world has increased. The Human Resource Development in today’s organizations is faced with a myriad of challenges. Literature shows that the challenges that are experienced today happen to arise from the elevation of human resource activities to being a core strategic function (O’donnell, 2006). Nevertheless, there are the contemporary issues that affect HRD which range from issues concerning legislating that affects the workplace, culture, a diverse workforce, as well as advances in technology. This paper aims at trying to point out the challenges that confront HRD professionals which then goes further to influence the HRD process in organizations. Contemporary issues that confront HRD professionals Recruitment, Retention and Motivation In today’s HR world, the finding, retaining, and motivating the employees remains one of the most challenging things in many organizations. Most of the HRD professionals today foresee that the retaining a pool of best employees in an organization will be one of the biggest challenges in years to come too. According to a poll conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, a great percentage of respondents ranked this as the number one factor in the top three challenges that they identified. The indication from the predictions is that there will be a lot of people looking for new jobs come the time that the economies start showing improvements. This is driven by the perception that the grass is always greener on the other side. In times of economic slowdown, and the times when the growth registers minimal growth, people tend to become more open to the considerations of other options of employment. With the increased utilization of the technological advances, employers have to find new ways of attracting talent through the social media, posting are some of the ways they have to apply so as to generate interest. On the other hand, this generation employees are looking for jobs but they have their set of requirements too that they wish the kind of job they settle for. They are mostly interested in jobs that provide them with work life balance (Mikkelsen and Gundersen, 2003). This means that they will opt for the jobs that helps them strike a good balance between their family and that desired autonomy. While organizations have continuously been advised to search for diversity, one that can generate new idea, sense of equality that leads to team work as well as better productivity, there don’t always get that and thus a lack of technical talent exists which makes it difficult for the HRD in most organizations to fill specialized positions. There is always a shortage of the desired employees in technical and technological companies for instance; employees with the training and competences required to perform niche jobs even in times of high unemployment are required (Blackman, 2009). In situations where the HRD in an organization has taken their time to give an employee the training and that experience that they require in a given position, it is always very difficult for them to retain this employee. The retaining of such employees has become tougher today than any other time in the past. This makes it difficult for the HR managers for they are called upon to offer more benefit packages to their employees considering that people will continue looking for the jobs that gives them a reduced risk during the tough economic times. From this, employers through their HRD professionals are advised to be on the look to be able to identify their key employees from their entry level to the upper level of management. Then be able to take the appropriate steps that are uniquely tailor made in line with their business to be able to retain those employees as much as possible. among the things they can do in efforts to reining their key employee is to consider merit pay increases, benefits such as flex time, projects that go much into increasing their employee’s responsibilities, telecommuting, and other technologies to keep the employees happy (Marsick, 2007). They should do their best also to build a workplace that leaves those working feeling very motivated to take up their task each day. This is an ongoing issue confronting the HR professionals; building that kind of environment in the workplace. Corporate Culture Regardless of whether performance is defined in terms of the productivity, attendance, customer satisfaction, or even stock price, culture influences the entire organizations performance as far as research is concerned. Human resources department is the body that plays the key role in the development of the culture of a given organization. Greater financial success is seen with organizations with great corporate culture; more than their peers. This gives these organization the opportunity to create great workplaces which often have lower employee turnover more than their competitors and for this reason are able to recruit the top talent and one that fits their culture. In the end, they are able to deliver customer satisfaction in all standards and be able to be innovative on products and services and this contributes to their overall financial success. According to research, there exists a co-relation between culture and hiring. The way an organization source, select and retain their employees is shown to be highly influence by the organizational culture. Considering that cultural fit is the makeup of someone, which is what they bring to the table. In case the corporate culture is not in sync with the person being hired, it will be very difficult to change them considering that culture is not something that can be taught. If it were a skill, then the organization can take time training this person. The challenge most HRD professionals face from the cultural aspect generally comes from their lack of paying attention to culture despite the fact that it is of great importance. To counter this, an organization’s HRD process has to be re-arrange to actively manage and develop culture. They can do this through hiring which will in turn improve significantly the situation of employee retention as well as their performance. This will highly benefit the organizational goals and influence its profitability and growth as well. HRD is challenged to develop programs that are able to reflect corporate strategies. If an organization is short term oriented, the HRD program should be the same. The HRD programs are today required to be in line with the organizations need. The challenge that emanates from this is that HRD professionals are forced to time and again develop interventions and initiatives to deal with the ever changing organizational cultures so that they can address and support the organization’s strategy. But the question that is always begging is whether the engagements the professions enter into help the organization in becoming more productive, efficient, and quality oriented. Another challenge that comes with the corporate culture is the need for the HRD professionals to develop the skills and abilities that help foster cultural change. They often lack the ability to act as facilitators and problem solver specialists. They should be able to act as internal consultants who are responsible for helping facilitate the organizational cultural change. Do be able to do this and deal with it effectively, they should be able to support participative management approaches, to be able to develop environments that exemplify mutual respect and corporation Fenwick (2005). Recommendation Consideration the shift that has occurred in HRD, there is need for the HRD professionals to be able to incorporate means and measures for a long-term impact both for the organization as well as for the society in their incentives and performance schemes. They will further need to incorporate some new ways of addressing the developmental requirements of their organizations not forgetting the development activities that are central to their roles. The reason they need to get this done is basically the fact that it will go some way to protecting their organization as well as the society from careless or reckless behavior. The organization and the society will be able to harmoniously leave together from things such as flex time and striking a work life balance. In so doing, the lost credibility that HRD has lost will be regained since they will be able to demonstrate that the organization’s human capital which they are supposed to manage and support can engage in socially aware performance related strategies. This is something that HRD practitioners cannot boast of the human capital as having at the moment. A wake up call is extended to the business school, there is need for them to go through a strategic decoupling since they are responsible of equipping the HR managers of tomorrow as well as the business leaders, they should do more in equipping them with methodologies and theories that will go deep in making possible to challenge the status quo (MacLean, 2010). References Blackman, D. and E. Sadler-Smith. 2009. The silent and the silenced in organizational knowing and learning. Management Learning 40, no. 5: 569–85. Read More