Training and Development in the Perspective of Hard and Soft HRM - Essay Example

Introduction

Staff training is a fundamental component of any organization and especially regarding its growth and sustainability prospects. Training essentially helps in improving sales, saving staff hours and enhancing the efficiency of production means. However, in order to realize such improvements, staff training must be such that it motivates the people, not only in terms of grasping the training objectives, but also in replicating the same to their daily work engagements. In light of normative HRM, policies must align with business planning in order to effect appropriate change in an organization. Additionally, with human resource as the single most valuable source of competitive advantage, policies that promote commitment are imperative. Central to this discussion are an exploration of employee training and development in the perspective or hard and soft HRM, the extent to which training supports employee motivation as well as the prospects of unproductive training and development discourses.

Training and development in the perspective of hard and soft HRM

Human resource management predominantly exhibit two main variants namely hard and soft models. The hard model treats employees as a business resource, just like machinery and buildings, and is thus a rationalism of strategic adaptability characterized by an emphasis on performance management (Baron and Armstrong, 2007). Hard HRM is tough-minded and embraces qualitative, calculative and business-strategic aspects of managing people. In fact, it is akin to scientific management since it reduces people to passive objects assessed solely on whether they meet the necessary skills and attributes. The soft model on the other hand, treats employees as an important business resource, largely as a source of competitive advantage. It integrates HR policies with business objectives by emphasizing employee commitment, adaptability and high quality performance. Thus, while employees in the former case are largely passive, the latter variant views them as proactive, worthy of trust and capable of development.

Within the context of training and development, hard HRM is characterized by little empowerment or delegation. The organization pays little attention to training and development, relying mostly on available skill set capable of ensuring successful task execution. Since little attention goes to employee development and training, their appraisals focus mainly individual judgements, good or bad, regarding the staff. The result is that many have visions parallel to those of the organization, yet cannot exhibit them due to the existing autocratic style of leadership. Furthermore, minimal communication takes place between junior and senior staff, which means that decision-making is solely the task of the executive personnel.

Another aspect characteristic to hard HRM that relates to partial or non-committal to employee development is its inclination towards short-term changes in employee discourses. Essentially, the employees under hard HRM do not form part of the company’s vision and mission, hence are perceived as mere means to the pursuing the mission. With recruitment as subtle as skill set congruency and dismissal a matter of convenience, hard HRM practices perceive employee training as an unnecessary practice, one that only adds to the organization’s overhead costs. It therefore embraces a system that pays only enough to recruit and retain enough staff for basic business functionality and does not attach any form of investment on the personnel, hence labels them as highly dispensable.

Soft HRM, on the contrary, treats employees as individuals and in addition to planning accordingly for their needs, incorporates them in the mission and vision of the business, majorly as sources of competitive advantage. It employs training as a means of empowers employees and encourages them to take responsibility. The organization thus invests in employee training with an objective of aligning employee skill set with the dynamic needs, vision and mission of the organization. In a bid to make employees hardworking and committed, hard HRM employs competitive pay structures with performance-related rewards, share of profits or shareholding offers.

Soft HRM also focusses on identifying and addressing training and other employee developmental needs. Such training normally arise from the need to undertake performance appraisals, benchmark improvement status to enhance overall organizational performance, as well as part of the organization’s professional development program. Furthermore, soft HRM with employees at the heart of its strategic development objectives pursues training as part of a succession plan to mold the employees to be eligible for the intended changes in relation to their new roles (Ihuah, 2014). In this regard, such training and development domains as communication, ethics and diversity, quality initiatives, diversity and customer service, among others are imperative. In fact, organizations embracing soft HRM have training and development as part of their organizational culture.

Training and development as a means of employee motivation

The sole objective of employee motivation is to ensure effective business operation that essentially frees the proprietor from the day-to-day chores of meditating on long-term development. The course of employee motivation begins with recognizing the fact that their prospects of delivering quality work lies on the existence of an environment that supports their emotional drives towards the acquisition, comprehension, bonding and defending their interests (Nohria, Groysberg and Lee, 2008). Employee motivation has been largely a factor of ‘add ins’ to the primary aspects of performance enhancement. For instance, such aspects as health care, insurance plans, ownership plans and child-care availability, among others have been used variously to inspire employee happiness and maintain their commitment to the organization and its objectives. However, while terminologies related to the same may change, the core tenets of employee motivation remain unchanged. Empowerment, quality circles and teamwork remain the formidable phrases in the realm of employee motivation.

Of greater interest to this discussion are empowerment, creativity and innovation as well as learning, mainly because the pursuit of the three entails employee training and development, which essentially acts as a motivation towards work. Empowerment, whether through training or subtle mentorship undertakings accords employees more responsibility and decision-making authority that in turn increases the real of control they have over their respective scope of operation (Saks et al., 2010). Such has the result of sparing individual employees of accountability to things for which they lack resources to accomplish. Instead, they direct their energy and expertise towards what they are well conversant, thus a diversion of energy from self-preservation to improved task accomplishment. Noteworthy is that whenever an employee engages in such tasks as he/she is well equipped to deal, the chances of exceptional performance and hence motivation alongside satisfaction increases.

Creativity and innovation is another aspect through which companies exploit human resource to ensure employee motivation. Initially, individuals with creative ideas would shy away from expressing them to the management out of fear of being ignored or ridiculed. However, recent managerial discourses have shifted towards encouraging creativity and innovation particularly as the primary means of product or service quality enhancement. In fact, most organizations presently have research and development initiatives and incentives all geared towards tapping into employee creativity and innovativeness. Today, many organizations embrace the idea that shifting the creativity power from top executives to line personnel and employees who have exceptional knowledge regarding a job, product or service has the potential of exploiting such ideas for the betterment of the same (Davila, 2012). The power to create or innovate in addition to motivating the employee also ensures the organization has a flexible workforce. Additionally, it allows the organization to utilize the wise experience of its employees to enhance information exchange that in turn confers the ability to respond quickly to market changes.

Learning is another aspect through which organizations can inspire employee motivation. Learning essentially requires an environment where employees have access to tools and opportunities to accomplish more. Studies show that such environments tend to encourage most employees to take the challenge. Bossche (2013) notes that by simply committing to perpetual enhancement of skills and knowledge of employees, firms can easily motivate employees to achieve more. Popular in the contemporary organizational behaviors is an adoption of accreditation and licensing programs tailored to bring about employee motivation and knowledge. Such programs tend to improve employee attitude towards the company or the client while simultaneously bolstering their individual self-confidence.

A deductive study by Kozlowski and Salas (2009) reinforces the assertion organizational learning improves employee motivation by such motivation is directly proportional to the extent to which the participants perceive the training as laden with potential benefits to their job or career utility. Simply put, the study argues that the mere satisfaction that knowledge gained from such learning environments have direct application to task accomplishment makes worthwhile its acquisition. In this case, both the employee and the employer have benefits to derive, one the prospects of increased performance hence rewards or appraisal, and the other better quality products or services alongside the prospects of retaining well-performing teams of individuals. To that end, learning and training is an integral part to enhancing employee motivation and in turn job satisfaction and quality performance.

While monetary rewards also have an integral role in employee motivation, research shows that non-monetary rewards are better employee motivators. Monetary motivators tend to be insufficient simply because often the expectations exceed rewards and the fact that disparities between individuals in the same rank may serve to divide, rather than unite them. Non-monetary motivators on the other hand foster team spirit through recognition, responsibility and overall advancement. Rewards such as letters of recommendation, advanced study programs, among others tend to enhance personal fulfilment as well as self-respect. Over long-term, sincere, value-oriented undertakings such as employee training and learning to enhance their skill set are more effective, economical and rewarding compared to monetary awards alone. Nonetheless, a motivation-oriented program that incorporates monetary rewards alongside systems that support intrinsic, self-actualizing needs are essentially more potent motivators.

When training and development are unproductive

Training and development discourses in an organization can at times fail to achieve the desired results, in which the undertakings are largely unproductive. While having smart goals is imperative to achieving business objectives, goals and objectives are only as effective as the people entitled to pursue and fulfil them. The creation of effective processes and structures within the organization through which it can manage performance can help inspire success, yet instances exist when such systems fail to deliver. Training is as important to the manager as it is to the common employees hence the need for an integrated process. For instance, managers need training to aid in the development of their managerial skills and enhance their understanding of the ever-dynamic organizational environment. Similarly, employees need training to enhance their understanding of responsibilities alongside the role of the managerial team based on need. Any disturbance to such an interdependent system may result in gross failure, hence unproductivity.

The first depiction of an unproductive training and development undertaking is characterized by employee confusion. The changes that emanate from training discourses may result in a mix-up in the communication channel and hence a situation where employees receive inconsistent messages regarding either their performance or expectations. Characteristic to this is a poor data documentation procedure on behaviors or expectations, hence instruction inconsistence or rater bias. Furthermore, the notion that education can tickle down such that training of executives of an organization would result in top-down transfer of knowledge to employees is flawed by nature. Such a system, as observed by Pruitt and Condit (2014) dangerously fails to acknowledge the disparity in core competencies between different managerial needs, and any collective approach, however pragmatic in in information dispersal, cannot be productive.

Training and development can also be unproductive when employees are unable to relate their performance with derived rewards from the same. The problem with such failure is that it results in low morale among employees, which in turn affects their productivity. Related unproductivity derives its explanation from what Hartel and Fujimoto (2014) terms as contextual performance, which essential entails prosocial behaviors, organizational spontaneity and personal initiative. Such have the result of limiting employees from applying their behavioral, cognitive and affective qualities to pursuing the goals of the organization notwithstanding the input in terms of training and knowledge transfer. Motivated employees tend to have comparatively higher task and contextual performance than those with less motivation, let along the higher organization commitment levels.

Finally, an organization in which management pays little or no attention to performance may experience low productivity even when productivity enhancing discourses such as training are in place. The catalyst to this is often low morale and feelings of hopeless efforts. Regardless of how intensive training and development undertakings are, if the management fails to follow up on the same with close supervision of performance, more so to determine the transferability of the newly acquired knowledge, improved performance and productivity might remain nothing but a dream. Based on the same, Werner and DeSimeone (2012) score supervision as being inclusive of exceptional leadership and monitoring of performance expectations. Thusly, employee training and development must incorporate performance assessment in order to be fruitful, failure to which is becomes efficiently unproductive.

Conclusion

The perception and handling of organizational training and development of employees varies immensely with the contexts of hard and soft HRM. Hard HRM perceives the same as of little relevance to the organizations since employees are equivalent to machines, only serving the purpose for which they are intended. Soft HRM on the other hand embraces employees as an integral component of organizational performance, and hence invests in their longevity for short- and long-term business sustainability. Training and development tends to offer a crucial avenue to employee motivation, more so in terms of individual or team empowerment, creativity and innovation as well as learning. However, when not handled effectively, employee training and development discourses may be unproductive, especially when they result in low morale, confusion or un-relatability or results to the input.