Roles, Functions, and Principles of Human Resource Development for International Business Company - Case Study Example

Summary

This paper aims to present the roles, functions and principles of Human Resource Development for International Business Company highlighting that HRD is the most important topic of present time and which is considered by the management professionals as the dimension of sub discipline of HRM and psychological, social and moral aspect for human development. Using relevant models, frameworks and methods, this paper aims to determine the impact of HRD on organisational strategy and identify if any factors affect the HRD and organisational productivity showing at the same time benefits and limitations of Human Resource Development. As the theory, HRD is a framework for human capital expansion through the development of the organisation and individuals to achieve improvement in performance. Thus, HRD is the integrated use of training, organisation and career development, which improves individual, group and organisational effectiveness. It is the aim of the paper to show these roles of HRD in connection to International Business Company performance.

Introduction

Human Resource Development is considered as the sub discipline of HRM with the emphasis on the development of productive skills. The other broader definition refers to the HRD as the process of increasing knowledge, skills and capacities of people in all spheres. This is the accumulation of human capital and the efficient investment in the development of organisational economy. Such accumulation enables the company to maximise talents, skills and abilities and thus to reflect on the company’s profit (Khan, Khan & Mahmood, 2012). It is the great strategic role of HRD on employee skills development, through which HRD serves the needs of the organisation and which helps the organisation to achieve its objectives (Memon, 2014). Since people are those who committed and make contributions to achievement of these objectives and thus to organisational success, the role of HRD here is to support organisational learning in order to establish performance expectations and address higher-level skills of problem solving taking into account social impact. The many other roles and functions of HRD are presented in this paper with an emphasis on the benefits and limitations of HRD and factors that can affect it.

Roles and functions of HRD departments

The main goal of human resource development is in developing skills, which individuals can use further to achieve better jobs and thus have broader choice of responsibilities for the sake of organisational success. Following this explanation, HRD is aimed at educating, training and developing people within organisation to change employee behaviour, which at the same time improves the organisational performance. Allameh et al (2012), states that to every particular organisation HRD goals are more specific but generally refer to accessing organisational proficiency, increasing quality and efficiency, promoting growth and individual development and integrating people into the business. Such integration impacts the model of behaviour of every particular employee within the organisation and it is the role of HRD professional to help employees in meeting their personal goals through provision of programmes and interventions to promote individual development.

At the same time, it is not an easy task to identify the causes of employee behaviour as numerous factors, complex and difficult influence such behaviour. Werner and DeSimone (2011), state that a model of employee behaviour can help in representing the main factors, which affect employee behaviour and the corresponding relationship. These are the external factors outside the organisation and the internal, which include leadership and aspects of work environment with co-workers and outcomes of performance. The main idea that stands behind the model is that both external and internal factors interact and produce a certain behaviour, which an employee uses in attaining personal and organisational outcomes.

Sims (2006), states that certain techniques can shape influences on employee behaviour. Thus, behavioural change is an effort to redirect and increase employees’ motivation and needs, skills and knowledge bases in order to coordinate performance of assigned tasks. Werner and DeSimone (2008), state that several motivation theories provide perspective on impacting employees’ perceptions of outcomes. These are the expectancy theory and equity theory, where people will either perform behaviours that they perceive as those that will bring valued outcomes or that the outcomes are evaluated by contrasting to the outcomes received by others. The number of motivational theories refer to the concept of needs, where needs drive employee behaviour. Here, the significance of Maslow’s needs hierarchy theory is great in terms of individual and thus organisational development. Herzber’s theory pays much attention to the needs of survival and personal growth, which in the organisational setting is important for employees’ ability to perform (Werner, 2008).

In the HRD field, the needs that drive employee behaviour come from assessing the needs of the field itself, where programme planners and developers agree the needs assessment as the essential step for any training and educational initiative. Assessing HRD needs means to investigate the process with the purpose of connecting the performance of organisation and opportunities for performance improvement (Berger, 2001). The following types of needs analyses are available in different organisational context and include organisational analysis with pointing the business needs for training (Paton et al, 1996). Personal analysis deals with the potential participants of the process of training. Work analysis and task analysis seek to specify the main duties and skills required for the organisation (Schmitt, 2012).

In the modern workplace, to obtain or transfer specific knowledge, skills and abilities, training and development is needed. The benefits of training are essential in terms of strategy development for both employer and employee as then the current and future challenges of business will be met and a wide range of learning actions will help to improve business (Niazi, 2011). These learning actions refer to the fact that an employer should consider the learner as the essential investment for organisation’s successful performance. In such case, the direct connection between the mission and learning culture of organisation benefit to employer and employee, highlighting positive associations of learning, motivation and performance of organisation (Niazi, 2011). Liotas (2014), states that the great role in understanding training and learning process is given to Gestalt practice, which allows both processes to take into account the intrapersonal and interpersonal aspects of the group and involved individuals. Another concept, which helps the HRD practitioners to understand learning process is Kolbs’ Learning Style Inventory and Experiential learning theory, which defines learning as the process of knowledge creation through transformation of experience and where knowledge comes from the combination of grasping and transforming experience. In human development, the experiential learning theory is the main determinant and shows how individuals learn shapes the course of personal development (Kolb, 2005).

Benefits and limitations of HRD

Jehanzeb and Bashir (2013), state that despite the tremendous role of employees on the success of organisation, there are many other different aspects, which impact the organisational performance. Thus, to ensure efficient employees, the organisation should ensure them in line with financially dominant and competitive in the market.

For that purpose, it is required that the organisations to be conscious about the job satisfaction and retention of workers as part strategy within HRD. On the international arena, companies provide their employees with the training and development programmes to improve skills and abilities of people. Such programmes create a lot of benefits to employees, especially career competencies and as the result employee satisfaction and better employee performance. For the organisation, the benefit of HRD is in market growth, better organisational performance and lower level of employee retention (Jehanzeb, 2013). If to apply the resource-based view towards the HRD within the organisation, the positive aspect of it will be that the firm can reach a competitive advantage as it can find rare, imperfectly imitable and non-substitutive resources through acquiring, developing and maintaining specific competencies of its employees obtained through development and training. For the organisation, that means to obtain certain predictability in the unpredictable business environment, because the emphasis is given to the appropriate selection, development, combination and deployment of human potential (Shanahan, Garavan & Carbery, 2012). To evaluate the effectiveness of such potential, Saad and Mat (2014), propose to apply the Kirkpatrick Model. Here, the training is defined as the systematic process of evaluating the worth, value or meaning of the process. To measure the effectiveness of training process, the four areas are suggested. These are the emotional reaction, achievement of objectives, behavioural changes and the organisational impact. The importance of emotional reaction is in perception of the participant to training, after which the one will gain certain knowledge and skills and then will be able to apply them on job.

Achieving learning objectives refer to the improvement of job performance. Only with the positive emotional reaction and enhance practical skills and knowledge, the one can identify the success of training. Behavioural changes enable the individual to connect the studying with practical use where emotional reaction and knowledge gain can be accomplished after training sessions and then behavioural changes help to fully implement the newly acquired skills and knowledge. The main purpose of Kirkpatrick’s evaluation framework is in its impat of organisation, as then training and HRD reflect the organizational culture and strategy and the outcomes positively impact the organisational performance (Saad, 2014). The only limitation of HRD can refer to the traditional training, which is centralised and a stand-alone department. Which can be replaced by the new system of training and development of employees. In addition, traditional training often lack focus, it lacks management support, is not always well-planned or conducted systematically (Byrne, 1999).

External factors that can affect HRD

Whether the purpose of HRD is the improvement of individual performances involved with skills, attitudes and knowledge, the main factor, which can impact the field is the structural and process interventions. The development process is the constant process and here formal education, working experience and relationship with others impact the HRD. In addition, in the context of HRD professionals, shortage of these specialists who are skilled and experiences has significant impact on further development of new theories and models related to HRD. What is also known that motivation, leadership style, organisational commitment, health and safety dimensions as well as creativity and innovation also influence the HRD (Al-Sayyed, 2014).

Conclusion

Being a subject of interest to management scholars, HRD is viewed as driving force of organisation and through which employees’ skills, competencies and knowledge can be obtained and improved for the organisation to obtain competitive advantage. For that reason, HR managers and partners should design and implement t strategies focusing on the operations improvements and taking into account the importance of HRD initiatives and programmes. This paper investigated questions about the role and functions of HRD, highlighting its importance to the organisation, employee development and showing benefits of HRD.