Human Resource Development and Performance Improvement - Coursework Example

Human Resource Development and Performance improvement (Institution) (Name) (Course) (Module) (Instructor) September 5 2009 This paper is divided into two sections each having an essay and a topic of discussion. The first essay discusses HRD while the second essay discusses a performance improvement as a continuous process of performance management Part 1. Human Resource Development in the face of globalization Human resource development is an integral part of management. It is the arm of management deals with the people factor in an organization. It differs from human resource management in the fact that it gives weight to advancing what is already there while HRM simply implies running what is there. The scope and depth of HRD varies as presented by different authors. Sofo (1999) says that HRD incorporates advancing the performance and skills of the people (e.g. suppliers and other stakeholders) and not their employees only. This paper will thus seek to show the connection of HRD and with HRM in the face of globalization in a social context. Through this discussion the paper will inform business managers on the importance of including the people factor in organizational growth and development. Human resource development is closely tied to performance and productivity of people in the workplace. This entails both personal and organizational success (Swanson & Holton, 2001). While the definition of HRD seems to center on processes aimed at enhancing personal and organizational productivity, Swanson and Holton (2001, p. 4) offer a more comprehensive definition that “HRD is a process of developing and unleashing expertise for the purpose of improving individual, team, work process and organizational system performance.” While human resource development is understandable to many managers and business experts, the term development in HRD is relatively ambiguous (Sofo, 1999). Joy-Mathews, Wilkinson and Surtees (2004) argue that political and social connotation of the term development has been a source of skepticism. However, they inform that the context of the term development in HRD is based on three principles of education, learning and training. From this point of view, they define HRD as “an integrated and holistic, conscious and proactive approach to changing work-related knowledge and behavior, suing a wide range of learning strategies and techniques” (Joy-Mathews, et al 2005, p. 6). They add that, a wide range of strategies and techniques aimed at increasing potential and capability in work and also enhance effectiveness in different capacities. Hewapitherana and Bowen (2004) quote Rothwell, Sullivan, and Mclean (1995, 31) who define HRD as “organized learning experiences provided by employers within a specified period of time to bring about the possibility of performance improvement and/or personal growth.” Simmonds and Pedersen (2006) say “HRD is a combination of structured and unstructured learning and performance based activities which develop individual and organizational competency, capability and capacity to cope with and successfully manage change.” From an economic point of view, HRD boosts organizational performance and hence, organizations employing HRD strategies are posed to increase their profitability in the long run. Joy-Mathews, et al (2004) introduce another perspective in the development aspect of HRD that views an organization as a single unit or even rather HR as a single unit undergoing growth or change for the better like living organisms In the face of globalization and labor mobility, organizations have to adopt HRD strategies in order to streamline productivity in the workforce. Willams (2002) says that diversity in the workforce has shown that it strengthens organizational culture but at the same time poses a challenge in effecting the spirit of teamwork and overall organizational performance. Sofo (1999) says that diversity refers to demographic differences such as race, culture and ethnicity among others. He divides these differences further into innate and degree. He says that these differences are a source of competitive advantage if managed effectively. Unfortunately, diversity has presented new challenges in HRM and development. On a larger scale, economic development of certain nations has either worsened or improved. Developed nations such as Australia take immigrants from less developed countries in order to benefit from their resourcefulness and skills. However, these developed countries are not willing to accept unskilled immigrants. As such, globalization presents a challenge to the less developed nations as they lose their skilled man power to the developed nations. For instance, Australia stand accused of sourcing nurses from Philippines and even Britain, countries which have also expressed a shortage in nurses and at the same time lost skills (Swanson, R. & Holton, 2001). Such large-scale migration of people has had both good and bad implication on the social life of the host country. In Australia, a politician, Kevin Andrews, was quoted to have said that Sudanese immigrants in the country could not fit in the Australian way of life. This can be interpreted to imply that Sudanese immigrants recruited in the Australian workforce would lower the average productivity of the country’s workforce. Similarly, training and educating these immigrants as part of HRD would imply increased costs. Sofo (1999) calls this cultural shock that is bound to hit everyone in a new cultural environment. He says that organizations might be faced with discrimination in the workplace among other vices. This affects performance and productivity of employees. The issue of discrimination in the workplace has added a number challenges in terms of managing employees and people development. Sofo (1999) says that the Australian government introduced the affirmative action act of 1986 to enable aboriginals in the country enjoy the same employment opportunities. However, the same law in the age of globalization protects foreign individuals in the country. On the other hand, discrimination laws such as the disability Act are meant to protect disabled individuals and enable them access the same employment opportunities like the rest of the people. While this is only in Australia, other countries have enacted various legislations aimed at protecting their citizens from exploitation. On a positive note, such laws ensure that employee development strategies employed are equally distributed across the gender divide and other special groups thereby enhancing equality in the society. How important is the people factor in running of organizations? This question has a lot of weight in the service industry than in the manufacturing industry. While this has been the traditional perception, modern managers are giving more weight to the people factor (Joy-Mathews et al, 2004). Sofo (1999, p.58) explains this shift in attitude to people management by borrowing from Mary Plankert who defines management as “the art of getting things done through people.” Therefore it becomes obvious that these “art” is necessary for increased performance of organizations. In order to ensure smooth running of getting things done, Sofo (1999) calls for fluent and open communication between top managers and the rest of the workforce. He says that management relies heavily on communication and leadership. In the case of leadership, the manager is implied to guide the organization in deciding the intended direction of the organization and hence communicate his ideas to the people working under him. Technologic growth has facilitated efficient communication among employees. The traditional printed memos and physical meetings have been replaced by email and video conferencing. Such efficient modes of communication have facilitated organization to expand and venture into new markets with increased efficiency. Companies such as Rio Tinto have diversified operations in many countries and various industries. According to the company’s CEO, its growth and success has highly relied on high levels of skills and expertise from its people. Unfortunately, Snow & Miles (2006) argue that large and successful companies devote relatively few resources to employee development such as training and coaching. They say that an organization of this magnitude prefer to hire employees with past experience and normally attracts such workers through higher than market rate remunerations and head hunting. PART 2 Performance improvement Performance improvement is based on the assumption that there are hindering factors that prevent employees from delivering maximum output. On the other hand, performance improvement measures seek to increase productivity of employees through an array of facilitating strategies. Increased employee performance translates into improved organizational performance and profitability. From an economic point of view therefore, organizations are keen to maximize performance for better returns on investment. This would also afford them a larger market share in the face of competition. In the process, a number of measures are employed that seek to cut out low performance and maximize it have been developed by management experts and authors. This paper reviews existing literature and performance improvement and discusses a number of strategies employed in maximizing performance in the workplace and asses how effective they are. Such an analysis is important in that while organizational mission, vision and strategy guide performance management, the relationship is two ways, in that performance will also determine the achievement of vision and mission and the strategies used. According to the Free Management Library (online), “performance management includes activities to ensure that goals are consistently being met in an effective and efficient manner.” Studies in the UK in the early 90’s demonstrate the positive correlation between organizational performance and people management strategies and specifically HRD. Williams (2002) says that modern approaches in HRD have concentrated on performance appraisals that seek to increase productivity of employees by molding their character and personal attributes to the benefit of organizations and personal career development. Heslin, Latham and VandeWalle (2005, p. 845) asses the effectiveness of performance appraisals through the Implicit Person Theory based on a psychological standpoint. The Implicit Person Theory is founded on the assumption that personal attributes can be altered through a number of measures in order to induce a change in behavior of a person, in this context employee. This implicit theory is further divided into two, incremental and prototypical. The archetypal IMT assumes that personal traits are unchanging entity while the incremental IMT assumes that personal traits are comparatively impressionable. Studies have bent on showing the impact of the incremental theory on an organizational context on aspects as self control, resilience o their self efficacy following setbacks and multitasking abilities. However, Heslin et al (2005) note that the results might be biased due to the fact that the same tests have not been carried out to assess the impact of the same theories on managers' judgment and perception of their employees. Scholtes (2004) identifies a number of techniques in performance appraisals though this paper is limited to two broad ones; collaborative – (management-by-objectives, work planning and review, 360° appraisals, peer review, etc) and numerical techniques. Collaborative methods are assumed to have a higher success factor than traditional methods and specifically the subjects crave for achievement and have higher ambition. Collaborative approaches are designed to help develop an organization’s human resources. They lay emphasis on smooth communication, on matching goals and objectives between managers and junior staff. These methods are habitually viewed to be more accurate and fair because of the involvement by junior staff with an obligation to the system and its goals. The Numerical methods (numerical ranking) rely on awarding points to employees regarding their performance in certain areas. Due to the fact that some work output is immeasurable, supervisor’s perception and opinion towards employees is assumed to be neutral, which is rare is used. Edwards Deming, famous business management thinker criticizes employee performance appraisals saying they have a negative impact on employee and organizational performance. In fact he says when used as a strategy in HRM it the traditional performance appraisal “nourishes short-term performance, destroys long-term planning, builds fear, demolishes teamwork and fosters rivalry and politics” (Shields, 2007, p. 22). Deming's view of performance appraisals may be said to be over rated. However, there exist a number of other business executives and management experts and authors who tend to be in congruence with his views. Falcone and Sachs (2007, p 4) write that performance appraisals have a common misconception in that their sole purpose in the workplace is to “inform employees how their performance has been rated.” Berger (2008) concurs with this misconception and says that a contemporary performance appraisal operate on the basis of absolute comparison by assessing how employees perform as compared to set goals and objectives. Rudman (1995) argues a good performance appraisals should be aim at planning for the future and not analyzing past performance. Stone (2000) identifies three ways through which to improve employee performance as mentoring, counseling and coaching. These strategies she says are to be employed continuously for long term benefits. However, many organizations employ them as a reaction to a situation. Sofo (1999) says there is need to first recognize and identify performance gap in an organization in order to enable the management to choose the best strategy. Sofo (1999, p. 111) suggests a formula of identifying performance gaps as “defining what workers do in terms of essential functions, and determining the skills necessary to perform the essential functions and the development tools necessary to build those skills.” Abdullah, Rose, Salleh and Kumar (2007) recognize employee training and development as another way of boosting employee performance. In their paper, they take the study of Malaysia as a country and discuss the government’s involvement in employee training and development in the country’s manufacturing industry. Increased demand for both skilled and unskilled labor fueled by the country’s rapid economic growth spurred the government into preparing the country’s labor force for the industry through the Human Resources Development Act of 1992 (Abdullah et al, 2007). The Malaysian government collaborates with organizations through sponsorship to run performance appraisal systems such as the Retrenched Workers Training Scheme. In fact in 2004, the Ministry of Human Resources allocated RM1.72 billion for of retraining and upgrading workers’ skills. This the government considers performance appraisal as an investment the same way that companies invest in their human resources through reward and compensation programs. Much attention has been given to equipping employees with ICT skills. Career counseling is founded on career theory and counseling theory. The Systems Theory Framework (STF) is the most efficient theory that is used to explain and develop career counseling (Patton & McMahon, 2006). This theory relies heavily on the individual system which tends to assume the Implicit Person Theory holds. The individual systems states that a person does not live in isolation and hence his environmental (geographic location, political decisions etc) and social perceptions impact on how he/she visualizes his career growth and development. The STF appreciates the diversity in career development as a vibrant progression through time as influenced by various factors. All these influences will impact on an employee’s decision in career matters with reference to in time i.e., past present and the future (Scholtes, 2004). Changes in the labor market have been instrumental in creating the necessity for career counseling. Traditionally, employees offered a job for life to employees with only minimum training in career perspectives, then called vocational guidance being offered (Scholtes, 2004). Intermediate approaches in career counseling tended to strive at matching wishes and knowledge about self with knowledge about the world of work. In the modern workplace, the elements of career counseling have been maintained although a number of theories have been incorporated in order to add relevance. In the modern workplace environment, employees encourage their employees to attain better skills in order to enhance the performance of the organization as whole. On the other hand, employees are motivated into seeking better skills and furthering their education in search of self satisfaction, better remuneration and promotion among a number of several motivating factors. As such, organizations as beneficiaries of employee skills have a moral obligation to support their staff in furthering their education and gaining additional skills out of the workplace. Scholtes (2004) writes that organizations such as GM have been active in sponsoring their employees on courses and even paying employees on educational leaves. It is on this note that organizations partner with institutions of higher learning in sponsoring high performing students. On a larger, scale governments like earlier mentioned in the case of Malaysia have contributed towards equipping their employees with knowledge by supporting their education. As a performance appraisal program then, it can be deduced that the education the labor force in Malaysia has played a significant growth in ensuring the country’s economic growth. Therefore, it necessary to employ performance improvement measures for sustainable growth. References Abdullah, H., Rose, R., Salleh, A., & Kumar, N. 2007. Measuring and Managing Performance Improvement in the Manufacturing Sector European Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp 157-166 Free Management Library, (Accessed on line on 5th Sept 2009 from) http://www.managementhelp.org/grp_perf/grp_perf.htm Heslin, P., Latham, G. & VandeWalle, D. 2005, “The Effect of Implicit Person Theory on Performance Appraisals,” Journal of applied psychology, Vol. 90, No. 5, 842– 856. Joy-Mathews, J. Megginson, D. & Surtees, M. 2004, Human resource development, Sydney: Kogan Page Publishers Luthans, F. Norman, S. & Avolio, B. 2008, The mediating role of psychological capital in the supportive organizational climate—employee performance relationship, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 29, No. 2, p. 219–238 Miles, E. and Snow C. 1984, Designing Strategic Human Resources Systems, Organizational Dynamics. Vol. 13, No. 1, p. 36-52. Patton, W. and McMahon, M. 2006, “The Systems Theory Framework of Career Development and Counseling: Connecting Theory and Practice.” International Journal for the Advancement of Counseling Vol. 28, No. 2 : pp. 153-166. Rudman, RR 1995, Performance planning and review, Pitman Publishing, Melbourne Sofo, F. 1999, Human resource development: perspectives, roles and practice choices, Melbourne: Allen & Unwin Stone, F. 2007, Coaching, counseling & mentoring: how to choose & use the right technique to boost employee performance, New York: AMACOM Scholtes, P. 2004. The leader's handbook: making things happen, getting things done (New York: McGraw-Hill. Swanson, R. & Holton, E. 2001, Foundations of human resource development, London: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Simmonds, D & Pedersen, C 2006, ‘HRD: the shapes and things to come’, Journal of Workplace Learning, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 122–34 Shileds, J. (2007). Managing employee performance and reward: concepts, practices, strategies, New York: Cambridge University Press Williams, R. 2002, Managing employee performance, Thomson Learning, United Kingdom Read More