Introduction to human resource development

Human resource management is one of the most essential factors that support the growth and development of organizations. Human resource management and development encompasses a large number of responsibilities within any organization. This involves recruiting employees, motivating them, setting goals and targets for them, managing employee performance, training and development of employees, creating an optimal workplace environment and ensuring long term employee retention within the business (Albrecht, et. al., 2015).

Human resource development includes opportunities for employees such as their training, development, coaching, mentoring and building. Organizations heavily invest in ensuring high levels of human resource development as it is considered to be an effective tool for employee motivation. The growth and development of human resources in any organization is directly responsible for fostering growth and creativity within the organization and ensuring accomplishment of strategic objectives of the organization. This report highlights upon the importance of human resource development, the role played by this function in the growth of the organization as well as its contribution in accomplishment of organizational objectives (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014).

Human resource development initiatives within organizations are aimed at the growth and development of organizational employees. HRD plays a significant role in ensuring employee satisfaction, employee retention and in deriving performance from employees in an effective manner. All of these roles combined ensure accomplishment of organizational objectives and improved performance.

Human resource development activities within any organization work as an effective tool for employee motivation. HRD functions keep employees motivated which in turn ensures optimal performance from employees. Development activities for employees instituted by organization make employees feel that they are valued in the business. This is often organization’s way of investing in their employees. Since these activities also lead to personal growth of employees, they feel motivated to work harder for the organization. Motivated employees perform better and in a more efficient manner (Bakker & Demerouti, 2014).

An organization which is focussed on human resource development, has an optimistic and productive workplace environment within the business. The environment within which employees work has a significant impact upon employee productivity and efficiency. Organizational efforts to ensure development of human resources creates an environment of growth. It is a predominant responsibility of the human resource management team within any organization to create an effective workplace that can foster creativity, innovation, learning and growth. Such an environment is sure to increase employee productivity, organizational performance and helps in accomplishment of organizational goals and objectives (Bamberger, Meshoulam & Biron, 2014).

Role of HRD

Human resource development activities within any organization foster training and development of employees. Employee learning is the key to keeping employees satisfied within the business. Efforts to train and develop employees not only keep employees motivated but also ensure an improvement in their performance. This improvement in performance leads to improved organizational performance and effective accomplishment of organizational goals. Training and development therefore has a significant role to play in ensuring employee growth and organizational performance. Training of employees also makes employees feel valued within the organization. This improves their dedication towards the organization and instils a sense of ownership. This eventually leads to improved performance and in turn successful accomplishment of organizational goals (Bratton & Gold, 2017).

Human resource development activities also work towards making the team more creative. These efforts foster innovation among employees. The culture of the organization that focusses on human resource development tends to make the team creative, foster innovation and ensure continued growth. Human resource development creates an organizational culture that fosters creativity and innovation through open communication. Leaders of the team encourage people to share their opinions and viewpoints without any prejudice. This unperturbed flow of ideas makes the team creative and helps the organization to be more innovative. This growth of creativity and innovation also helps the organization in accomplishment of organizational goals (Brewster, Chung & Sparrow, 2016).

An organization that fosters creativity in its practices, also depicts a high risk appetite. This allows employees to take risks and perform to the best of their abilities. This rise in creativity improves employee’s performance and assists in accomplishment of strategic goals of the business.

Employees or human resources are the most important assets of any organization. Therefore human resource development activities within any organization act as a way of improving this asset. In the era of excessive competition, it is imperative that businesses work towards creating a competitive advantage over others. This competitive advantage can be in terms of the quality of the product or service, pricing strategy adopted by the business, promotional strategies used to enhance awareness about brand or even the place at which the product or service is sold. Human resource development activities by any organization work towards enhancing performance delivered by employees of the business (Kavanagh & Johnson, 2017).

The purpose of human resource development is to ensure the growth and development of employees. This is done through training activities, coaching, mentoring, and conducting workshops. Besides this, human resource management focusses on creating a workplace environment that is optimistic, amicable and productive. Working environment plays a significant role in ensuring effective performance from employees. This is why by managing the workplace environment in an effective manner, strategic human resource management practices aim towards gaining a competitive advantage in accomplishment of organizational goals (Lin & Wu, 2014).

Employee motivation

Employee retention and employee satisfaction are important factors in managing the human resources of any business. In accordance to this, Human Resource Development is considered as one of the most useful and effective departments for an organization. This department not just recruit and select candidates on the basis of organizational requirements and their qualifications; they also evaluate their communication skills, capabilities and compatibility with the organization. Thus, when a candidate is selected for the desired position, he/she needs to go through several rounds of interviews in order to showcase talent and skills they have and their significance for the organization (Marchington, et. al., 2016).  

Lot of roles and responsibilities are fulfilled by human resource department of an organization and these ultimately help the organization to boost up its performance along with the managing the employees and assigning them appropriate and relevant tasks as per their skills and talent. Thus, role of Human Resource Department is said to be the most crucial in the organizational functionalities. Human Resource Department also plays vital role in attainment of strategic goals of the organization along with managing the business needs as per changing business environment. Strategic human resource practices are considered as essential for the behemoth multinational corporations but with the changing business needs and environment, these practices have been adopted by small as well as mediums scale companies also (Paillé, et. al., 2014). With the help of these practices, organization could easily uplift its performance and it is considered that there is direct relationship between strategic human resource practices and firm’s performance.

Recruitment and Selection, training and development, compensation systems, etc. are some of the crucial business practices of strategic human resource department which helps in improving organizational performance. It is also known as the connection between the companies’ human resources and the company’s strategies, goals and objectives (Rothwell, Hohne & King, 2018). The aim of the human resource management is:

• To implement advance flexibility, competitive advantage and innovation at workplace
• To develop and create appropriate fit for the organizational culture
• To enhance organizational performance

In relevance to the strategic human resource management to be effective, human resources (HR) of the organization must play vital role as a partner aligned with the policies. HR activities are hiring, training, motivating and aligning their efforts as per the organizational goals as well as rewarding them. Strategic HR plays direct role in the company’s growth and in relevance to this, it is necessary for the HR to adopt strategic approaches along with developing and retaining them with the organization to meet with the organizational needs and wants (Shields, et. al., 2015).

Workplace environment

HR plays vital role in the accomplishment of organizational goals and in relation to this, it is necessary for the organization to manage the operations of the human resources with the objective to attain desired goals and objectives. The primary objective of human resource management is to develop coordination between the teams along with making the direct link between the employee’s efforts and organizational goals. With regards to this, HR department carry out relevant analysis to determine employees’ capabilities and their actions in order to estimate the gap between organizational demands and employees’ efforts (Taylor, Doherty & McGraw, 2015). Thus, strategic human resource management seeks for the results of the analysis in terms of developing HR techniques to address employees’ weaknesses along with converting those weaknesses into organizational strengths. Following are some of the benefits of strategic human resource management:

• Enhanced job satisfaction
• Better workplace culture
• Enhanced rate of customer satisfaction
• Efficient and effective utilisation of resources
• Adaptation of proactive approach of managing employees
• Boosting productivity

Thus, the role of human resource management is considered as the vital element for organizational growth and development. This not just only helps in enhancing organizational productivity but it also helps in terms of managing employees with the objective to fulfil employees’ needs as well as to maintain a balance between organizational demands and employees’ needs. HRM also coordinate between employees and the top level management in order to match up with the dynamic environmental needs through which strategic goals could be attained as well as in terms of attaining competitive advantage (Tyson, 2014).

Conclusion

Thus, it could be concluded that employees or human resources are the most important assets of any organization. Therefore human resource development activities within any organization act as a way of improving this asset. In the era of excessive competition, it is imperative that businesses work towards creating a competitive advantage over others. HRD functions keep employees motivated which in turn ensure optimal performance from employees. Development activities for employees instituted by organization make employees feel that they are valued in the business. This is often organization’s way of investing in their employees and by this manner; organization could easily create a bridge between expectations and the actual performance.

References 

Albrecht, S.L., Bakker, A.B., Gruman, J.A., Macey, W.H. and Saks, A.M., 2015. Employee engagement, human resource management practices and competitive advantage: An integrated approach. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, 2(1), pp.7-35.

Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S., 2014. Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice. Kogan Page Publishers.

Bakker, A.B. and Demerouti, E., 2014. Job demands–resources theory. Wellbeing: A complete reference guide, pp.1-28.

Bamberger, P.A., Meshoulam, I. and Biron, M., 2014. Human resource strategy: Formulation, implementation, and impact. Routledge.

Bratton, J. and Gold, J., 2017. Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave.

Brewster, C., Chung, C. and Sparrow, P., 2016. Globalizing human resource management. Routledge.

Kavanagh, M.J. and Johnson, R.D. eds., 2017. Human resource information systems: Basics, applications, and future directions. Sage Publications.

Lin, Y. and Wu, L.Y., 2014. Exploring the role of dynamic capabilities in firm performance under the resource-based view framework. Journal of business research, 67(3), pp.407-413.

Marchington, M., Wilkinson, A., Donnelly, R. and Kynighou, A., 2016. Human resource management at work. Kogan Page Publishers.

Paillé, P., Chen, Y., Boiral, O. and Jin, J., 2014. The impact of human resource management on environmental performance: An employee-level study. Journal of Business Ethics, 121(3), pp.451-466.

Rothwell, W.J., Hohne, C.K. and King, S.B., 2018. Human performance improvement: Building practitioner performance. Routledge.

Shields, J., Brown, M., Kaine, S., Dolle-Samuel, C., North-Samardzic, A., McLean, P., Johns, R., O’Leary, P., Robinson, J. and Plimmer, G., 2015. Managing employee performance & reward: Concepts, practices, strategies. Cambridge University Press.

Taylor, T., Doherty, A. and McGraw, P., 2015. Managing people in sport organizations: A strategic human resource management perspective. Routledge.

Tyson, S., 2014. Essentials of human resource management. Routledge.