Human Resource is a field that has attained reasonable and due attention by many leading firms in recent times. Human Resources has been recognized as an important factor for achieving success in the global arena and in gaining a competitive advantage in the industry. Many leading firms put special importance on the behavior of their workforce playing an important role in the success of the organization. To maintain this they have planned and organized their human resource function in such a manner that it provides them a competitive advantage in the industry they operate. If we talk about Human Resource Management which has been a dedicated field for improving the Human Resource function of any organization, it puts special emphasis on certain important aspects to be taken care of regarding the employee to achieve success in formulating a successful Human Resource department. These factors are the compensation plans and strategies, Reward and incentives plan, Training and trainability of the employees, Hiring and Recruiting, and Future or Human Resource Development (Mathis and Jackson 2007). All these factors play a strong role and go side by side in the formulation of a competitive Human Resource Department. Human Resource Management deals with the most important factors of the success of the organization which is its employees. Apart from other physical factors making sure the employees are working at their highest level also requires them to be emotionally satisfied. The employee doesn’t need to get a high salary for being productive but factors like regular appraisals, positive feedbacks on high-level performance, and a social environment are also necessary. There have been many theories regarding employee motivation that have come forward each of them has highlighted the fact that employee development is very important to enhance the employee’s skills, his or her chances of success, his or her motivation, and for the success of the organization.
HRD and Strategic Human Resource Management
Human Resource Development is one of the major functions of the Human Resource Department. It is strategically an important task in the list of the functions of the Human Resource Department which includes recruitment and selection, compensation and benefits, employee relations, human resource planning, EEO, and HRD. Training and development of an employee is an important part of the whole Human Resource Management. Judging and improving employee skills is an integral part of managing an effective and efficient workforce. It is important to categorize employees in terms of their abilities and skills and plan accordingly their role in the organization. This training is regularly monitored and planned for an employee accordingly. Another aspect while planning this is judging the ability of an employee to be trained also known as trainability of an employee. This is to exactly judge how far can the employee be trained and what would be the best fields for him to be trained at. The trainability of the employee determines how his or her future would be shaped at the organization. The employee’s trainability is determined by the Human Resource department people and then the perfect prospects for the employee are determined. There are many ways to assess the trainability of the employee. The human resource department can use questionnaires and observational techniques to assess the skills of the employee. The assessing of the trainability is the first step in the work of a human resource department hence it should be performed with complete accuracy as it would determine the success of the human resource function. Development can not be only in form of training but can also be through a high level of exposure to important projects and strategic decision and their details. Involving the employee in high-level strategic decisions can result positive for the employee as an increment and gain in the experience. Human Resource Development as discussed earlier is a part of Strategic Human Resource Management. This is because the core function of Human Resource Management is to develop and maintain your workforce. Functions like hiring and recruiting are only the initial phase but Human Resource Development is the long-term planning, organizing, implementing, and controlling of your intellectual assets which is the workforce.
HRD and Globalization
Human Resource Development has evolved and one of the major factors helping it to evolve at this rate and ease is Globalization. When ideas and theories related to the study of Human Resource Development were shared across borders many unique and new concepts which were better than before evolved. This helped the field in developing itself to become more and more advanced and sophisticated. The importance of your workforce was only realized through the concept of globalization when organizations discovered that how motivation, behavior, and attitudes of the workforce affected the level of productivity of the organization. One of the major concepts related to the social and economic aspects of globalization is of maintaining a diverse workforce. This is the latest trend supported by globalization in the field of Human Resource Development. Organizations focus on the fact that a multicultural workforce though does have its negatives but also brings the talent of different types to one place. This makes the workforce much richer in talent as a whole and provides greater flexibility to the organization but a drawback with this concept is the fact that multi-cultured workforce also brings confusion and difficulty in performing the Human Resource Development process. Regarding this scenario, this field needs to bring new and much more detailed concepts in capitalizing on the optimum level of benefits from the multi-cultured workforce. It is much more surprising to see how fast the study of Human Resource Development has evolved over globalization and how much it is being supported by globalization. Organizations send their employees for training and development to other countries which helps the employees develop their skills and also gain an insight on the different markets of the World. This helps the organizations in later extending their operations in other countries as well.
Conclusion
To conclude this essay I would like to comment on the fact that the study of Human Resource Development is one of the few fields that have developed very fast with Human Development. This field is not a very old one but its growth is quite drastic. This has been highly dependent on the importance of this concept. The importance has been achieved due to its effect on the organizational performance which is very high. This has made HRD a strategic part of HRM and needs to be given ample importance by every organization.
References
Dessler, G.(2007). Human Resource Management, 11th edn Prentice Hall
French W. (2006). Human Resources Management, 6th edn South-Western College Pub
Ivancevich, J.(2009).Human Resource Management, 11th edn McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Mathis R. L., Jackson, J. H.(2007). Human Resource Management, 12th edition South-Western College Pub
Mondy W.(2007). Human Resource Management, 10th edn Prentice Hall
Werner J. M., DeSimone R. L. (2008).Human Resource Development, 5th edition South-Western College Pub;
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