Importance of Human Resource Development

Importance of HRD

Companies derive competitive advantage from training and development. Training and development programmes, as was pointed out earlier, help remove performance deficiencies in employee. This is particularly true when – (1) the deficiency is caused by a lack of ability rather than a lack of motivation to perform, (2) the individual(s) involved have the aptitude and motivation need to learn to do the job better, and (3) supervisors and peers are supportive of the desired behaviors

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There is greater stability, flexibility, and capacity for growth in an organization. Training contributes to employee stability in at least two ways. Employees become efficient after undergoing training. Efficient employees contribute to the growth of the organization. Growth renders stability to the workforce. Further, trained employees tend to stay with the organization. They seldom leave the company. Training makes the employees versatile in operations. All rounders can be transferred to any job. Flexibility is therefore ensured. Growth indicates prosperity, which is reflected in increased profits from year to year. Who else but well-trained employees can contribute to the prosperity of an enterprise?

Accidents, scrap and damage to machinery and equipment can be avoided or minimized through training. Even dissatisfaction, complaints, absenteeism, and turnover can be reduced if employees are trained well.

Future needs of employees will be met through training and development programmes. Organizations take fresh diploma holders or graduates as apprentices or management trainees. They are absorbed after course completion. Training serves as an effective source of recruitment. Training is an investment in HR with a promise of better returns in future.

A company’s training and development pays dividends to the employee and the organization. Though no single training programme yields all the benefits, the organization which devotes itself to training and development enhances its HR capabilities and strengthens its competitive edge. At the same time, the employee’s personal and career goals are furthered, generally adding to his or her abilities and value to the employer. Ultimately, the objectives of the HR department are also furthered.

Reasons for managers having poor views of training

There are many impediments which can make a training programme ineffective. Following are the major hindrances:

Management Commitment is Lacking and Uneven

Most companies do not spend money on training. Those that do, tend to concentrate on managers, technicians and professionals. The rank-and-file workers are ignored. This must change, for, as a result of rapid technological change, combined with new approaches to organizational design and production management, workers are required to learn three types of new skills: (i) the ability to use technology, (ii) the ability to maintain it, and (ill) the ability to diagnose system problems. In an increasingly competitive environment, the ability to implement rapid changes in products and technologies is often essential for economic viability

Aggregate Spending on Training is Inadequate

Companies spend minuscule proportions of their revenues on training. Worse still, budget allocation to training is the first item to be cut when a company faces a financial crunch.

Educational Institutions Award Degrees but Graduates Lack Skills

This is the reason why business must spend vast sums of money to train workers in basic skills. Organizations also need to train employees in multiple skills. Managers, particularly at the middle level, need to be retrained in team-playing skills, entrepreneurship skills, leadership skills and customer-orientation skills.

Large-scale Poaching of Trained Workers

Trained workforce is in great demand. Unlike Germany, where local business groups pressure companies not to poach on another company’s employees, there is no such system in our country. Companies in our country, however, insist on employees to sign ‘bonds of tenure’ before sending them for training, particularly before deputing them to undergo training in foreign countries. Such bonds are not effective as the employees or the poachers are prepared to pay the stipulated amounts as compensation when the bonds are breached.

No Help to Workers

Displaced because of Downsizing Organizations are downsizing and de-layering in order to trim their workforces. The government should set apart certain fund from the National Renewal Fund for the purpose of retraining and rehabilitating displaced workers.

Recommendations

The last stage in the training and development process is the evaluation of results. Since huge sums of money are spent on training and development, how far the programme has been useful must be judged/determined. Evaluation helps determine the results of the training and development programme. In practice, however, organizations either overlook or lack facilities for evaluation.

Need for Evaluation: The main objective of evaluating the training programmes is to determine if they are accomplishing specific training objectives that are, correcting performance deficiencies. A second reason for evaluation is to ensure that any changes in trainee capabilities are due to the training programme and not due to any other conditions. Training programmes should be evaluated to determine their cost effectiveness. Evaluation is useful to explain programme failure, should finally, credibility of training and development is greatly enhanced when it is proved that the organization has benefited tangibly from it.

Principles of Evaluation: Evaluation of the training programme must be based on the principles:

Evaluation specialist must be clear about the goals and purposes of evaluation.

Evaluation must be continuous.

Evaluation must be specific.

Evaluation must provide the means and focus for trainers to be able to appraise themselves, their practices, and their products.

Evaluation must be based on objective methods and standards.

Realistic target dates must be set for each phase of the evaluation process. A sense of urgency must be developed, but deadlines that are unreasonably high will result in poor evaluation

Criteria for Evaluation: The last column in Fig. 9.1 contains a number of potential goals

Training validity: Did the trainees learn during training?

Transfer validity: What has been learnt in training, has it been transferred on the job enhanced performance in the work organization?

Intra-organizational validity: Is performance of the new group of trainees, for which the training programme was developed, consistent with the performance of the original training group?

Inter-organizational validity: Can a training programme validated in one organization be used successfully in another organization?

These questions often result in different evaluation techniques.

Techniques of Evaluation: Several techniques of evaluation are being used in organization may be stated that the usefulness of the methods is inversely proportional to the ease with which evaluation can be done.

One approach towards evaluation is to use experimental and control groups. Each group is randomly selected, one to receive training (experimental) and the other not to receive training (control). The random selection helps to assure the formation of groups quite similar to each other. Measures are taken of the relevant indicators of success (e.g. words typed per minute, quality pieces produced per hour, wires attached per minute) before and after training for both groups. If the gains demonstrated by the experimental groups are better than those by the control group, the training programme is labeled as successful.

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Another method of training evaluation involves longitudinal or time-series analysis. Measures are taken before the programme begins and are continued during and after the programme is completed. These results are plotted on a graph to determine whether changes have occurred and remain as a result of the training effort. To further validate that change has occurred as a result of training and not due to some other variable, a control group may be included.

One simple method of evaluation is to send a questionnaire to the trainees after the completion the programme to obtain their opinions about the programmes worth. Their opinions could through interviews. A variation of this method is to measure the knowledge and/or skills that employee possess at the commencement and completion of a training. If the measurement reveals that the results after training are satisfactory, then the training may be taken as successful.