Human resource development: a concise introduction
Ronan Carberry & Christine Cross
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, Chapter 1 – Introduction to HRD
What is HRD?
Human capital theory (Shultz): organizations receive economic value from their employees’
knowledge, skills, competences and experience and human capital can be increased by training and
education.
The term human resource development (HRD) is first originated in 1964 in term of the human capital
theory.
There is not one definition of HRD but Hamlin and Stewart (2011) identified four core purposes for
the definition of HRD:
Improving individual or group effectiveness and performance
Improving organizational effectiveness and performance
Developing knowledge, skills and competencies
Enhancing human potential and personal growth.
The term HRD is rarely used in organizational settings, with most organizations labelling HRD-
activities: Learning and development, Training and development or employee development.
There are a number of activities that envelop HRD:
Training and development
Education and training
Technical training
Personal development
Career development
Leadership development
Management development
Performance improvement
Coaching
Talent management
Wat are the key differences between training, development, learning
and education?
Competencies: competence is the practical application (toepassing) of knowledge, skills, attitudes
(KSA’s), motivation, values, beliefs, cognitive style and personality that enables an individuals to work
effectively and autonomously in a clearly defined context.
Knowledge: specific information of a task, job or role that the learner should acquire.
Skills: the dimension of performance that the learner should be able to demonstrate.
Attitudes: beliefs and values that the learner should espouse (omhelzen) and put into
practice and sustain.
Training: the process of acquiring knowledge, skills and attitudes required to perform an
organizational role effectively.
Training prepares you for the requirements of a specific job and is very narrow in focus, requiring a
short time to acquire and immediate application.
Training needs are generally determined by organizations to bring about an instant improvement in
job performance and training tends to take place in the workplace.
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,Development: An ongoing acquisition of skills and knowledge aimed at long-term career growth
rather than immediate performance.
Training is for a specific job and development is concerned with the growth of the person and is not
related to a specific job.
Development can be determined by the individual or the organization.
Education: any experience that has effect on the way we think, feel or act.
Education is completed in a much longer timeframe than training.
Training focuses on work, education on the whole person and development is often a mix of training
and education.
Learning: the act of acquiring knowledge or skill.
Lifelong learning: the ongoing voluntary, and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge for either
personal or professional reasons.
Education, training and development, and learning are interlinked and interdependent, rather than
separate and distinct from one another.
What is the value of HRD individuals, organizations and society?
Value of HRD for individuals:
To fulfil potential and develop a sense of identity
To meet the demands of change
To change behaviours and enhance other behaviours
To enhance self-worth/self-esteem and self-efficacy
To enhance employability and expertise
To remain employable
To facilitate learning and change
To increase earning potential and secure a better job
Value of HRD for organizations:
To facilitate organizational learning, the achievement of strategy and organizational change
To enhance organizational performance, increase competiveness and profitability
To reinforce and manage the culture of the organization
To encourage and facilitate compliance with external regulatory requirements
To align individual behaviour with that required by the organization
To facilitate dissemination (verspreiding), diffusion and sharing of knowledge
To facilitate the motivation and retention of employees
To attract employees to the organization and be an employer of choice
To manage the psychological contract
To manage talented employees
To allow organizations to adapt to change
Value of HRD for society:
To contribute to the economic growth of a nation through the development of human capital
To enhance the culture of a country
To build communities and make society more cohesive
To enhance the wellbeing of people in society
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, What is the context of HRD?
There are a number of contextual factors that impact upon the design, delivery and extent of HRD
activities undertaken by organizations and individuals.
Economic factors
The Global Financial Crisis (GFC). While 20 th-century organizations were characterized by hierarchical
organization structures with numerous layers of bureaucracy, 21th-century organizations are flatter
and resemble a network that links partners, employees, external contractors, suppliers and
customers in various relationships.
Organizations that spent less time training employees were more likely to use non-standard workers,
such as agency or temporary workers. By not giving job-specific training opportunities to these
employees, organizations assign the workers simpler tasks, which gives them little chance to enhance
or develop their skills on the job.
When organizations choose to invest in HRD activities, they tend to focus on two groups of
employees:
Those whose skills are considered valuable or essential to achieve an organization’s strategic
goals or objectives
Workers who have longer-term relationships with their employers.
Part-time workers: less than 35 hours a week.
A lot of employees are not part-time or full-time workers but fall outside the regular categorization.
Workers are coming from an increasingly fragmented supply of labour:
Professional employee organizations (PEOs) are administrative organizations that engage in a
contractual relationship with their client organizations.
Leased employees are employed by an agency, working alongside regular employees for the
organization that controls the work to be carried out, agency retains control over
recruitment and selection, compensation and termination.
Independent contractors work for themselves and are not employees of an organization.
They are employed to carry out specific work by an organization, but how the work is done is
up to the contractor.
Vendor on premises is an arrangement whereby an organization contract with a vendor
(verkoper) to perform work.
Agency temporary workers, whereby an agency provides workers to an organization for
short-term assignments.
Labour Market Intermediaries (LMIs): groups that stand between the individual worker and the
organization that needs work done, and expand it to include social media sites, executive search
firms and online job boards.
These firms blurs the boundaries where the responsibilities lie.
LMI workers make the jobs of an organization’s normal employees more demanding because they
typically have less firm-specific knowledge, receive little training and orientation from the client and
therefore need more help and time from regular employees.
Technology
Communities of practice (CoPs): a group of individuals who share a common interest in a topic, and
who deepen their knowledge of it through ongoing interaction and relationship building in their
group.
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