HRM Basics: HRM Role on Training and Development

We have always thought that educational qualification suffice to make an employee effective, efficient, and competitive. Well –we thought wrong. Education is not a sufficient index or metrics to gauge employee’s competence. While education provides the basic cognitive skills to prepare one for work, it is not necessarily sufficient to predict his or her behavior in the workplace. It takes more than that.

Skills and knowledge, or competency (more appropriately) has to be developed. This can only happen when the HRM (Human Resource Management) Department takes it mandate of developing people to become competitive. Thus training initiative is imperative.

Training is costly, as my colleague from the Finance Department would immediately object. Honestly, it is. That is when a organization does not have a concrete training policy and tangible training goals that can justify investments or increase profits. A training policy defines the obligations of the employees after he/she completed a training program. And this obligation should move towards fulfilling the set goals for the training. Hence for example, if employee A was given a week training on “Effective Widget Making” whose goal is to increase his productivity by 50% and lessen his errors by 90%, then by all means these expectations are made clear to him/her.

One the one hand, training can be costly when goals or expectations are not met. On the other hand, when these are met or even exceeded, the organization reaps its long term benefits. Because when employees competencies improve, the organization gains an increase in corporate competitiveness, and in return an increase in profitability.

Training programs must be initiated by the HRM department. These must be carefully planned, executed utilizing the best possible resources, i.e., instructors or training facilitators, venues, etc. The focus must not only delve on competencies but on values and attitudes as well. For in the end, training is actually a change management initiative whose aims is to develop employees potentials, holistically, so that they add more vale to the organization and the community where they belong.

This a sensitive role for the HRM professional, and is a tough one. After all, HRM is still about not only managing, but developing human resource.