Managing Human Resource Development Programs

Current Issues and Evolving Trends

Claretha Hughes, Marilyn Byrd

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781137492173
• eBook ISBN: 9781137492197
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

Managing Human Resource Development Programs makes the critical connection between HR development and the larger system of HR management. This book offers a framework for developing HR programs that are customizable to the needs of the organization.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction to Employment Relations Management

Learning Objectives

On completion of this chapter you should be able to:

• Define employee relations.

• Describe ways that good employee relations benefit HRD professionals.

• Recognize ways HRD professionals build positive relationships with all stakeholders.

• Analyze critical issues in HRD.

The first step in managing human resource development (HRD) programs within organizations is to clearly understand the business needs of the organization (Clardy 2008; Divyaranjani and Rajasekar 2014). This may appear to be a simple concept, but many HRD professionals fail to grasp this urgent necessity. It is especially essential as organizations within the global economy undergo rapid change, continuously. It is impossible to develop, implement, and maintain HRD programs that do not align with the business needs of organizations. HRD professionals have consistently lamented that HRD is the area where the first cuts are made when an organization downsizes and struggle to understand why this consistently occurs (Holton 2002). This book seeks to help HRD professionals understand why they are perceived to be easily expendable and provide potential solutions for their retention, especially during economic downturns.

Employment Relations

Employment relations concerns itself with the relationship between the management and employees in the workplace (Armstrong 2014; Kalleberg 2000; Kersley 2006). Employment relation is not limited to full-time employees but also includes temporary, part-time, and contract employees. To manage HRD programs within organizations, HRD professionals must understand all aspects of business needs. Understanding business needs of the organizations includes not only knowing what products or services the organization provides but also knowing how to relate to all employees and stakeholders of the organization. Essential to the success of HRD professionals is to understand the importance of employee relations management and the legal and ethical implications of developing employees within organizations. HRD professionals must understand for whom they are working and why. They are working for the organization and may be aware of their location within the traditional organizational chart, but they must also understand that they are working for all employees and stakeholders to assist the organization as it seeks to maintain and enhance its competitive advantage within the global marketplace. Today’s organizations are moving to a business model that recognizes employees as being its most important asset (Hlupic 2014; Porter and Kramer 2011). As the most important assets, employees are capable of providing a competitive advantage; therefore, how people are developed and managed is essential to maximize the business model (Hughes 2012). For most organizations, their business model does not work at all or not work well unless they are actively developing their people resources to achieve the goals.

Employees are critical to the success of the organization, and the relationships that are established between and among employees drive the extent to which the organization meets its business needs. HRD professionals usually interact with all employees while providing training and development, career development, and organization development initiatives to the organization. Within all of these initiatives, HRD professionals must recognize the extent to which employee relations matter. HRD professionals must understand the value of all employees to the organization and how essential it is to build relationships with employees from the HRD function. HRD professionals typically work with all employees across the organization to assist with organization productivity improvement (Combs, Liu, Hall, and Ketchen 2006; Swanson 2007). Understanding the employee is essential before introducing them to a new HRD program that needs to be managed.

Case to Consider

Production needs have increased over 30 percent with the onset of the cyclical increase in sales for XYZ organization. The HRD department has been asked to assist with training and development during the on-boarding of 130 new, temporary, contract, and part-time employees across the organization. They have two weeks to accomplish this task. Typical departments that are on-boarding these employees include the call center, the quality control department, the shipping and receiving department, and several production lines producing the product. Describe some first steps that should occur within the HRD department to begin establishing employment relations with these employees. Use the problem analysis activity questions below to begin analyzing this case.

Problem Analysis Activity

1. What is the problem?

2. Do you have personal involvement with the problem; if so, what is your personal involvement with the problem?

3. To what extent do you have control over the situation or specific problem?

4. Based on your problem analysis, what are your explanations and/or assumptions regarding the cause(s) of the problem?

5. Isolate your assumptions from facts.

6. Specifically outline and document: In what practical ways will the situation improve if the problem is resolved? How will your organization benefit? How will the employees benefit?

7. What are the first two or three things you must do to begin your study of the problem and its resolution?

8. How do you plan to go about gathering information related to the problem and its resolution? Be specific.

Employee Engagement

Kahn (1990) defined engagement as “the harnessing of organizational members’ selves to their work role” (693) and expressed a view focused on the personal engagement of organizational members employing and expressing themselves on physical, cognitive, and emotional levels during their job functions. Employee engagement relates to job satisfaction, employees’ work-related passion, and organizational commitment (Federman 2009; Leiter and Bakker 2010; Macey and Schneider 2008; Zigarmi, Nimon, Houson, Witt, and Diehl 2009).

When employees are not engaged, employees have a tendency to not provide peak performance and/or they may leave the organization. The initial on-boarding investments made by organizations to place an employee in a job should be enough to inspire efforts to engage with and retain employees. For best results, high levels of employee engagement are essential with all employees despite differences among employees. Jones and Harter (2005) found that at low levels of engagement, members of different-race dyads report a lower tendency to remain with their organization for at least one year than members of same-race dyads, and at high levels of engagement, intent to remain was greater for members of different-race dyads. Badal and Harter (2013) revealed a business unit-level financial benefit to organizations that have strong employee engagement.

The suggested topic for HRD certification “Handling Employee Performance Problems—When a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) Is Not Enough,” noted in the preface, is interesting; however, performance management is considered to be a function of human resource management (HRM), not HRD. This could be a point for increased interaction between HRM and HRD. Framing this in terms of employee engagement strategies is more in line with HRD.

Both HRD and HRM need to be actively engaged with employees, but for different purposes. HRD needs employee engagement to successfully provide training and development, career development, and organization development services. These services intertwine with employee performance and their loyalty to the organization. If the employee chose to work for the organization with the expectation of receiving these services, this level of loyalty from organization leaders must be met. Loyalty between employees and management in employee engagement is critical.

Employee engagement is also necessary to further critical thinking, to inspire a willingness to accept change and collaborate with others, to build interpersonal relationship skills, and for teamwork. It is also central to achieving goals when introducing new technology and developing future managers and leaders within the organization. Employees must feel engaged if there is a desire from organization leaders for some employees to assume management responsibility.

Employee engagement can reduce turnover and inspire employees to allow themselves to be better managed (Mayo 1945; Melé 2003). Personal individual development plans or IDPs for all employees is a positive step toward employee engagement. IDPs are tied to training plans within the company and allow for short-term and long-term assessment of employee development. IDPs allow for the establishment of specific milestones that are measurable for each individual employee. These plans should not be performance related and should allow for personal accountability of employees and management accountability for employee development.

Some organizations have skill sets that are imperative to consistency and success of the organization. Without employees being engaged in developing the required skill sets, the organization cannot expect to succeed. In some instances, organizations have leadership models that they use to teach each employee who desires a leadership position the same type of leadership principles that are valued within the organization. The principles are not enough by themselves to produce effective leaders; therefore, leadership curricula are needed for all groups at multiple levels to show potential leaders how leadership applies to their jobs and what in their specific jobs requires leadership.

The use of competency models can also be of assistance when developing employees (Rothwell 2002). Many organizations do not have time to develop the standards associated with certain competencies, so they choose to use what is available within the marketplace. HRD professionals must be adept and adapt these standards to the needs of their organizations as applicable. Modifying available resources can be a huge, cost-saving benefit to the organization. Not all organizations are able to invest substantially in their needed HRD activities. They depend on HRD professionals to have the ability to leverage current resources to the greatest extent possible.

To manage employee engagement in IDPs, many organizations use training or learning management systems that require substantial investment. HRD professionals must make the case for these systems to be purchased, implemented, and maintained within their organizations. Thus, they must engage with employees to ensure accuracy of content and development activities. Maintaining this information requires extensive time and effort. They can also use these systems to leverage training across multiple locations within an organization. Using technology to develop employee skills through e-learning is prevalent today and is ever increasing. Organizations typically use e-learning to supplement what they cannot or find not feasible to construct in-house. Employee engagement with technology must be utilized and controlled. Employees must use the technology in ways that benefit their development and avoid excessive personal use of technology. Most systems are housed on an intranet to avoid this concern, but in places where an intranet is not available, personal Internet use must be controlled.

Critical Issues in Employee Relations

Employee relations have many issues that impact their success within organizations. These issues are essential to HRD professionals because they often interact with all organization employees at some point. During on-boarding, they provide annual and required training. They also provide registration services for developmental activities in which employees participate throughout their employment. They may also assist with exit interviews as needed. Thus, their employee relations skills must be exceptional. Some of the critical issues that are occurring within employee relations are diversity and inclusion, ethical and legal issues, career development and succession planning, and critical thinking.

Understanding how the HRD professional’s role is impacted by these critical issues is necessary due to rapid changes that occur within the global workplace. Marquardt and Mtshontshi (2003) noted that the development of human resources in the twenty-first century takes place in a world dominated by eight significant forces: globalization, technology, radical restructuring and reengineering of the world of work, increased customer power and demands, emergence of knowledge and learning as the organization’s most valuable assets, changing roles and expectations of workers, biotechnology, and ever more rapid change and chaos.

Organizations experience natural resistance to change from customers: customers who want to believe that they are the organization’s only customers, and are hesitant to embrace new ideas. HRD professionals are tasked to assist their organizations to answer the question: How do you sell new concepts to customers? They are tasked to assist their organizations with determining categories of values for customer support as follows:

1. Best practices should provide a benchmark of business lost or business opportunity.

2. Every organization should provide an assessment of where the organization is compared to others within their area.

3. Career growth opportunities for individuals.

4. Communication skills from making professional presentations.

5. Interpersonal skill development.

6. Technical skill development.

The eight identified environmental forces must be managed by employees who are diverse within inclusive organizational environments. HRD professionals must manage the ethical and legal issues that arise in the context of the forces and provide career development and succession planning resources to leaders and employees that will enhance the organization growth and success. They must also address critical thinking issues for all employees to enhance decision-making and problem-solving issues within organizations.

Diversity and Inclusion

The globalization of the workforce requires that HRD professionals have the emotional, intellectual, cultural, and diversity intelligences needed to relate to each employee within the organization (Hughes 2015). HRD professionals cannot afford to not develop any employee to the fullest extent possible as organizations seek to leverage all of their human resources to remain competitive. The only option for inclusion should be that all employees are needed for the organization to success. Everyone is different, and those differences must be valued so that each employee can function at optimum levels of performance.

The workplace is already diverse in the sense that there are different types of employees from different places performing different job responsibilities. The key for HRD professionals is to recognize this and focus on including every employee in all efforts to enhance organizational competitive advantage. Hughes (2012) introduced the term inter-personnel diversity so as to focus on the ways that individuals differ in their personal characteristics and within the context of the employees’ five values (location, use, maintenance, modification, and time) within the workplace.

Inclusion is influenced by the power of employees and structure inside organizations, which may be derived from the central position of individuals (Brass and Burkhardt 1993; Burkhardt and Brass 1990). Central position can be interpreted as the value of an employee’s location in the organization. Employees should be valued for the diversity that they bring to the organization and should not be hindered by lack of inclusion in power positions. Employees’ actual and perceived power within organizations has been shown to be based upon their strategic placem...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction to Employment Relations Management
• 2. HRD Theory and Philosophy
• 3. The Role of HRD in Organizations
• 4. Learning in Organizations
• 5. Strategic HRD
• 6. HRD Quality Management
• 7. Career and Performance Management
• 8. Managing Diversity Training Programs
• 9. Negotiation Skills and the HRD Professionals
• 10. Current Issues and Evolving Trends
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index