The Significance of Human Resource Management (HRM)
Human Resource Management is a strategized approach of an organization’s management on its valued assets. HRM plays an important role in every organization. HRM role is to identify the needs of an employee and to ensure that every employee’s well-being is taken care of. Human resource system was basically devised for the management of employees in an organization. It covers several aspects like hiring, firing, motivation, and training of employees (Breaugh, 2017).
An essential element of a human resource management and for the success of an organization is its employees. A skilled employee who has gone through proper training and development is much more efficient than the others. In order to maintain the capabilities of a workforce, it is important for an organization to strategize and provide the necessary training to its employees. Only a trained workforce is flexible enough to tackle the new challenges coming towards the organization. Besides, the potential of survival of an organization in such a competitive environment it is dependent on the quality of the trained staff an organization has. Imparting a quality training program is the key function which is ensured by Human Resource Management (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014).
Training is the refinement of one’s behavior through educating and learning. The motive of providing training to employees is for the betterment of their performance and to handle thing effectively in a different way which also helps them in getting job satisfaction. Training triggers the key areas like the skills, abilities, and knowledge which are essential qualities that should be enhanced in order to get more efficient towards the work. It is an established fact that in order to get the excellent results, it is important for employees to understand their job which can only be achieved through proper training (Deery & Jago, 2015).
Training practices not only improve the efficiency of employees but it also helps business to grow and provide a competitive advantage. Trained employees are able to provide better customer service as they are well conversant with the job knowledge and skills required in order to accomplish a task. Training also helps the employees in getting competent with new technologies, improving communication with people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and being a team player (Haff & Triplett, 2015).
Skill training is an important aspect which every employee look forward too. Skill training is divided into two categories which are hard and soft skills. Hard skills comprise of administrative or technical procedures prevalent in the organization whereas soft skills are the communication and behavioral skills exhibited by the employees. Both these skills are important but it’s easy to impart and train an employee for hard skills than it is for soft skill. Soft skills are related to individual development which is very difficult to define. The need of these skills may vary from organization’s process as some business may give emphasis to hard skill and some may prefer soft skills like in Sales process. It is important to develop these skills under an experienced guide and practice more because only a skilled employee in an organization has the opportunity to make its mark (Serrat, 2017).
Importance of Employee Training and Development
Development is basically providing an opportunity of learning to employees so that they can grow. From an organizational point of view, development is helping the people to excel in their careers. It is a much broader aspect than training. It helps in increasing the capability as an employee and accelerates their performance.
Through proper training and development policies, the bottlenecks and unproductive areas can be minimized. There is a significant difference between training and development. On one hand, training imparts knowledge and skills in an employee so that s/he can perform the necessary job role effectively while on the other hand, development is a continuous expansion of knowledge and skills. Through training, companies focus on short-term goal while development is a long-term player which provides more exposure (George, 2015).
Furthermore, training also imparts a level of flexibility among the employees. Employees who have been trained to be functional for all departmental process can be posted to whichever job as per the need. It increases the adaptability of the workforce. It is the duty of an HR to strategize the training sessions for the employees which may assist the business to achieve organizational success. Employees who are more adaptable to the change are given more preference as they are the one who can tackle any kind of problems coming in their way. They are the ones who can resolve any situation effectively as they have been trained in various domains. It becomes important for an organization to make their employees train to be an all-rounder in all fields (Marler & Fisher, 2013).
Strengthening the bond between the employer and the employee is the strategic role a human resource manager plays. Not only this, the HR manager also assists in formulating the strategies related to workforce and make changes in the functionality of a process so as to meets the organizational objectives. Employee training is one of the areas where HR focuses to devise strategies. By providing the apt training and development, HRM ensures that the employees are being prepared for future positions relevant to the company. Training and development also motivate employees and is a key factor in employee retention as well (Citp & Ballaro, 2014).
It is often evident that there are certain situations where there is a conflict between the employee-employer relationships. During such kind of situations, the ethical and legal concepts of HRM should ensure that there is no such contradiction prevailing among the people. It should be ensured that the legal and ethical aspects such as the term period of training and development are being followed, every employee is being treated equally during the training period, and every employee is having equal opportunity to grow. There is should be no discrimination on the grounds of race, religion or gender. The T&D plan is being followed keeping in mind all the legal norms which may not question the law laid down by the government. It is to be ensured that all the norms, rules and regulation comply with the mentioned guidelines. Running parallel to the prescribed guidelines also ensures the effectiveness of employee’s performance which in turn results in increased productivity of the organization (Rees & Smith, 2017).
Types of Employee Training
The main aims and objectives behind the importance of training and development are the development of employees in context to the overall performance of an organization. T&D also helps in analyzing how exactly and in which area training can improve the skills of the workforce. It helps in identifying the issues related to training and formulates policies which can be used to minimize the issues. It also assesses the impact of training and development scheme on the workforce satisfaction. All these factors can be taken into consideration in strategies policies according to the need.
For the survival of an organization in this competitive and changing environment, it is a critical need of the business to fulfill the demand of its customers and maintain the customer satisfaction level. Due to the globalization phenomenon, the demand for excellent services has become the prime need and all the organization strives to abide by the same, as the business performance largely depends on it. All these necessities can only be satisfied when an employee is trained and motivated. It helps in providing services and products with utmost quality. Due to increase in competition of jobs and demand for skilled employees, the training and development process has become crucial for the business to survive in the competitive environment (Gooderham, Morley, Parry & Stavrou, 2015).
The capital of an organization is its trained and skilled employees. Human Resource Management ensures that the employees of an organization are effectively engaged in training and development programs. Also, that the workforce is upgraded from time to time. The focus should be given to both training and development to ensure that the team is able to perform to the best of their abilities. The importance should be given to competency-based training as it has become an inevitable part of every business process. In competence-based training, the most important role is of the trainer as he is responsible for molding the employees as per the organization’s process (Storey, 2014).
Thus, it can be established that the main aim of organizational training and development is to enhance the skills of employees which in turn raises the bar of the organization and provides a competitive edge. There is a huge demand for employees who are skilled or willing to develop skills, as these employees help in growth of the company. For a company who has its presence across the globe, it is important to perform and fulfill the expectations of every customer and provide them with the topmost service possible. This is where the trained and developed employees help the companies in achieving their targets. This T&D always assures the growth of an employee not only in a short-term i.e. for the current job but also for a long-term growth i.e. in upcoming jobs.
References
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Gooderham, P. N., Morley, M. J., Parry, E., & Stavrou, E. (2015). National and firm-level drivers of the devolution of HRM decision making to line managers. Journal of International Business Studies, 46(6), 715-723.
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Rees, G., & Smith, P. (Eds.). (2017). Strategic human resource management: An international perspective. Sage.
Serrat, O. (2017). Building a learning organization. In Knowledge solutions (pp. 57-67). Springer Singapore.
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