Principles and Challenges of HRD – Human Resource Development department

Table of Contents:-

• Challenges of HRD
• Principles of HRD 

Challenges of HRD

The Human Resource Development department is a dynamic and multifaceted field that holds immense promise but presents various challenges of HRD, including globalization, competition, skill gaps, mismatches, and more. These challenges arise because the HRD is not an isolated function; it is linked with every other department within an organisation whose end purpose is business success. Business involves profits and losses, risks and competition. 

The major challenges faced by HRD can be listed as follows:

1) Ever-Changing Manpower Demographics

An HRD department must match steps with changing workforce demographics. Nowadays, the pace of businesses all over the globe is changing very fast. As newer specialisations emerge, the workforce is becoming more diverse regarding skills, qualifications, and, in today’s times, ethnicity. Intra-country and inter-country migration of the workforce are very common. Employees from diverse backgrounds carry with them their baggage of cultural and moral values and working systems. HRD needs to cope with this diversity. Blending this diversity into a coherent, seatless entity is challenging.

2) Global Competition

 With the advent of scientific innovations like the internet and mobile technology, along with relaxed laws for inter-country business, the world has virtually become a smaller place. It has made global business competition an important challenge to face. With little control over the global prices of commodities, human resources has become a decisive factor. 

The challenge before HRD is to change, upgrade and develop the workforce according to the changing needs of the business. The business environment has become more complex and highly predictable. It has required HRD departments to develop novel training methods, systems and strategies to update employees’ skills and knowledge, along with enhancing their preparedness to adjust to newer, sometimes unpredictable circumstances.

3) Keeping Pace with Advancement

With science advancing rapidly, newer technology and processes are available, making older working methods obsolete. For an organisation to maintain pace in this competitive scenario, its HRD department needs to work fast to introduce training and development programmes for employees to acquire newer skills that match newer technology and processes. Organisations that cannot do this have any option but to be left behind in the business race,

4) Motivating Employees for Lifelong Learning

Organisations provide generalised training. Such training programmes cannot meet the training requirements of individual employees. With ever-changing workplace requirements, an employee needs to be responsible for sharpening his skills, expertise and knowledge at every step; this makes his learning a lifelong process. It is not an easy task. The HRD department should take up the challenge of motivating employees to analyse their individual needs for training and take steps to fulfil them.

5) Awareness of Customer Demands

Although the end product results from the efforts of all departments and employees, all employees are not aware of customers’ demands regarding the products. To make every employee aware of the market demand, the HRD department should facilitate meetings between production, quality control, design and other relevant departments. 

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6) Entry of Multinational Companies (MNCs)

In a global business environment, mergers and takeovers by MNCs are very common. This results in a blend of diverse cultures and skills. HRD should take up the challenge to see that the skill gap between employees is not so big as to cause employee conflicts. Weaker employees need to be trained by the employer or should self-train themselves.

7) Marriage and Double-Income Families

In today’s environment of gender equality, there are numerous opportunities for women to make their mark in the workplace. Often, family pressures on women’s marriage compel them to resign. The vacancy created during pregnancy is another challenge for HRD. In cases where both husband and wife are pursuing their careers, HRD managers need to be flexible while formulating policies for such individuals. 

8) Product-Related Challenges

Often, market conditions require a reduction in selling price without increasing manufacturing costs in the phase of stiff competition from substitute products or imported products or due to price wars in the local market. HR managers must find and recruit efficient candidates at lower costs.

Principles of HRD 

The following are the main principles of HRD:

1) Principle of Enhancement of Organisational Capability: First and foremost, human resource development involves the enhancement of inherent organisational capability. Every organisation should possess inherent capabilities to maintain sound intra-organisational health, which means relationships, an organisational culture with justice at its core, and people working harmoniously towards achieving organisational goals. Diagnosing problems as they arise, solving them in the healthy working minimum possible time, and well-supported systems are important aspects of organisational capacity. 

2) Principle of Potential Optimisation: Various HRD sub-systems should help employees optimise their working potential to deliver the best results.

3) Principle of Facilitating Maximum Autonomy: HRD systems should facilitate maximum autonomy to go hand-in-hand with responsible behaviour. The more responsible an individual is, the more suitable he is to act independently. 

4) Principle of Effective Delegation: To maximise efficiency, HRD systems should ensure delegation of work whenever feasible, thus enabling a balanced distribution of workload and authority. 

5) Principle of Participative Decision-Making: This is an important principle of HRD as the maximum possible participation of employees in decision-making ensures that individual inputs contribute to achieving the best results. 

6) Principle of Efficient Management of Transition: HRD systems should strive to ensure a smooth transition from existing to new organisational cultures.

7) Principle of Periodic Review: HRD systems should be subjected to periodic review, and changes in policies and functions should be made as and when required.

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