Businesses
are investing heavily in development of Human Capital. It has become imperative
for businesses small and big, to keep abreast with technological advances and
have an effective Human Resource Development strategy. The challenge is to
identify, design and implement effective Human capital development strategies
and then to retain trained personnel. As a Human capital development expert it
requires a great understanding of processes involved in effective development
of the workforce at every level. The HRD strategies need to be worked out such
that they are win-win situations for the workforce and the organization. As a
Human Resource Development strategist great care needs to be taken to sync the
changing personal and professional goals of the workforce with that of the
organization. Businesses need to pay special attention to the development of
the workforce to attain sustainability and a competitive advantage.
The four
stage framework for Human Resource Development is; Need Assessment, Program design,
Program implementation and Evaluation. This should address training and
development needs of the employee, career development needs and lasting
organizational development needs. Any organization would require an ongoing
process of reevaluation and reinventing itself to sustain in a globalized and competitive
environment. Here is how the four stages
would work in a generic sense. Need assessment would include the process of
assessing needs and then prioritizing them. The design stage would include, defining
objectives, develop lesson plans, develop and /or acquire training material,
select leaders or trainers, select methods of implementation and finally
schedule and implement the program. Stage three is implementation of the
intervention. At this stage you may want to loop back to reassessing the
success and needs redesigning the program and implementing the improvements.
Finally the program would go through an evaluation process. The evaluation
process would ideally include a selection of the evaluation criteria, the
conduction of the process of evaluation and finally to interpret the results.
The evaluation of the results would become an important input to the
reassessment of following programs.
Let us
look at the case of the airline industry in the country, which has changed
significantly in the recent past. With the advent of newer, larger, safer and
more sophisticated aircraft like the Airbus A380 there is need to realign the
operations and training of the pilots, crew and the ground staff with the way
operations have changed due to larger capacity of the aircraft. The airlines
need to take all necessary steps to prepare themselves in alignment with the
newer more sophisticated technology at reduced costs and providing a better
experience to every guest. We could apply the four stage framework in this
context.
The
airlines can very well assess the needs of training the pilots, crew and the
ground staff in line with the changed needs of the operations at every level.
The pilots need to be trained in line with the more sophisticated
instrumentation and handling of the larger technologically different aircraft.
The crew and ground staff need to be trained to handle more number of fliers
and more baggage in every flight. The needs in this case will have to be
assessed for each subgroup of the workforce. The needs and training of the
pilots will be different from that of the crew where the needs and requirements
will be different from that of the ground staff.
Once the
needs of each group and sub-group are assessed, they need to be prioritized. At
the design stage the objectives of each training category would have to be set,
training material created and trainers identifies and a suitable mode of
delivery would need to be identified. The training of pilots may require for
instance the use of simulators, classroom training and web based training. The
training needs for the flight crew would require mockups of the aircraft, along
with classroom training and would be different and unique from the training of
the ground staff. Finally detailed schedule of implementation would be drawn to
carry out the programs.
Once the
schedule of implementation is in place the programs would be implemented. It
would be imperative at this stage to assess that the objectives of the training
are being met and if required the programs should be reworked to keep them in
line with the objectives of the airline’s needs and strategy. For instance if
the training has been designed on an older version of the aircraft and the
design from the pilots’ or crew has now changed suitable changes to say the
simulator design or the aircraft mockups would need to be carried out to keep
the training in line with the changed environment.
While the
training programs have been implemented the evaluation stage needs to begin. We
can never ignore the evaluation process with proper systems of feedback in
place from the trainers and trainees, to make sure that the objectives are
being met. The evaluation stage is important for assessing that the training is
progressing in line with the objectives of the management. Until the process
has stabilized there is need for evaluation, reassessment and redesigning or
“tweaking” the program to better meet the needs of the organization. Therefore
it becomes an ongoing loop from evaluation going back to assessment, design,
implementation and evaluation. This becomes even more important where there is
fierce competition and success depends on perceptions of professionalism among
other things.
Such
processes prepare the organization and the workforce to better face the
challenges of the fast changing business environment; there are a few
challenges however, both internal and external. In the airline industry as in
many other, attrition is a big challenge. This causes leakages of skilled
resources. On the other hand the need for training is very high due to the
rapidly changing technological environment, to maintain a competitive edge.
Thus it is imperative to keep in mind the Rate of Return, when devising any
training budget. In the airline industry the Rate of Return is greatly reduced
due to the high employee turnover. Thus it is equally important to implement an
employee retention program to reduce employee turnover. Remuneration and fringe
benefits play an important role in employee retention, in the airline industry.
The strategy of employee retention and controlling attrition would largely
depend on the industry.
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