The Importance of Human Resource Development



In a highly competitive business, even a strong market position cannot be held or improved with mediocre people. It takes the best people, continually giving their best, to attain challenging but achievable goals. It takes people with superior education, training, and experience who are interested in maintaining the initiative in the face of carefully calculated business risks to stay on top of the competitive heap.
It takes people with pride in workmanship who carefully apply their skills and disciplines to produce a marketable product of fine competitive quality on time and within carefully controlled costs. It takes first-line supervisors who are very much aware of the influence they have over their people
and who by their example influence them to do their jobs more effectively.
It takes a healthy, profitable company to engage in public service activities. This takes managers with superior skills who recognize and take advantage of opportunities while keeping the wheels turning, the costs down, and the profits up.
It takes broad-gauged managers who see beyond the four walls of their offices to initiate social change and do so profitably, instead of merely reacting to change. It takes managers with special skills in communication, organization, selection, utilization, motivation, and manpower development to make business plans become realities.
In short, the bigger the job to be done, the higher the caliber of person who must be hired to do the job and the more complex and challenging the task of managing him and providing the climate and the environment within which he will put forth his best efforts. Whatever the objective, the human resource is the key factor in its attainment.
Identification and solution of management problems is another responsibility of the human resources executive. One of the prerequisites of the human resources executive is to recognize those causes and provide operating management with the tools to reduce the effects or eliminate the conditions that detract from an organization ability to achieve its goals.
To set guide-posts to line management in managing the human asset is a vital part of the human resources executive responsibility. He does this by formulating and recommending policy for approval by the executive office. Policies are made for several reasons: to assure consistency of action by all managers faced with common decisions; to avoid making the same decisions over and over again; to provide for fair and equitable treatment of all employees in similar situations and circumstances; to communicate top management major philosophies, values, and attitudes and to translate these into practice; to insure maintenance of a competitive posture in accord with company goals; to communicate top management decisions to all concerned.
Employee relations policies relate to compensation, vacations, holidays, fringe benefits, moving expenses and transfer allowances, performance appraisal, discrimination, termination, severance pay, promotions, manpower development, educational assistance,disciplinary action and discharge, and communication.
Good, sound, up-to-date employee relations policies, well administered, help to prevent conflict and internal dissension. They clarify and communicate. They provide guidelines for managerial decisions on human resource questions. They help to recruit high-caliber executives. As an example, if a company compensation policy provides for payment above the going rate for executive talent, the recruiting job is made immeasurably easier. Money is important, particularly at the middle management levels. Add to the dollars a sound fringe benefit package, including a holiday and vacation schedule on the liberal side for the industry, and chances of winning over a prospect are further enhanced. Couple this with a formal policy of education assistance, including a plan for the individual career development, and the chances are enhanced even further. As the candidate sees his job responsibility spelled out, visualizes how and where he can contribute, perceives his avenues for advancement, and then finds it will cost him nothing to relocate his family, the odds heavily favor the company in the recruitment market.

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