Recent Scenario of Human Resource Development in India

It’s no secret that employees’ attitudes about their jobs, their benefits and their employers can range from exuberant to sour. What’s less well known and harder to find out is exactly what matter to specific types of employees and how effective various types of HRD policies, practices and workplace characteristic are, in spurring employee productivity and retention. Since human resource development and management is culture sensitive, therefore we shall examine the recent scenario of HRD in India context by having a brief preview of HRD scenario in the global context as discussed below:

More and more employers are assessing the value returned from each dollar spent on employees. They are targeting specific programs and practice to the employees that value them the most and becoming more important than ever. Determining what matter most to employees and aligning expenditures with priorities is a strategic challenges for HRD function. Employee change continuously due, in part, to change changes in personal preference but also in part to the chum that occurs as employees leave and new ones enter the Organization. However, it is neither cost effective nor practical to satisfy every employee. Therefore, understanding employees and issues they face holds the key to the function to respond quickly.

Of the 21 factor in the job satisfaction survey, HRD professionals and employees differed on the relatively importance of all but one. Now professionals and employees differed on the relative importance of all but one. Now the question arises whether HRD professionals are out of touch with the attitudes among their own particular employees. Perhaps, in some Organization, HRD function is very much in tune with what their employees are thinking, while in some others the gap may be larger. Finding out what really matters to employees so that the Organization can maximize its investment in human resource is not an incident undertaking. There are costs involved in doing surveys and in analyzing their results and there are there are additional costs if an Organization does not show that it values the efforts.

Thus, it is that core HRD tools, tactics and programmes remains the same however employee needs and priorities have changed and indeed changing. Employee’s values greatly professional developments, job specific training and learning, career development and empowerment more than anything else, except compensation. Employees are increasingly emphasizing opportunities for their development in order to enhance their productive contribution to the Organization and derive satisfaction. Hence, organizations understand, have adopted and implemented HRD programmes and practices as parts of overall business planning. The difference however lies the prioritization of various HRD issues and concerns. Now let us examine the HRD scenario in Indian context. With progressive development in management science and practice, numerous programme, policies and systems has been designed to influence or adapt employee attitude and behavior to create capability and competition and changing environment. Post 1991, India started its phased economics restructuring to provide domestic Organizations the time and competencies to face greater competition. The liberalization paved the way for integration of India economy with the global economy. It opened many opportunities for growth through the removal of artificial barriers on pricing and output decisions, investments, mergers and acquisition, joint ventures, technology imports, import of foreign captain etc, this enabled Indian Organizations an opportunity to expand, diversify, integrate and globalize more freely.

Liberalization has resulted in sudden and increased levels of competition for Indian Organizations from multinational firms, globalization and internalization of domestic businesses, concerns for total quality management, incentives to export, demographic changes in the employee profile, retaining and redeployment of workforce, focus on performance appraisal and career management. Thus, with liberalization there is an increasing pressure on Organizations in India to change from indigenous, costly, suboptimal levels of technology to performance based, competitive and higher technology provision.

Indian Organizations have to develop the workforce capable of taking up challenges thrown by the new economic environment. To tackle this challenging situation, Indian academics a nod practitioner have both advocated the adoption of the concept of human resource development. The adoption of professionalized HRD practices in India is recent phenomenon, but has gained momentum in the past ten years. Organizations are now asking their HRD departments for innovative approaches and solutions to improve productivity and quality of work life, while aptly coping with an environment of high uncertainty and intense global competition. This requires Indian Organizations to develop a diverse workforce with competitive skill sets. This is difficult given the diverse socio- economic background of Indian workforce coupled with antagonistic nature of trade union and colonial time cumbersome labor laws.

The challenges for Human Resource Development:

• Changing workforce demographic
• Competing in global economy
• Eliminating the skill gap
• Need for lifelong learning
• Need for Organizational learning

The scenario of Human Resource Development in India is characterised by:

1.  Lack of adoption of innovative HRD practice in unionized Organization due to lack of co-operative attitude among trade unionists.

2.  Larger Organizations have been able to adopt HRD practice fully due to various costs, resources and expertise involved. Sparrow and Budhwar (1997)  in their study of 137 fully owned Indian Organizations with more than 200 employees, located in North, central and Western Indian states within six manufacturing sectors of food processing, plastics, steel, textiles, pharmaceuticals and footwear suggest that they are still not geared to adopt HRD programmes

3. Organizations with foreign participation have more extensive and early implementation of HRD programmes and practices than public and family owned Organizations. This is because international consultants propound those HRD strategies such as training, performance appraisal, career management; reward mechanisms, etc, are key to improvement.

4. Organizations with stronger leadership have been able to implement HRD programmes and practices. This is because most of the Indian Organizations seem to rhetoric believe such as ‘change is constant’, ‘only quality ensures survival’, ‘products, not people are paramount’ and ‘information is everything’, etc. the main challenges before the chief executives are seen to be to create flexible systems, to develop a culture of excellence, to facilitate teamwork and empower employees, and to speed up and decentralize data flows. A common feature of strong culture Organization in India has been the influential role of top management has played in development of human resource issues and institutionalizing practices.

5.  Indian Organization which are trying to be competitive by involving the services of international management consultants, have been found to favour HRD programmes and practices. This is because international consultants propound those HRD strategies such as training, performance appraisal, career management; reward mechanism, etc are key to improvement.

6.  Lack of professionally managed HRD departments. This has resulted in lack of a strategic role in terms of ability to identify, develop and manage support resources for adoption of HRD programmes and practices. This is primarily due to non possession of current knowledge base and ability to research new developments via methods of benchmarking and networking.

Hence, it is the institution pressures that have influenced the adoption of HRD programmes and practices in the post liberalization scenario in India However; the HRD scenario in India is not so grim.

Conclusion

HRD is a relatively young field, and there are significant challenges to its future. Failing to acknowledge these challenges will increasingly marginalize HRD within organizations. The tasks seen as central to the HRD profession will be taken on by others who work in professions more focused on delivering and measuring outcomes, thinking and working systemically, with a sounder theoretical base, with clear standards and ethical codes, with stronger professional bodies and competent practitioners. HRD will be left on the sidelines: a gradually shrinking number of people who write for themselves, focus on internal process issues, and react ineffectively to demands long after they have been formulated. We invite all those with a stake in the future of HRD to join together to grapple with the critical challenges that face our field, engage in deep meaningful dialogue about the challenges, and construct workable, effective, and immediate approaches to addressing the challenges to secure the future of HRD. Our goal is to banish complacency and to encourage dialogue. HRD’s human resources are impressive; they must now be focused.