Have you ever wondered what the “Human Resources” is? What does the Human Resources do? What are the differences between “Human Resources Development” and “Human Resources Management? The Human Resources are the ones who make-up the workforce of an organization, business sector or economy. This article talks about the difference between Human Resources Development and Human Resources Management.
The human resources department of an organization performs human resources management, overseeing various aspects of employment, such as compliance with labor law and employment standards, administration of employee benefits.
Human Resources Development
The term “Human Resources Development” consists of two words i.e.
“Human Resource” and “Development”
- Human resources: Who are considered to be the lifeblood of any organization, are the people and their characteristics at work either at the national level or organizational level.
- Development: Is the acquisition of capabilities that are needed to perform the present job or the future expected job. Thus, human resource development is the process of developing the human resource working in an organization by modernizing their knowledge and upgrading their skills, attitudes and perceptions in order to meet out the changing trends of the globalized economy and also to utilize those developments for the attainment of the organizational goals.
What are the aims of Human Resources Development?
Human resources development aims at assisting people to acquire competencies that are being required to perform their duties in an efficient manner and to let the organization ripe the fruits of their know-how and talents.
HRD as an activity and as a process plays a crucial and noteworthy role identifying the hidden potential of the workforce employed in the organization and to polish their skills, technical knowledge in order to develop them and to prepare them for facing the challenges on their own.
What is the Historical Perspective of Human Resources Development?
The evolution of human resources development can be easily understood in the following chronological sequence:
The Commodity Concept
Human resources was referred as “a commodity” to be bought and sold. Wages were decided on the basis of demand and supply forces.
The Factor of Production Concept
Labor is treated as any other factor of production, ex: Money, Material, Land, etc.
The goodwill concept
Welfare measures like safety, first aid, lunch room, rest room, etc…These measures prove to be a source of boosting up the morale of workers and enhancing their performance.
The Paternalistic Concept
Management must assume a fatherly and protective attitude towards employers. Paternalism does not mean merely providing benefits but it signifies to satisfy various needs of employees just as parents meet the requirements of the children.
The Humanitarian Concept
To improve the productivity, physical, social and psychological needs of workers must be fulfilled. Money is the least factor to determine output, than group standards, group incentives and security. The organization is a social system that has both economic and social dimensions.
The Human Resource Concept
Employees are the most valuable assets of an organization. There should be a conscious effort to realize organizational goals by satisfying needs and aspirations of employees.
What are the benefits of Human Resources Development?
Human Resources Development, improves the performance of employees through proper training and develops openness, trust, collaboration among the employees to identify the organizational needs and shows the path to move on for achieving the same.
Thus, following are some of the important benefits which are the outcome of implementing Human Resources Development in any organization:
- Helps in identifying organizational goals, through better understanding of employees.
- Fosters commitment through the communication values.
- It facilitates dyadic relationship.
- Increases the awareness of the importance of change management and consequent adaptability of employees.
- Provides higher quality of work life through opportunities of a meaningful; career, job satisfaction and professional development.
- It focuses on need contentment through recognition and achievement with appropriate HRD program, people become more committed towards their jobs, and people are assessed on the basis of their performance.
- Makes people more competent, it develops new skills, knowledge and attitude of the people in the organization concerned.
- Proper human resources development policies promote openness in the overall growth of employees.
- Resources are utilized in an optimum manner.
- It helps in developing a sense of belongingness among the employees and increases the participation rate among them.
What are the differences between Human Resources Development (HRD) and Human Resources Management (HRM)?
The discipline of human resource development (HRD) was developed because the human resource management function failed to meet the new challenges of the 20th century. Some of organizations have merely redesigned their personnel departments as HRD departments. But there are certain differences in both the areas:
- Human Resource Management (HRM) is viewed as a set of independent sub-functions while Human Resource Development (HRD) is seen as a system of a larger system in an organization.
- HRM is considered as mainly a service function enduring with the demands of the organization as and when they arise, but HRD is considered as a proactive function which forecasts the needs of the organization and keep itself prepared to face the unseen competition in an organized manner.
- HRM is a narrower concept which aims at developing and administering people only. HRD is a wider concept aims at developing not only its people but its whole organization.
- The main focus of HRM is on enhancing skills and increasing efficiency of people in the organization whereas HRD is based on the concept of building up the right organizational climate that could discover, nurture and utilize human capabilities in an optimum manner.
- HRM, main motivators are salary, wage incentives and job simplifications. On the other hand, HRD relies on job enrichment, job challenge, informal organizational climate, autonomous work groups and creativity for motivating the work force in the organization.
- HRM is supposed to be the exclusive responsibility of the Human Resource (HR) Managers and their concerned department. But HRD is considered as the responsibility of all the managers in an organization. In fact, HRD aims at developing the capabilities of all the line managers to carry out various human resource management functions themselves.
- Under HRM, higher morale and satisfaction are regarded as the cause of improved performance. On the contrary, HRD perceives improved performances as the cause of improved job satisfaction and morale of employees on work.