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Human Resource Development And Productivity In The Civil Service
[AN APPRAISAL OF KOGI STATE CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION]
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 8]
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1.4 Literature Review
Human Resource development can be defined as a
method of equipping the employees particularly the non-managerial
employees with specific skills that will enable them to improve on their
performance and overall efficiency.
Prof. Sanker observed that
Human resource development is a development oriented planning effort in
the personal area which is basically concerned with the development of
human resources in the organization for improving the existing
capabilities and acquiring new capabilities for the achievement of the
cooperate and individual goals.
Dr. Nader defines Human Resource
Development as an organized learning experience within a period of time
with an objective of producing the possibility of performing the change.
Accordingly Human resource development from a business prospective
is not entirely focused on the individual’s growth and development,
“development occurs to enhance the organizations value, not solely for
individual improvement. Individual education and development is a tool
and a means to an end, not the end goal itselfâ€. (Elwood F. Holton II,
James W. Trout Jnr).
They further argued that the broader concept of
national and more strategic attention to the development of human
resources is beginning to emerge as newly independent countries face
strong competition for their skilled professionals and the accompanying
brain-drain they experience.
At the organizational level, a
successful Human resource development program will prepare the
individual to undertake a higher level of work, organized learning over a
given period of time to provide the possibility of performance change
(Nadler 1984).
In these settings, human resource development is the
framework that focuses on the organizations competencies of the first
stage, training and then developing the employee through education, to
satisfy the organizations long-term needs and the individual’s career
goals and employees value to their present and future employers.
Human
resource development can be defined simply as developing the most
important section of any business, its human resources by “attaining or
upgrading the skills and attitudes of employees at all levels in order
to maximize the effectiveness of the enterprise’ (Kelly, 2001). He
concludes that the people within an organization are its human resource.
The Human resource development framework views employees as an
asset to the enterprise whose value will be enhanced by development; its
primary focus is on growth and employee development. It emphasizes
developing individual potential and skills (Elwood, Olton and Troot
1996). Human resource development in this treatment can be in room group
training, tertiary or vocational courses or mentioning and coaching by
senior employees with the aim for a desired outcome that will develop
the individuals performance. At the level of a national strategy, it can
be a broad intersectional approach to fostering effective contributions
to national productivity.
Staff training and development fall
within the purview of personal management in most organization,
especially public organizations. The importance of staff training and
development in any organization is clear, if we recognize the fact that
the structure that sustains it depends on the individual that operate
the structure.
Staff training and development can occur
simultaneously. According to Onah (2003) any organization that has no
plan for the training and development of its staff is less than dynamic,
for learning is a continuous process. He further acquired that skills
become redundant when the environment changes.
Accordingly, Lisa M. Lynch and Sandra Black (1995:47) observed that:
There
is growing economic evidence that investment in training and
development are associated with long-run profitability, and firms that
recognize work using programs such as teams and quantity circles report
greater productivity if those programs are associated with worker
education.
George T Mikovish and John W. Boudreau (1997: 15) posit
that: While the effort to spend on training is astonishing, even more
astonishing is how little we know about effectively managing training
investment and its productivity.
Training may be defined as an
organized and co-ordinate development of knowledge, skill and attitudes
needed by an individual to master a given situation or perform a certain
task within an organizational setting.
Craig (1967) defines training as the development process made possible through the device of words and signs.
However,
a definition which seems to meet the theoretical requirement of this
work is that used by Magalee and Thayer (1961). Their definition is
based on the theory that training is a sub-system within the total
system of the enterprises management. They therefore see training as the
formal procedure which an organization uses to facilitate employees
learning so that their resultant behavior contributes to the attainment
of the organizational as well as the individual goals and objective.
Staff
development on the other hand according to Akpan (1982) is a process
whereby an employee is enabled to grow in job through the acquisition of
wide experience breadth and responsibility, the aim been to enable him
to reach the top or achieve his best in his profession of employment.
Such a position will be attained through action, observation, study,
reflection, experiment and initiative.
As Cole (2002) puts it, staff
development can be seen as any learning activity which is directed
towards further needs rather than present needs and which is concerned
more with career growth than immediate performance.
They have been
different opinions on whether staff training and development differ at
all, some conceive training as primarily dealing with operative
personnel and development as relating to managers and executives. Others
like Austey (1961:50) Hebison and Mayer (1964) and Novit (1979:111)
sees a considerable overlap between the two concepts in operational
terms. In his book, Novit (1979) applied the term behavior change to
illuminate the essence of both training and development in an
organization. In his view, the central to the occurrence of behavior
change is the learning process aimed at behavior change to the extent
that there is an overlap between them.
But Strayton (1977:2) draws a
somewhat suitable distinction between training and development in this
way. As we progress from the shop floor to the boardroom (management)
the importance in intellectual capacity, the object of teaching becomes
essentially the development of sound judgment.
Straytons definition
implies that training in the sense of training and learning of skills
pertain more to operative personal while development is associated with
those at the management/executive level.
Akpan (1982) says that
staff training and development can occur simultaneously or
complementarily to each other. To him they should in fact be separately
treated in concept. However, in this work, the two concepts will be used
simultaneously because of their relatedness and their result in the
efficiency and effectiveness of the human resources.
It is on this
background that Onah (2003) posits than an untrained member of an
organization is a liability to a dynamic organization as he not only
applies the wrong
knowledge to others coming after him and those he happens to be supervising. As Akpan (1979:13) puts it:
An
untrained man in the modern world may be a menace to the society, he is
a quack; he knows only the laws of things, he has no idea of (their)
why. Hence if they are any trouble anywhere, a breakdown in a machine or
a mistake in a ledger. All he can do is to fumble and punch up trouble
any how; leading to a more serious breakdown or greater confusion,
really there is no place for untrained and undeveloped workers and or
even the intelligent armature in these days of specialized works.
Ubeku, (1975:114) regrettably notes that:
They
are many organizations in this country that regard training and
development as expensive ventures and avoid them like a plague. What
such organization are interested in are the immediate returns. But in a
changing world, of which Nigeria is a part, thus attitude can no longer
hold good.
Akpomouvire (2007) argues that Human resource training
and development is a tool employed by organizations to equip their
workforce for the accomplishment of set goals and objectives.
Furthermore, he argued that in any organization, there are a great many
things that the people employed need to learn in order to become
competent in their jobs. It is within the framework of this cluster of
notes and learning process that management delimits responsibilities,
provides the participating members of the organization with resources
and boundaries within which efficiency may be a reasonable expectation.
In the attempt to accomplish this goal, the importance of human resource
training and development becomes inevitable.
Human resource
training and development improves employees abilities to perform the
task required by an organization. It according to Graham (1981) has the
important dual function of utilization and motivation. By improving
employees ability to perform the task required by the company training:
Allows
better use to be made of human resources, by giving employees a feeling
of mastery over their work and of recognition by management, which
increases job satisfaction in workers.
Furthermore, organizations
have a stake in developing the careers of their employees so that the
employees can be retained while their performance becomes more effective
and efficient. Walker (1992) for example opined that in the 1990’s and
beyond, organizations will invest more, not less in efforts to retain,
train and develop talents.
According to Simon (1937) administrative
efficiency is increased by a specialization of the task among the group
in the direction that will lead to greater efficiency.
The position adopted by Du-Santoy (1957) is instructive on the significance.
Akpomouvire
(2002) contends that for human resource training and development to
achieve its goals of being the planed process of modifying attitudes,
knowledge and skills through learning and experience, to achieve
effective performance in an activity or range of activities so as to
satisfy the current and future needs of an organization or government,
three broad perspective are to be considered. They are:
a. Human resource training and development
b. Training, development and professionalization in the civil service and
c. Administrative reforms.
Human
resource training and development in its myriad forms is provided to
help employees learn job-related skills and obtain knowledge that will
help them improve their performance and further the organizations goals.
From a more concise source, human resource development can be termed to
be a:
Planned process to modify attitudes, skills or behavior
through learning experience to achieve effective performance in an
activity or range of activities. Its purpose in a work situation is to
develop the abilities of the individuals and to satisfy the current and
future needs of the organization (Foot and Hook, 1999).
To Griffin
(1984:17), in order to postulate the disposition and capacity building
of the various employees of government, a good human resource management
and development must be in place. He went further to say that human
resource development involves taking various resources an organization
has at its disposal and combining them in such a way that the
organizations goals are attained. He explained that by efficient, he
meant that doing things in a systematic fashion without waste.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 8]
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]The Civil Service as the machinery of Government performs the unique role of governance and National development as such government everywhere in the world have come to terms with the need to train and re-train it’s human resource for them to be better equipped to maximize productivity levels and meet the challenges of governance and management.This work makes use of the system theory as the theoretical framework and data gathered from secondary sources. My chapter one began with the gene ... Continue reading---
