Trends in HRD

National and regional HRD policies and practices are being enunciated in many places.

European Union

European Union has declared a "European employment and social policy: a policy for people. At the dawn of the 21st century, high unemployment of a 40 percent of Europe's population became the most serious economic and social problem for nearly all member states. Although millions of jobs have been created, some populations groups still have special difficulties in obtaining jobs: the long-term unemployed, young people, older jobseekers, people with disabilities, women, and ethnic minorities. The EU is now seeking to ensure not only good jobs are created but that opportunities are extended to the disadvantaged. The emphasis in on making more people employable, foster entrepreneurship and the adaptability of business and employees to economic and technological change and those equal opportunities are provided. Creating relevant training and retraining and making these opportunities open to all, including the disadvantaged populations is one of the key strategies.

Several efforts are being expanded: increasing apprenticeships, identifying and reducing obstacles to forming small businesses and for women, minorities, and the disabled to get better jobs, creating more jobs in the social sector to improve the quality of life for many, developing strategies for modern and flexible work organisations, providing incentives for individuals and companies to undertake training.
Since 1957, the European Social Fund is the financial instrument for investing in people. The Social Fund provides funds to member states to meet the goals previously identified. It funds training initiatives to help people keep or acquire a job and skills. It is also used to help improve systems and structures to make the labour market itself work better. Members do differ on approaches they use but support improves whatever approaches they use.

The EU has encouraged citizens to acquire international skills. In education, two programmes, Socrates and Leonardo da Vinci, have successfully promoted an international dimension in universities and schools and in vocational training. Qualifications, like language skills and experience in other countries are vital for the future. EU measures are designed to open up access to learning abroad and overcome the red tape that prevents recognition of qualifications in other countries. Also, the EU supports research and technological developments to ensure that new technologies are used in everyday life. Since 2000 the new economic and social agenda for EU is to become the most competitive and knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustaining economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. The right HRD policies and practices will move the EU towards these admirable goals.

Worldwide Training Trends
Since 1997, ASTD has collected and reported data on the state of the workplace learning, performance and internal training staff operations within the United States and around the world. ASTD secures information from its free Benchmarking Service afforded to organisations worldwide and other relevant sources. According to the ASTD "State of the Industry" research completed, the average U.S. company is training more of its employees than ever before although training expenditures have dropped slightly. More funds are going to technical training than other types of training and e-learning gains momentum among large companies. The technical training is primarily for processes and procedures). Compared to the average companies, it is important to note that the top ten percent called ('Training Investment Leaders') of the companies surveyed, are training 98.4 percent of employees in their organisations. These companies have made training a central focus of organisation-wide efforts to stay competitive and deliver results in the New Economy. Now more than ever, companies continuously demonstrate the value and worth of their investments in training.

In its international comparison research, ASTD shows that countries have a wide range of diversity in training investments and practices across the world but are increasing their investments in training. Another ASTD study shows the value of company investments in training. Although recently companies are eliminating workers in an effort to cut expenses and boost shareholder value, this policy appears to be shortsighted. After a major study of training practices and outcomes of 575 US-based publicly traded firms from 1996 to 1998, ASTD found that companies who invested $680 more in training than the average company in the study improved their total shareholder return (TSR) the next year by six percentage points, even after considering other factors. ASTD examined the average annual training expenditures of these firms, and found that those in the top half of the study group- who spent more on training- had an average TSR following year of 36.9 percent. Firms at the bottom half had an average of only 19.8 TSR.

ASTD had previously found that for the top spenders in training, these investments in human capital reap substantial rewards. For potential and incumbent employees, the chance for development offered by the companies who care about them induce them to join the company and stay. ASTD's study found that a number of people-oriented companies experienced lower turnover and higher employee satisfaction that the average company in its industry. The identified companies attributed their results, in great part, to their investments in the employees, both through fair and equitable human resource policies and practices, and in the employee growth and career development initiatives. The companies undertook a number of initiatives, including:

Companies made employees responsible for their own learning, while simultaneously providing generous support by providing them coaches, mentors and teams. Each company had a strong identify and culture in which employees were seen as an essential ingredient of success. Organisational infrastructures were in place to support the people-oriented policies. Assisted by technology, training systems and processes were embedded throughout the organization. All the companies had instituted position or role competencies as guidance for employees. For these companies recruiting the "right" kind of person to be compatible with the organisation's culture is promoted.

But ASTD wanted to find out whether this pattern the benefits of continued investment was still true in a recessionary economy when money is tight and shareholders are calling for the elimination of extraneous resources. ASTD identified several companies who continued to value their employees and put a big emphasis on training to ensure employee are current despite the drop in the economy are still benefiting. In fact, some companies were expanding their efforts. For example, Southwest Airlines and Sears are gaining the hard-to-acquire talent, such as Information Technology specialists from now defunct organisations similar to themselves. Rita Bailey, head of Southwest Airlines University for People believes that "one of the top motivators for workers entering the market is the ability to continue learning." These investments put the companies in good positions when the economy recovers.

The "ASTD State of the Industry" Report reported that internal training departments are responding to and fostering changes in their environment. The findings can be summarized as follows:
Internal training departments are reclaiming more and more responsibility for performing the fundamental tasks related to workplace learning and performance in their organizations rather than outsourcing the work. These challenges resulted in how training staff allocate their time. The portions of their time spent on each of the seven categories (management, analysis, selecting interventions, designing and developing interventions, implementing interventions, leading change, and evaluating interventions) changed more than three percentage points from one year to the next.

(The information comes from ASTD website at www.astd.org)

Worldwide Supervisory Training and Performance
Worldwide supervisory training and performance review is under scrutiny. We often joke that the persons who are good technicians but have poor people skills are often the ones who get promoted into supervisory positions. Reports indicate that many new supervisors lack the inclination and skills for their new responsibilities but receive little or no training. Even supervisors complain that when budgets are tight, the "soft skills training" such as leadership development, is often the first training eliminated. Also, most supervisors are appraised based on their technical work not their supervision of people. And few supervisors are ever removed from their positions.

Transnational Education and Training
Following up the work of the World Trade Organisation on Education Services, the Global Alliance for Transnational Education (GATE) finds that trade barriers exist to transnational education and training. Legally enforceable rights to trade in education are set forth in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the first such multilateral agreement. GAT sanctions trade without discrimination to assure market access and fair treatment, transparent and reasonable rules and regulations and flexibility among developing countries. However, it grants to each country latitude in determining how much or little it chooses to liberalise its markets.
GATE notes that these trade barriers restrict education and training providers, related trade, the supply of instructional materials and access to resources in other countries. The barriers include:

- providing national laws and policies to prevent international providers from obtaining national licenses to operate as degree-granting institutions.
- declaring foreign institutions unnecessary because local providers are meeting local needs.
- not recognising degrees from other nations and offering no equivalents.
- restricting satellite feeds, visas, customs and foreign currencies to restrict flow of instructors and educational materials, and
- limiting foreign ownership to restrict ability of international providers to control their offshore activities.

However, e-learning offers the most practical way to advance learning for people constrained because of time, money or distance

Summary of the International Labour Office's
"World Employment Report 2001: Life At Work In The Information Economy"

Mentoring For The New Millenium
By: Jack Carew, Chairman and CEO, Carew International, Inc

E-Learning -An Integrated Approach: A Case Study in Hong Kong
By: Robin Wong, Director, Management Development Center, Hong Kong

Best Practice in Management/Supervisory Development
By: Brenda Jamnik, President of the Australian Institute of Training and Development in the Northern Territory.

Human Performance Improvement

Performance Technology Landscape
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Note: "The International Society for Performance Improvement has provided permission to reprint these articles."

Balancing Globalisation
By : George Alogoskoufis, Minister of Economy and Finance, Greece
Organisation of Economic, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) FORUM 2006 22-23 May 2006, Paris.

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Optimising Human Capital

Measuring what really matters
By : Les Pickett
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News from Ireland

PEOPLE FOCUS
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in Ireland. Spring 2006 Volume 4: No 1

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Accelerated Learning
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Managing Mergers and Acquisitions
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Talent Management
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