The field of HRD or Human Resource Development encompasses several aspects of enabling and empowering human resources in organization. Whereas earlier HRD was denoted as managing people in organizations with emphasis on payroll, training and other functions that were designed to keep employees happy, the current line of management thought focuses on empowering and enabling them to become employees capable of fulfilling their aspirations and actualizing their potential. This shift in the way human resources are treated has come about due to the prevailing notion that human resources are sources of competitive advantage and not merely employees fulfilling their job responsibilities. The point here is that the current paradigm in HRD treats employees as value creators and assets based on the RBV or the Resource Based View of the firm that has emerged in the SHRM (Strategic Human Resource Management) field.The field of HRD spans several functions across the organization starting with employee recruitment and training, appraisals and payroll and extending to the recreational and motivational aspects of employee development. |
Indeed, one reason for the emergence of the RBV or the SHRM paradigm is that with the advent of the service sector and the greater proportion of companies in the service sector, employees are not merely a factor of production like land, labor and capital but in fact, they are sources of competitive advantage. This is characterized by many CEO’s calling employees their chief assets and valuing their contribution accordingly. As a matter of fact, many IT and Financial Services companies routinely refer to employees as the value creators and value enhancers rather than just resources doing their job.
What this has meant is that the field of HRD has become prominent and important for organizations and has morphed into a function that takes its place