Business Development

Training and Development is the framework for helping employees to develop their personal and organizational skills, knowledge, and abilities. The focus of all aspects of Human Resource Development is on developing the most superior workforce so that the organization and individual employees can accomplish their work goals in service to customers.

All employees want to be valuable and remain competitive in the labour market at all times. This can only be achieved through employee training and development. Employees will always want to develop career-enhancing skills, which will always lead to employee motivation and retention. There is no doubt that a well trained and developed staff will be a valuable asset to the company and thereby increasing the chances of his efficiency in discharging his or her duties.

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I write a lot about the general importance of improving communications between IT and the business and the havoc that poor communication between the two camps can wreak.

Considering the strategic importance of software applications to many companies and the high costs of development and, in particular, of going back and doing major code fixes, development is one process where communication would appear to be especially important. There’s also users’ general dissatisfaction with enterprise applications to consider.

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Recent developments in America suggest that learning and development could be resurrected from the dark, dusty recesses of human resources into a bright new future.

Ever since 1994 and the merger between the Institute of Training and Development and the Institute of Personnel Management to form what in 2000 became the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, there has been no argument about which area was the dominant one. Factors concerning the development of employee skills seemingly became secondary to the rising importance of Human Resource Management.

I was recently provided a glaring example of this by an acquaintance in a senior learning and development role at one of the largest organisations in the UK. With a sad, but knowing look in his eye he presented me with the yearly objectives for the HR department. Not one of them related to employee development in any way. When you consider that the company employ over five hundred people in roles that are directly related to learning this is truly amazing, although hardly isolated.

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“At senior levels of an organization, the ability to adapt, to make decisions quickly in situations of high uncertainty, and to steer through wrenching change is critical. But at a time when the need for superior talent is increasing, big U.S. companies are finding it difficult to attract and retain good people. Executives and experts point to a severe and worsening shortage of the people needed to run divisions and manage critical functions, let alone lead companies. Everyone knows organizations where key jobs go begging, business objectives languish, and compensation packages skyrocket.”

Elizabeth Chambers etal, McKinsey & Company, The War for Talent

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