HRD Strategy Strategy and Human Resources Development: Evidence of Best Practices and General Recommendations

Developing and adhering to a clear and concrete strategy is something that seems of obvious importance to any organization, yet a true understanding of what strategic planning and commitment entails is often surprisingly lacking in many organizations. In order for a strategy to be effective, not only must it appropriately account for external situations and internal capabilities, but it must also include concrete operational controls that will serve to maintain strategic focus and goal attainment in all areas of the organization's activities. One such area is human resources management, and especially human resources development. The following pages contain a review of current literature on the subject, providing a set of evidence-based best practices for human resources development that support overall strategies and providing a brief set of general recommendations in the area.

Evidence of Best Practices

General and long-term research on organizational development and performance shows a clear and direct link between organizational learning -- a key component of human resources -- and long-term strategic success (Boonstra & Cummings, 2008). Encouraging and facilitating organizational learning depends largely on organizational structure, and ensuring that proper hierarchies and lateral relationships in place to allow for knowledge transfer encourages learning and through this overall development (Armstrong, 2009). This allows for the most effective pursuit of strategic objectives.

A simple, general matrix that has been developed showing the relation of various organizational elements also provides some insight into the best practices of human resources development. Human performance, the enhancement of which is the outcome that human resource development has as its ultimate goal, is found in this matrix at the intersection of management, implying that it is through managerial...

Direct personal analyses of employees and of human resource groups within an organization provides the type of managerial attention and task/process awareness that is most likely to produce beneficial outcomes, further research has shown (Werner & DeSimone, 2012).
Not all findings presented in the literature agree that business strategy should have a direct and conscious influence on human resources development, with some researchers finding that corporate structure had more influence on human resource outcomes than business strategy (Stroh & Reilly, 1994). Such structuring, at the organizational level and even at the national level, can actually be seen (should actually be seen, according to many) as an element of strategy, not a separate aspect of the organization, and properly structuring any organization so as to retain and nurture the development of top talent is the only way for technology- and other knowledge-intensive companies to achieve strategic success (Elkhamri et al., 2009). Clear yet flexible structure that are somewhat adaptable to human resource demands are needed in such situations.

All of the research connecting human resources development and its relation to overall organizational strategy has led to the emergence of the field of strategic human resources management (SHRM), of which human resources development is a major constituent part (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2009). The overarching theory that underlies this relatively new discipline in business and management studies and practice is that an organization I ultimately and essentially made up of the individual people within it, and that strategy should not only be related to human resources development and management but must be built on a foundation of conscious strategic human resources planning (Lengnick-Hall…