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whole job ranking is probably the most frequently used, although larger companies often prefer the points evaluation system.

Job classification involves the setting of wage and salary levels by classifying jobs within the organization and comparing the levels of pay with contribution to organizational success, and to competitive or other firms with a comparable job structure and conditions of business. The market value of individual jobs is given consideration, using various sources of information such as surveys and reports published by management associations, government departments, or independent business information services.

In practice, however, many jobs are not evaluated, or, if they are, their evaluation is only one of the factors determining the rate of pay:

While many employers believe that employees’ pay should be differentiated on the basis of current performance, many others (perhaps a majority) believe that seniority, age and past performance and loyalty should have equal or greater weight in individual pay determination. Managers may claim that they have merit or performance-based pay systems, but many studies indicate that they are more accurately based on current performance plus seniority, or seniority alone.2

Changes in the way work is done (e.g. as a result of new technologies and particularly developments in new forms of work organization) have changed the jobs people do in critical ways. The dramatic changes in technologies, job structures and staff competence requirements are generating new demands for advice and assistance.

18.6 Human resource development

Human resource development (HRD) is a fast-growing area of consulting in personnel and human resource management. There are consultants who specialize in this area, while many firms have established important HRD divisions and train most of their staff members in various aspects and technologies of HRD. As clients have become better informed about HRD, and hence more cautious, competent and demanding in selecting HRD programmes and consultants, the “charlatans” who previously viewed HRD as a source of easy income have become known for what they are.

The main purpose of HRD is to help people in organizations to face the challenges created by technological and other changes, to adapt to new requirements, to develop skills, and to achieve the levels of performance needed to stay competitive. A true HRD professional does not promise spectacular changes in attitudes and competence as a result of a few workshop sessions. The HRD specialist makes the client aware of the complexity of the human side of the enterprise, and of the need to consider all factors affecting motivation, behaviour, interpersonal relations and performance of people in organizations. It is important to warn the client against inconsistencies in personnel and HRD

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practices, as these can devalue the impact of many well-intentioned but partial and uncoordinated staff development measures.

Ideally, HRD should be allied to significant ongoing or projected changes in the organization or its policies so that the change and the development are mutually reinforcing. The specialist needs to be informed about the availability of a wide range of techniques for human resource and organization development and for productivity and performance improvement (see Chapter 20), but must also be aware of the cultural bias of certain techniques and the need to avoid a mechanistic transfer which disregards differences in local cultural values and social systems.

HRD is an area which is to a considerable extent bound by national culture. The approach to career planning, the exposure of inadequacies that require training and the informal, even humorous, training style that may work very well in the United States, for example, would be totally inappropriate in China. Consultants need to be aware of these variations. Even so, some general trends are discernible. There are moves to raise the profile of HRD within organizations, to make it more flexible and tailored to individuals and to take a broader view, so that people would develop through job rotation, through careful mentoring by a superior, and by self-study as much as through classroom-based courses. At the same time, and perhaps rather paradoxically, companies are increasingly likely to insist that HRD is tailored to the immediately foreseeable needs of the organization, so that the cost–benefit equation is more obviously positive.

HRD is a very broad topic and it is not possible here to review all the approaches and techniques used.3 Rather we will point to certain management concerns that may call for a consultant’s intervention. The reader should also refer to Chapter 4 on consulting and change, where several HRD and OD techniques are discussed in some detail.

Staff training and development

An HRD consultant can act as an adviser on how to increase the effectiveness of staff training and development, or can be directly involved in preparing and delivering in-company training. Typically, assignments in this area aim to answer such questions as:

●How can staff training and development be related to the goals and problems of the organization and make it performance-oriented?

●How can the training needs of various categories of personnel be identified?

●What should be the content and methodology of staff development programmes and how should they be organized?

●How can the impact of staff development on organizational performance be evaluated and the optimum level of investment in HRD determined?

●How can the training unit be organized and the competence of the training director and in-company trainers increased?

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●What benefits can be drawn from sending managers and staff specialists to external courses at business schools, management institutes, consulting firms, productivity centres, and elsewhere? What sort of relationship should be established with external units offering training programmes, and should these units be used for mounting tailor-made in-plant programmes?

●How can employees be motivated for training and self-development and for using the results of training in their work? What obstacles need to be removed if training is to have the desired impact on both individual and organizational performance?

In some countries trade unions are heavily involved in the provision of training. In others the trade unions or employee representatives can be partners in training, helping to ensure that its importance is recognized, that its content is relevant, and that employees are enthusiastic about undertaking it.

Where the consultant is directly involved in the organization and delivery of training, it is useful to go through the same checklist of questions in relation to training policy to ensure that the programme offers maximum benefit.

One question that consultants often have to answer concerns the cost of training individuals who, in a free labour market, may leave, taking their acquired skill to another organization. Part of the answer is that few organizations can afford not to invest in the skills of their employees, whatever the risk, and part is that a clear and coherent human resources management and training policy often motivates people to stay. There are also examples of competitors working together in an attempt to reduce costs and increase cost-effectiveness of training.

Career development and succession planning

Career development is a significant aspect of human resource development, although its importance may not be the same in all cultures. The consultant should be able to explain the consequences of the absence of career planning to the client. Although in many organizations a detailed plan of the career path of every individual may be impossible or undesirable, it should be possible to establish a career development policy as guidance for staff development and for motivating individual performance. Without constituting a legal commitment to every individual, such a policy provides a clear model against which employees can compare their own expectations and gear their self-development and work improvement efforts, with obvious gains in motivation and productivity.

Linked to the concept of career development is that of succession planning: who will take over as senior managers of the organization when the current ones retire or leave? Many organizations have no plans even for such predictable events. Individuals with potential should be identified in good time and the organization should work on preparing them for promotion. Alternatively, plans need to be made for external recruitment. The consultant can play a useful role in reminding organizations’ leaders of their “organizational mortality” and in sensitively arranging for smooth successions.

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Performance appraisal

Performance appraisal has been one of the weakest links in HRM systems. Many small organizations do not practise any performance appraisal on a regular basis. A number of medium-sized and large organizations have introduced structured performance appraisal schemes, but the reality tends to be very different from declared objectives and policies. The consultant is likely to find that, even where regular performance appraisals do take place and performance reports are duly produced and signed, no conclusions are drawn and no use is made of the appraisals in deciding on staff development, promotions, transfers, merit increments, and so on. In some organizations annual appraisals have become formalities that must be carried out but do not reflect real performance. In other cases the appraisal reflects only the subjective views and preferences of direct supervisors.

While it is not hard to find out about the formalism and other weaknesses of performance appraisals, it is much more difficult to change a deeply rooted practice. The consultant can help the client to realize that appraisal ought to be concerned with actual performance rating, that appraisers require training in performance assessment techniques, and that sensible performance appraisal commences with well-established organizational, group and individual goals. Current thinking concentrates on these, and simple reporting forms, rather than on complex and time-consuming paperwork.

The important task, of course, is the management of performance, not the organization of a system. Good managers will always be able to motivate and assess the outputs of their staff; no system will make poor managers do it properly. A key role for consultants is to bring this message home to the organization. However good the appraisal system is, it cannot be a substitute for inadequate managers. The development of a performance appraisal system that achieves the organization’s objectives will almost always require a careful look at the quality and development of the organization’s management team. Whatever organization and techniques of appraisal are chosen, the improved system will require the support of employees’ representatives and strong management commitment.

Organizational development

Many consulting interventions in the HRD field are of the OD type. The original definitions of OD emphasized the application of behavioural sciences for assisting organizations in identifying, planning and implementing organizational changes. Interventions focused on organizational processes such as communication, sharing of information, interpersonal relations, team building, the use of meetings or the ways of resolving conflicts, rather than on providing solutions to substantive technical issues involved in the process. More recent approaches aim to combine “classical” OD with diagnosis and resolution of specific (technological, organizational, financial) problems, and to implement

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organizational performance improvement programmes in which many other diagnostic, problem-solving, process re-engineering and change management techniques are used (see also Chapters 4 and 22). This requires that an OD consultant should also be versed in a particular area of management and business. Equally, consultants in various technical areas of management, as well as all-round generalists, can increase their effectiveness by mastering OD principles and some OD techniques.

Towards a learning organization

A useful concept reflecting contemporary thinking about change and organizations, as well as the recent experience of a number of dynamic companies, is the “learning organization”.4 It brings a new dimension to corporate strategy and to training and development. Instead of having a separate training and development function, the whole organization is viewed as a learning system where individuals learn from the organization’s actions and from developments shaping its environment, and where the organization as a whole learns from actively participating individuals. Both individual and organizational learning are used as inseparable elements of strategic management and change.

These features have been stressed in the various definitions of learning organizations. For example, according to the Training Commission in the United Kingdom, “a learning organization is one which facilitates learning and personal development of all its employees, whilst continually transforming itself”.

In learning organizations, continuous learning by individuals is regarded as necessary for organizational survival and for achieving organizational excellence in a rapidly changing business environment. It is facilitated and stimulated in accordance with the following principles:

●learning is linked both to organizational strategy and to individual goals;

●emphasis is on on-the-job development and action learning;

●specialist training courses are available across the knowledge/skills/value spectrum;

●the principal focus is on learning about developments in the company’s environment, science and technology, and new management and business concepts that could and should be used to improve organizational performance and competitiveness in the future;

●training to fill existing competency gaps related to current business activities is not neglected;

●new and open forms of training activity are utilized, including distance learning, Internet-based programmes and self-development, and individuals have the main say in choosing the forms they use;

●learning is regarded as a continuous process, not as a sequence of separate and mutually unrelated courses or other events;

●the career and reward systems provide strong recognition of learning.

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However, encouraging individual learning is not enough to become a learning organization. Individual learning must be turned into organizational learning. Therefore learning organizations aim to develop the following features:

–learning in teams is encouraged;

–various formulas are used to share information and results of individual and team learning throughout the organization; results of individual learning must be available to any other collaborator who may need them;

–managers act as trainers and coaches and are responsible for the transfer of information, ideas and competencies among individuals and teams within their units, and with other units in the organization;

–managers focus learning on the organization’s goals, opportunities and future perspectives without neglecting training needed for achieving shortterm objectives and making immediate improvements;

–management makes sure that learning is effectively used for planning and implementing organizational changes;

–the main responsibility for staff development is vested in line managers; but human resource and training managers have a prominent position in the company’s power structure and participate in conceptual and strategic thinking and planning concerning the organization’s future.

Learning organizations learn from their own internal environment and experience, making sure that positive experience is rapidly disseminated and replicated, while negative experience is objectively assessed and acknowledged, and measures are taken to avoid repeating it (e.g. in other parts of the organization or by new staff members). Ideas and critiques are collected through suggestion schemes and meetings, opinion and corporate climate surveys are used, open discussion and feedback are practised, innovation and experimentation are encouraged, and internal records and reports are carefully studied.

Learning from the external environment includes:

–learning from customers (satisfaction, complaints, changing needs and demands, changing tastes, ideas on new and better services, joint work on product and service improvement);

–learning from competitors and other organizations involved in comparable activities (e.g. through benchmarking);

–learning about new developments in science and technology;

–learning about market trends and changes;

–learning about economic, social, institutional and other developments.

At a minimum level, a learning organization can respond to information learned and analysed. At an optimum level, it is forward-looking and proactive, changing and improving products, services and processes without waiting for such a change to become inevitable as a result of more dynamic competitors or unhappy customers.

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