Post answers and at least one peer response to the discussion board per the following instructions;

All discussion board assignments must include an original post in response to the discussion question and at least one post in response to another student’s original post. All posts must be substantial, significant and thoughtful (not just “I agree”!) and you must include at least 2 (2) citations and appropriate references from relevant academically sound sources and only one reference of the two can be the text book. Citations and references must adhere to the latest APA format. Academically appropriate sources are peer reviewed journals, text books, conference proceedings, dissertations etc.They are NOT Forbes.com, Business Week, Wikipedia etc.

REMEMBER, this is a five point assignment and will be graded as such. Make sure that you provide appropriate detail and academic support for your arguments on discussion assignments as they represent 30% of your overall grade. In other words, this is an important part of your coursework so spend appropriate time and effort on them!

Q2: In your opinion, what HRD skills or competencies does an HRD manager need? How are these skills and competencies learned?

Q6: Which challenges to HRD professional discussed in this chaper will directly affect your present or future working environment? What additional challenges do you forsee affecting HRD?

MAY YOU ALSO SEND ME A RESPONSE TO THIS STUDENT POST?

Q2: In your opinion, what HRD skills or competencies does an HRD manager need? How are these skills and competencies learned?

I believe that an effective HRD manager requires outstanding communication and critical thinking skills. In order to understand where an organization needs attention in its systems or personnel, that manager must have the ability to conduct research, avoid biases, and identify root causes of inefficient behavior – or conversely, highlight those efficiencies which they can leverage to improve other areas in that company or team. Now, after the manager identifies those points, he or she must clearly communicate the need to improve, the plan for improvement or change, and create buy-in within the organization to pursue that change.

The text book highlights the three core competencies of personal, interpersonal, and business/management, which all work together to form the foundation upon which managers can develop areas of expertise. (Werner, 2017) Communication skills clearly fall under the category of interpersonal competencies, and critical thinking lies more in the business and management competency.

Additionally, the ability to effectively analyze the environment (thinking critically) and propose a meaningful solution impacts the future performance of the group. If the manager selects an insignificant area around which training is centered, they risk losing the buy in of the group and credibility suffers. If the training is meaningful, the return-on-investment can be great. This outcome of critical thinking and business management supports the claim that “employers still seem to consider training and learning to be a predominant area of focus within HRD.” (Hiyudayaraj & Baker, 2018, p. 590)

Q6: Which challenges to HRD professional discussed in this chaper will directly affect your present or future working environment? What additional challenges do you forsee affecting HRD?

I think that the challenge of “facilitating organizational learning” will be my greatest effort in both my current and future work environments. (Werner, 2017, p. 21) In the contemporary work environment, technology drives everything and instant access to information is the norm, or expectation. When competing priorities arise, most individuals choose productivity over training, and perhaps this is because in my job we use online training for nearly all learning events. Although online training has merit for modular efforts , self-paced learning, and ease of access, there are limits to the level of engagement the medium can achieve with the audience.

Most people are in a training environment because the headquarters deemed the training important, and thus, mandatory in most cases. If the audience is not passionate about learning the material, it is highly unlikely that they will participate fully and develop as intended. The parallel challenge now comes with creating buy-in with the audience. So, in the future (at least in the military) the online training batteries must come with an enthusiastic, well-informed, and influential manager who can now create buy-in and instill the desire for education in that subject area. This is no small task and I foresee that becoming one of the major challenges in fostering and maintaining lifelong learning within the organization.

References

Hiyudayaraj, M., & Baker, R. (2018). HRD Competencies: Analysis of employer expectations from online job postings. European Journal of Training and Development, 42(9), 577-596. doi:10.1108/EJTD-04-2018-0036

Werner, J. (2017). Human Resource Development: Talent Development, 7th Edition. Boston: Cengage Learning.