Jim Kissane recently had a very interesting post on his Workforce Development Blog about a trend that could potentially impact training in the future....
The Future Workforce - Predictions about the New Role of HR
The post discusses how the role of HR is changing. Here is a nugget that is particularly of interest.
"They [upper management] question why operations people increasingly are shouldering a
bigger part of the burden of recruitment, training and development and
retention. In my opinion, it isn't the HR department's fault per say,
but rather the organizations inability to see that major structural
changes are occurring that is morphing the traditional HR role into
something new."
The post goes on to mention ten points on how potentially HR will change moving forward. It's a good list, I guess all I can say there is I hope so because it seems they would be beneficial, but its not my area of expertise, so I cannot say for sure.
I will comment on the quote above. In my opinion, the reason you have operations people taking on more of the burden of recruitment, training and development is because it is more likely to impact their actual compensation than say 'HR's' compensation.
For example, its highly probable that a plant manager's compensation is directly related to the many metrics that are used portray how well the plant puts out widgets. Things like lost production time, quality metrics, allocation of resources, etc. So you can bet that the plant manager, their head of quality assurance, floor supervisors, and other plant management personnel are going to be very interested and invested in facilitating and supporting things like like recruitment, training and development because the better the factory is run, the more money they make, they can move up, are recognized, etc.
Not always the case when it comes to the HR function in terms of how they are measured/compensated in regards to their performance.
Dave Boggs
SyberWorks, Inc.
SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series
SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Series
e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series
SyberWorks Training Center Learning Management System