Human Resource Development
Human Resource Development is a key area for every organisation. Organisations usually go through changes in order to gain an upper hand in the market. There are five functions that need to be followed and they are: 1)People issues related to management re-engineering, 2) Adult learning principles, 3) HRDNI analysis phase, 4)Investigation phase and 5) Design phase. It is always a good measure for an organisation to critically evaluate and regularly assess their processes to know what things to fine tune and work on.
Qantas was established in 1920 in Queensland, Australia. It is the oldest airline in Australia and provides many routes to international and domestic destinations such as Africa, Europe and America. (Where it all began: The history of Qantas, 2011). Qantas has many subsidiaries, one of them being Jetstar and Qantas is a part of the Oneworld airline alliance. The mission statement of Qantas is to uphold the objective of procurement in Qantas itself to maximise shareholder value from all significant supplier relationships. This is achieved through maintaining a disciplined, systematic and ongoing process for achieving reliable and ethical supply of externally purchased goods or services, whilst reducing the total costs and improving the levels of quality, service and technology. (Qantas Airways Ltd. – Company Profile, Information, Business Description, History, Background Information on Qantas Airways Ltd,2004).The core value of Qantasis that it is to offer its customers a higher level of efficient service that differentiates itself from other competitor airlines such as Virgin Australia.Qantas is also often pictured as being the national airline of Australia.
Management re-engineering involves the radical redesign of core business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in productivity, cycle times and quality. They typically adopt a new value system that places increased emphasis on customer needs. Companies reduce organizational layers and eliminate unproductive activities.(Johnson, 2012).
They also rethink on ways how to deliver its products as well. Organisations such as Qantas often go through re-engineering processes to try to gain some stability or possibly a competitive advantage in an already competitive industry. For Qantas, the reasons to re-engineer are too many. They were experiencing a significant downturn due to fierce competition from Virgin Australia in the domestic markets. Virgin Australia started as low cost carrier in the early 2000’s to become a full service airline 10- 12 years later. (Sakata, Prideaux and Whyte,2012).Other reasons include receiving customer complaints and receiving negative feedback on their services. These days, most organisations look towards the trend of cost cutting and making flatter organisational structures which means fewer middle managers to deal with. (Delahaye,2011).
With changes come problems. Most organisations face internal resistance and disorganisation of its employees which has disastrous consequences on the organisation. One of the most common reasons employees resists change because they do not know what lies ahead. You can expect some level of resistance to any change, no matter how small or how much benefit it might promise. Changes also cause disorganisation. Employees may find it harder to reach their goals and complete their tasks correctly when they have many changes being implemented around them. Managers and supervisors may become overwhelmed with planning and implementing the changes and forget about their responsibilities to manage and guide their employees. Qantas wasn’t spared by both of these issues. Due to cost cutting and losing their dominance over the domestic travel market, Qantas grounded its entire fleet in 2012. Qantas also axed 500 jobs as well. (Ryan, 2012).
Andragogy emphasises the value of the process of learning. It uses approaches to learning that are problem based and collaborative.(Adult Learning Theory and Principles,2007).There are six principles to adult learning. These could also be applied to employees in the workplace. They are: 1) Adults are internally motivated and self-directed; 2) Adults bring life experiences and knowledge to learning experiences, 3) Adults are goal oriented, 4) Adults are relevancy oriented, 5) Adults are practical and 6) Adult learners like to be respected(Adult Learning Theory and Principles, 2007). Qantas and their management need to be aware of these issues. If changes are taking place, employee motivation changes. This affects the efficiency of Qantas to carry out its processes.
There are a few factors that are very critical for Qantas to decide upon when creating a positive learning climate. These mainly are: 1) Make learning personal by tying it to performance, career advancement, and recognition and 2) Make learning available to all employees. (Sakai, 2013).
The HRDNI phase is a process that identifies the gap between what is currently happening and what should be occurring. This stage emphasises a lot on performance and efficiency. HRDNI tries to find the answers to the topics of: 1) The content and learning objectives, 2) The population, 3) The resources needed and 4) The context and organisational politics. The investigation phase involves two different stages with the first one including data gathering which includesorganisational records, assessment centres and critical incident techniques while the second stage is data analysis which compromises of three different outcomes which are: 1) Learning objectives,2) Competencies and 3)Learning outcomes.(Delahaye, 2011).
Qantas shows the investigation phase. This can first be clearly seen data analysis component of the investigation phase for Qantas as it shows the three key outcomes of the learning objectives, competencies and learning outcomes. The learning objectives that Qantas has tried to bring forward is the necessity to significantly improve employee safety time and again while being fully devoted to provide identical levels of performance in OHS.The competencies Qantas wanted to find about was done through a review of the safety procedures of the workers. Qantas are creating a management structure which will have every report activity coming from every single department of the company straight to the executive committee.(Qantas, 2012).The learning outcomes that Qantas has tried to bring about for current and future workers is to have a decrease in the frequency of injuries and the impact of this on the time, also to create and improve leadership in current and future workers. This also links perfectly to one of the underlying topics that HRDNI phase is trying to find which the content and learning objective is.(Delahaye, 2011).
Qantas has also evidently showed the data gathering stage of the investigation. The first is the observation component which can be seen through progress evaluations were conducted on a regular basis which allows management to get a clear view of their workers competencies through their observation of regular evaluations which are mentionedabove. Additionally Qantas links leadership behaviours and skills to reduction in injuries as an observation as they want to know how leadership can change their behaviour to help out their employees. (Delahaye,2005).Qantas has made an assessment centre to gather information so it is easily analysed which is part of the investigation phase of HRDNI. Another type of assessment centre that Qantas has achieved is through managers and making reports and giving it to executive committee. For the critical incident technique part of the investigation phase, Qantas has created a succession of workshops with every employee ranging from the managers to the top brass of the organisation.(Qantas, 2012).Here they are able to critically assess their performance and give them advice on how to manage their team and how to keep the motivation and morale high.(Sambrook, 2009).
The design phase is the last phase to talk about. This phase is basically the development of training programs for current and future development. These training programs must meet Qantas’s organisational needs and needs to be strategical at the same time. (Blanchard and Thacker, 2009). This phase is similar to the investigation phase because it has learning outcomes as well.(Sambrook, 2009). Employee development is crucial for Qantas. It is possible that employee development could bring on problems such as managing diversity and succession planning.(Noe, 2009).
Qantas has demonstrated each phase in an efficient manner. These issues were issues relating to management re-engineering, the adult learning principles involved, the HRDNI phase, the investigation phase and the design phase. Qantas takes a lot of pride and commitment when it comes to their customers. Qantas is often associated with being the“Spirit of Australia” and through seeing Qantas’ motivation to succeed even through such a tough time, it is safe to see , Qantas will be trying not to go anywhere in the near future.
References
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Delahaye, B.L., (2011). Human Resource Development: Managing Learning and Knowledge Management, 3rd edition, Prahran, Tilde University Press
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Ryan, P. (2012) Hundreds of Qantas jobs expected to go. [online] Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-16/qantas-jobs-under-review/3833032 [Accessed: 28 Apr 2013].
Sakai, C. (2013) Adult Learning in the Workplace. [online] Available at: http://www.think-training.com/adult-learning-in-the-workplace/ [Accessed: 28 Apr 2013].
Sambrook, S. (2009) Critical HRD: a concept analysis. Personnel Review, 1 (38), p.61-73. Available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=0048-3486&volume=38&issue=1&articleid=1757531&show=pdf [Accessed: 28 Apr 2013].
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