Competing in an ever-changing world.

The downturn in the employment market over the last 18 months has given companies the chance to focus internally on structure and processes, making their organizations more efficient in an effort to increase revenue and profits. With the increasing pressures employees face today, the nature of the human resource function is constantly evolving. Through strategic human resource management (HRM) and human resource development (HRD), companies must focus on their core knowledge base: their workers.

The link between training and HRM--which is concerned with overall patterns of recruitment, employment and the outflow of people--is critical.

The identification of improvements through training can be divided into three distinct levels:

Organizational Level: What are the weaknesses in the organization? What training is required and for whom? How will training affect the organization's performance?

Task Analysis Level: Analyze what training would increase performance and deepen understanding. Identify areas of weakness.

Person Analysis Level: Who needs to be trained? Does each employee need to attend all training sessions? Look at each member of the staff and analyze where each would benefit from skills. Seek to identify all motivating factors.

People within the workforce must be managed, motivated and retained. Through effective recruitment policies and internal hiring processes focusing on not only hard skills but soft skills as well. Organizations can capture the top percentile of talent to enhance and develop existing teams and bring new ideas and creativity to an organization. By investing in the development of people, companies may realize that they can compete more effectively in this fast-paced and ever-evolving world.

Linda Strazdins is a Director at E.S.I. Inc. You can contact her at [e-mail], or call [phone].