By the end of this unit a student will be able to:
Analyse employee knowledge, skills and behaviours required by HR professionals.
Analyse the factors to be considered when implementing and evaluating inclusive learning and development to drive sustainable business performance.
Apply knowledge and understanding to the ways in which high-performance working (HPW) contributes to employee engagement and competitive advantage.
Evaluate ways in which performance management, collaborative working and effective communication can support high-performance culture and commitment.
LO1 Analyse employee knowledge, skills and behaviours required by HR professionals
Continuing professional development (CPD):
What does this mean? How do we engage in CPD?
How and why should CPD be recorded and evaluated?
Frameworks for CPD:
As a means to structure CPD activities and to provide opportunities for reflection and evaluation.
Reflective learning:
Consider this as a philosophy and a concept. Using reflective learning to gain a deeper and objective insight into levels of performance in comparison to levels of expectation.
Feedback for learning:
Using feedback as part of the learning cycle where feedback informs reflection which in turn informs action.
LO2 Analyse the factors to be considered when implementing and evaluating inclusive learning and development to drive sustainable business performance
Supporting organisational and individual learning:
Learning should be focused on strategic and tactical goals and informed by, for example, GAP analysis or a skills evaluation.
Consider how learning is determined and implemented.
The learning organisation:
The use of formal and informal learning across an organisation to develop individual, team and organisational skill sets.
Training or development:
Training as a one-off event or series of activities is different to development which has a more protracted timescale and builds on the skills and knowledge gained during training. Should organisations focus on training, development or both?
The learning cycle:
Recognising that learning is continuous through the use of learning cycle theories developed by Kolb, Honey and Mumford and Lewin.
Barriers to learning:
Recognising the various environmental, physical, psychological and cognitive barriers and how to overcome them.
Essential Unit Contents
LO3 Apply knowledge and understanding to the ways in which highperformance working (HPW) contributes to employee engagement and competitive advantage
High-performance working (HPW):
As a concept, philosophy and approach to developing and supporting strategy development, competitive advantage and improving employee relations.
HPW organisations:
What characterises a HPW organisation (HPWO)?
How is this beneficial to employees and the employer?
What barriers may exist to HPW?
High-performance HRM practice:
How are the two related?
Which informs which?
What impact does the desire to achieve HPW impact of HR practices?
HPW and external stakeholders:
How will HPW be perceived and viewed by internal and external stakeholders?
Partnerships in a HPWO:
Consider who will be able to support HPW in an organisation? The use of HPW champions to act as catalysts. How do you sell the concept of HPW to those who will be facilitating this?
LO4 Evaluate ways in which performance management, collaborative working and effective communication can support high-performance culture and commitment
Performance management (PM):
As a concept and a process.
What constitutes effective PM?
How does effective PM inform learning and development at the organisational, team and individual level?
Differences in PM systems.
Organisational culture:
How this can be both a facilitator or barrier to effective PM.
The use of internal collaboration to deliver effective PM.
Transformation process:
Use PM to transform organisations. How this is achieved would depend on factors such as scale and size of the organisation, its geographic dispersal and competing challenges. The latter could be the requirement to remain strong in the market, to make a profit or to meet customer expectations during a period of transformation.
The developmental approach to PM:
Separating development from evaluation where the developmental approach considers stages in development and how these are achieved through the setting of criteria, the imposition of systems and an incremental approach to achieving developmental aims.
The Assignment
Read carefully the instructions before attempting any of the questions. The assignment is to be addressed with reference to the scenario addressing learning outcome 1 to 4. To ensure effective and quality assessment, learners will be assessed using different mode of assessments.
Scenario Task 1 (Covering LO1):
The organisations around the world are becoming more and more focused and directly dependent on human resources professionals, their professional skills, etc. Additionally, HR professionals lead teams of skilled individuals for successful implementation of a HR development campaign by creating value for the organisations in order to create value for the sustainable development of organisations.
Today’s HR professionals must be able to create sustainable value and managing teams of highly motivated professional individuals and their contribution to their respective organisations.
You have been shortlisted by a leading PLC organisation; choose an organisation of your choice, for a position of “Assistant Manager HR Development”. As part of the recruitment process, you are required to create a development portfolio which shows your ‘own’ learning progress and acquisition of key skills. The portfolio should include evidence for the planning and monitoring of progress towards the achievement of personal and professional objectives.
You are to produce a portfolio containing the following documents:
Skills and attributes analysis required by HR professionals, based on a range of different roles within an organisation.
Personal SWOT analysis.
Detailed & coherent Personal development plan based on the SWOT analysis for a one of the job roles.
Reflective statement.
The submission is in the form of a portfolio. This should be written in a concise, formal business style using 1.5 spacing and font size 12.
All work must be supported with research and referenced using the Harvard referencing system.
Provide a bibliography using the Harvard referencing system. The recommended word limit is 1,000–1,500 words, although you may not be penalised for exceeding the total word limit.
