Understanding Organizations and the Role of Human Resources

Learning and development (L&D) is one of the functions of the human resource department and plays an important role towards attaining sustainable performances. The L&D activities improve the quality of human resources, thus, promoting workforce performances and implementation of strategies for organizations. With the recent developments, the L&D function in many organizations faces challenges of downsizing or abolishment as a way of reducing costs. These actions could have adverse impacts on the organization’s strategy as well as on the managers and staff making it necessary to retain the function in an organization. This essay is a report and aims at providing support for retaining the L&D function in an organization. It will explain how learning and development activities support the organization’s strategy as well as the ways in which the learning and development professionals support managers and their staff.

The activities of the L&D function offer undeniable support to the strategy of the organization by aligning the workforce capabilities to the strategic needs. The L&D function helps in recruitment practices in the organization in efforts to ensure that the workers hired have the desired qualifications to implement the organization’s strategy (Jackson et al, 2009, p271). The L&D identifies the training and development needs for the organization and matches them with qualifications of new employees. This increases the effectiveness of the human resource department in selecting persons that could successfully implement the organization’s strategy with support of training programs available. The function, thus, helps the organization recruit highly relevant and competent persons in accordance with the organization’s strategy.