EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT AND COMPANY PERFORMANCE

A Critical Analysis Of The Correlation Between Employee Development And Company Performance

Table of Contents

1 Introduction3

2 Aspect 13

2.1 (Sub-aspect 1 of Aspect 1)4

2.2 (Sub-aspect 2 of Aspect 1)4

3 (Aspect 2)5

3.1 (Sub-aspect 1 of Aspect 2)6

3.2 (Sub-aspect 2 of Aspect 2)7

4 Conclusion8

Bibliography9

A Critical Analysis Of The Correlation Between Employee Development And Company Performance

1 Introduction

Over the last two decades, the pace of change within companies has grown ever faster, and the global competitive pressures have become ever more acute. This study focuses on two trends that stand out from this period. First, companies repeatedly say 'employees are our greatest asset', shorthand for a series of initiatives around skills, motivation, involvement and empowerment. Second, they have tried to rediscover a sense of purpose, expressed in statements of corporate mission and values - an effort to focus on the 'corporate glue' at a time when they are hollowing out and reengineering themselves, often through dramatic and disruptive reorganisations. Within companies, those charged with managing both these aspects - whether Human Resources (HR) managers, Corporate Community Involvement (CCI) professionals or the many managers in line functions - are grappling with some apparently contradictory trends. (David Halley 1999 Pp. 113-115.)

2 Aspect 1

When redundancies are announced, the share price goes up. Despite embracing wider social responsibilities, overt criticism of corporations is mounting in some quarters, while simple scepticism reigns in many others. So a group of companies came together in this study to try to make sense of these trends and find the linkage between them. Many personnel managers see pride in the company and building a sense of common values between employee and employee as the 'Holy Grail' of human resource management. At the same time, many in corporate community involvement think their activities can have at least as big an impact on employee attitudes and on their behaviour at work as on reputation among external audiences. To work towards this answer, nine companies - BT, Centrica, KPMG, Levi Strauss Europe, The Littlewoods Organisation, NatWest (now part of The Royal Bank of Scotland), PricewaterhouseCoopers, United Utilities and Zurich - came together to commission research from The Corporate Citizenship Company, working with MORI.

2.1 (Sub-aspect 1 of Aspect 1)

As regards employees, such responsible behaviour encompasses a broad range of operational issues including fair pay, a safe workplace, equal opportunities and the promotion of diversity, and support for employee development. It also encompasses a range of activities called corporate community involvement (CCI), that is engaging with local communities, special interest groups and issues of concern in society, above and beyond the day-to-day operations, often working in partnership with not-for-profit organisations. Employees frequently play a central part in this activity, by volunteering their time and skills, fundraising or donating through the payroll. Much measurement in human resource management is imprecise and limited. Assessment of training, for example, usually concentrates on the benefit to the individual in skills gained, not the impact on the employer when (or if) the skills are deployed at ...