Assessment of The Effect of Human Resource Development on Performance of Academic Staff
Chapter One
Introduction
1.1 Background to the Study
Human Resource development also known as
staff development can be described as the process of job enrichment that has a
mechanism to motivate an employee to accept and play challenging organizational
tasks. Human resource development refers to employee development programmes put
in place to improve value of employee after joining the organization. It
includes education, training and development, which involves giving employee
experience in order to improve learning geared towards proper preparation for
job performance. Most new employees are not certain about their roles and
responsibilities, hence, job demands and employees‟ capabilities must be
balanced through human resource development. Human resource development
improves the skill of the individuals in the said role and prepares them for
future responsibilities, and such development pays dividends to the employee
and the organization; the personal and career goals of the staff are advanced,
adding to their abilities and values to the employer. This was further stressed
by Becker (1963), in his Human Capital Theory where he argued that, investment
in education and training will improve employees‟ knowledge and skill and at
the same time enhance performance. On the other hand, performance tends to
reflect on how well an employee performs to achieve organizational objectives.
There are different types of organizations with production of different goods
and services. University is one of the organizations which develop societal
human capital and also render services to the community. Some of the functions
of the university system in any society aside teaching is development of new
knowledge, research and community services. These functions cannot be
accomplished without proper planning of academic staff development. Building
solid academic staff programmes influences the realization of the university
mission statement. The Nigerian University system significantly emphasizes
research and dissemination of knowledge as part of its mission statement. This
was made obvious in the ordinance passed by the Nigerian Legislative Council in
1948, which stated that the mission of funding their first university
(University of Ibadan) was to advance learning and research and to provide
instruction in all branches of liberal education (Mellamby, 1974 in Owo, 2014).
Also, the 1954 ordinance according to Bingilar & Etale (2014) identified
the need to promote research and advancement of science as one of the main objectives
of the university education. This implies that research and dissemination of
relevant research result remain one of the parameters for assessment.
Therefore, development efforts enable the university to assume these roles and
greater responsibilities. Such development programmes in the university system
includes; seminars, workshops, conferences and Advanced studies. Managing human
resource in the schools is not an easy task. For a staff to be able to give
learning instruction efficiently and effectively for a desired output, he or
she must have the teaching skills, knowledge and teaching methods. Not
following the required teaching methods, one may leave some gaps in the
accepted teaching procedures, hence, difficulty in realizing the objectives or
not realizing them at all. It is an established fact that knowledge is not
static, but dynamic. For this reason, knowledge acquired today can become
obsolete tomorrow, thus development becomes important. Similarly, development
helps to recharge the “lecturer’s intellectual battery” with new electrolytes
of knowledge and ideas. Which implies that after a lecturer has been given
necessary training in an educational institution where he is employed, he
develops on the job in order to acquire new knowledge, skills and abilities
which ensure their usefulness to the university and at the same time meeting
personal desire for advancement.
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