Official training programs are an integral part of hiring new employees and integrating them into

a company (Gesme & Towle, 2010). Training is improving the knowledge, skills and attitudes

of employees for the short-term, term, particular to a specific job or task (Ratha, 2016). Any

effective company has training in place to make sure employees can perform his or her job.

During the recruitment and selection process, the right person should be hired to begin with. But

even the right person may need training in how the company does things.

Lack of training can result in lost productivity, lost customers, and poor relationships between

employees and managers. It can also result in dissatisfaction, which means retention problems

and high turnover. All these end up being direct costs to the organization. In a study performed

by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) they found that 41 percent of

employees at companies with poor training, planned to leave within the year, but in companies

with excellent training, only 12 percent planned to leave. Therefore, in order to reduce some

costs associated with not training or under training, development of training programs can help

with some of the risk.

Two of the legal implications that a lack of a training program can pose to the organizations

include: prosecution for workplace safety, sexual harassment.

Prosecution for Workplace Safety

According OSHA (2015), Training programs help ensure that safe jobs are no accident. Safe jobs

exist because employers make a conscious decision, each and every day of the year, to make

protecting workers a priority in the workplace. When this effort includes participation from
workers, workplace injury and illness prevention programs are improved because workers can

identify missing safety procedures, make recommendations for changes and help ensure a safe

workplace (OSHA, 2015). They further stated that in the Occupational Safety and Health Act of

1970, employers are responsible for providing a health and safety workplace, one that is free

from hazardous chemicals and accident-free. Workers should feel safe, especially where

hazardous chemicals or working with dangerous equipment may be involved. Proper protective

equipment and procedures should be used to minimize any injuries.

In light of this, organizations should provide training where necessary to prevent any likely

occurrence of incidents. Failure to provide a safe environment for your employees may result a

fine or have the business temporarily or permanently shutdown, depending on the magnitude of

the violation (OSHA, 2015). This is something many businesses can't afford. If an organization

refuses to meet health and safety standards, then the company will lose business, money, and

customers.

Sexual Harassment

According to Mackinnon (1979) sexual harassment is unwelcome verbal, visual, or physical

conduct of a sexual nature that is severe or pervasive and affects working conditions or creates a

hostile work environment. Workplace sexual harassment is costly to workers and organizations

and is legally prohibited in more than 75 countries (Hersch, 2015). Sexual harassment costs to

the organizations include increased turnover and absenteeism, lower individual and group

productivity, loss of managerial time to investigate complaints, and legal expenses, including

litigation costs and paying damages to victims (Hersch, 2015).

According to Hersch (2015) the study of sexual harassment of US government workers estimated

the costs of sexual harassment over a two-year period at $327 million, including job turnover,

sick leave, and individual and workgroup productivity, with 61% of the total cost due to reduced

workgroup productivity. The reduction in individual and workgroup productivity is estimated to

cost organizations an average of $22,500 per person affected by sexual harassment according to

a meta-analysis of 41 US studies with nearly 70,000 observations.

One of the approaches that organizations can take to reduce sexual harassment involve the

promulgation of a strong policy prohibiting sexual harassment, workplace training, and a

complaints process that protects workers from retaliation (Hersch, 2015).

Human Resource Development

According to (Werner & DeSimone, 2012) human resource development (HRD) can be defined

as a set of systematic and planned activities designed by an organization to provide its members

with the opportunities to learn necessary skills to meet current and future job demands. HRD

seeks to develop people’s “knowledge, expertise, productivity, and satisfaction, whether for

personal or group/team gain, or for the benefit of an organization, community, nation, or,

ultimately, the whole of humanity (p. 322).” HRD activities should begin when an employee

joins an organization and continue throughout his or her career, regardless of whether that

employee is an executive or a worker on an assembly line.

The purpose of HRD is to enhance individual performance and improve organizational

effectiveness and productivity (Alhalboosi, 2018). Now a days, HRD is considered as the key

to higher productivity, better relations and greater profitability for any organization. The

functions of Human Resource Development includes: Organization development, Career

development and training and development.

Organization Development

According to Werner & DeSimone (2012) organization development (OD) is defined as the

process of enhancing the effectiveness of an organization and the well-being of its members

through planned interventions that apply behavioral science concepts. Organization development

is a responds to change a complex educational strategy intended to change the benefits, attitudes,

values and structure of organizations so that they can better adopt to new technologies, markets,
challenges and dizzying rate of change itself. Organization development fosters organizational

change, growth, and development initiatives.

The Relationship between HRD and OD

The relationship between human resource development and organization development is that

HRD plays the role of a change agent. Human Resource Roles in Change Ulrich in his book

“Human Resource Champions” states that “change happens” (Ulrich, 1997, p. 151) and

considers HR professionals as change agents in that process, where they make sure that

initiatives are defined, developed, and delivered in a timely manner, and that processes are

stopped, started, and simplified, and that fundamental values within the organization are debated

and appropriately adapted to changing business conditions. Ulrich stated that while the

intellectual commitment to change is easy to make, the practical efforts involved in change are

difficult. Successful HR change agents replace resistance with resolve, planning with results and

fear of change with excitement about its possibilities. On the other hand, Maxwell & Watson

(2006) argue that business partnership between human resource specialists and the employees

have emerged as the dominant model for human resource operations within organizations. They

outline the role of human resource experts as working alongside other members of the

organization to help them reach their goals by crafting strategies to maximize productivity

through alignment of corporate resources to these goals. Moreover, the human resource experts’

involvements in successful change management offer several benefits to organizations namely:

1. It enables them to forge closer relationships with other managers in the organization which

promotes a partnership model towards managing employees.

2. It encourages gifted managers to use their initiative and become more involved in day-to-day

workplace management decisions and problems or issues that can be resolved speedily before

they escalate.

Enablers of human resource experts’ involvement in change management include: -

Greater degrees of responsibility and task variation.

- Human resource information systems.

- Close relationships with employees.

- Formation of strategic partnerships.

Benedict (2007) asserts that “change management leaders must promote awareness and

understanding of the change initiative to influence employees’ willingness to embrace the

change. Therefore, Managers and HR professionals must be knowledgeable of the change

process, so they can fully understand this framework and plan change based on it, also they must

have compatible leadership skills to ensure the smooth transition of state, thus, leading to

reduction of resistance and increasing productivity.