UNIVERSITY OF VAASA FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY Shadab Iqbal EXPLORING THE PRACTICE OF HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT IN FINNISH MUNICIPALITY ORGANIZATION Case of Vaasa City Organization Master‟s Thesis in Public Management VAASA 2013 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ABSTRACT 7 1. INTRODUCTION 9 1.1. Background 10 1.2. Purpose and conceptual framework of study 11 1.3. Research questions 12 1.4. Delimitation 12 1.5. Limitations of the Study 13 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 14 2.1. Conceptual framework 14 2.2. Human Resource Development 19 2.2.1. Theories in Human Resource Development 20 2.2.2. Definitions of Human Resource Development 21 2.3. Human Resource Development Functions 23 2.3.1. Training and Development 25 2.3.2. Organization Development 29 2.3.3. Career Development 30 2.3.4. HRD program evaluation 33 2.3.5. Models and frameworks of evaluation 34 2.3.6. Barriers to Training Evaluation 35 2.4. Summary 37 3. METHODOLOGY 39 3.1. Overview of Research Design 39 3.3. Municipality of Vaasa: a case for HRD research 40 3.4. Data collection and respondents demographic information 41 3.5. Instrumentation 45 3.6. Data Analysis 45 3 4. EMPIRICAL FINDINGS 47 4.1. HRD systems and profile of Vaasa city organisation 47 4.2. Training and development activities in Vaasa city organization 47 4.2.1. Training evaluation activities in Vaasa city organization 54 4.3. Organization Development activities within Vaasa city organisation 59 4.3.1. Effectiveness of OD activities in city organizations 66 4.4. Career development activities within city organisation 69 4.5. Barriers to use HRD in Vaasa city organization (VCO) 72 4.6. The suggestions by local HR professionals to improve HRD in city organisation 78 5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 86 REFERENCES 93 APPENDICES 99 Appendix 1. Interview cover letter (English version) 99 Appendix 1.1. Interview cover letter (Finnish version) 100 Appendix 2. Interview questionnaire (English and Finnish version) 101 Appendix 3. Interviewees‟ Pseudonyms and date of interview 103 LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Interdisciplinary bodies of knowledge of human resource development. 20 Table 2. Human resource development programs and interventions 24 Table 3. Training versus development: a comparison. 25 Table 4. HRD Evaluation Models/Frameworks. 35 Table 5. Descriptive statistics related to the respondents, their organizations and work experience. 43 Table 6. Interviewees‟ Pseudonyms, information related to their organizations, current positions and job roles. 44 4 Table 7. Type of Training offered by Vaasa City Organisation (VCO): Respondents (n=12). 48 Table 8. Training approaches used by Vaasa City Organisation (CO) indicated by HRD professionals (n=12). 51 Table 9. Learning methods used by Vaasa City Organisation for implementing training activities (n=12). 52 Table 10. Types of training media used by Vaasa City Organisation for implementing trainings activities (n=12). 52 Table 11. Methods used by Service Organisations (SOs) to evaluate training and development programs (n=12) 54 Table 12. Use of methods for evaluating outcome (level 4) of training by COs 56 Table 13. Service organizations identified their focus of training evaluation in order to determine program outcomes (n=12). 57 Table 14. Type of Organisational Development activities by Vaasa City Organisation (n=12) 60 Table 15. Type of OD activities identified by respondents (n=12) as to be effective or ineffective within Finnish City organisations. 67 Table 16. Type of career development activities offered to staff by Vaasa City Organisation (n=12) 70 Table 17. Barriers to HRD activities within Service organisations identified by respondents (n=12) 73 Table 18. City HRD professionals‟ suggestions on how to improve their role and HRD practices within their organisations in future (n=12) 79 5 6 7 UNIVERSITY OF VAASA Faculty of Philosophy Author: Shadab Iqbal Master’s Thesis: Exploring the practice of human resource development in Finnish municipality organization: Case of Vaasa City Organization Degree: Master of Administrative Sciences Major Subject: Public Management Supervisor: Ari Salminen Year of Graduation: 2013 Number of Pages: 103 ABSTRACT: This qualitative study explored the practice of human resource development (HRD) in Vaasa city organization (VCO) including its five service organizations (Health, Social, Education, General administration and Technical services) to develop clear understanding of their HRD infrastructure and nature of activities occurring within them. The purpose was to produce HRD profile of a Vaasa city organization that clearly describe occurrence of activities related to all three functions of HRD described by Mclagan (1989); Training and Development, Organizational Development and Career Development. In addition, this study investigated the kind of challenges HRD professionals are facing in implementation of practices by identifying the major barriers to use HRD programs in VCO. Study posed a question to local HRD professionals to obtain key suggestions which can potentially lead to improve HRD in VCO to achieve performance, workforce capacity in attempt to deal with challenges related to human resources posed by changes in workforce demographics (e.g. work force aging and their continual mass retirements). HRD professionals described a potential role of HRD functions in integrating New Municipality Vision 2017 which aims to improve performance of local governments by increasing their financial and workforce efficiency to provide quality services to community. The conceptual framework of this study was based on contingency perspective of HRD proposed by Kuchinke (2003: 299). 12 HRD professionals were interviewed who were responsible for planning and organizing HRD activities in five different Service organizations (SOs) of Vaasa city. Qualitative data collected from respondents was used to advance empirical analysis, findings derived from analysis were used to answer all the research questions. The findings suggested that SOs were engaged differently in conducting range of HRD programs on regular basis. However, the HRD activities including planning process, nature and execution of those HRD activities reflected similarities among them in most cases. Interviewees from different SOs reported generic and specific occurrence of HRD activities by exhibiting a fairly comprehensive perspective towards some HRD practices while opportunistic approach towards others in Vaasa city organization. SOs indicated top three barriers to use and implement HRD programs, they ranked lack of integrated use of HRD functions as top barrier fallowed by llimited staff and expertise to conduct HRD activities second highest, these two were identified to be the most common barriers hindering the effective implementation of HRD programs. Overall suggestions given by HRD professional of different SOs to advance HRD practices in Vaasa city organization were linked to improve the management of HRD in service units. Due to pro-active workforce planning and city organization‟s HRD policy being aligned with National HRD policy, SOs seem confident to effectively deal with challenges of workforces‟ recruitment, training and development on large scale. KEYWORDS: Human Resource Development (HRD), Human Resource Professionals, Human Resource Development Practices, Vaasa City Organization (VCO), Service Organizations (SOs) 8 9 1. INTRODUCTION In order to maintain economic stability, community wellbeing, service satisfaction and/or to restructure economy, in pursuit of these goals, one of the most important factors is to enhance the performance of local government (LG) which depends on availability of workforce capable of effective management and delivery of public goods and services. In recent years most of large Finnish municipalities (FMs) have undergone merger process with small municipalities (Restructuring Local Government in Finland 2011: 3). Through new municipality 2017 vision, FMs will continue to undergo restructuring until 2017, due to these changes fallowed by high number of workforce retirements within city organisations, local government is facing pressures of recruitment, training and development of its human resource. Reform has brought structural changes to Finnish municipalities as in response to an increased residents demands (e.g. due to aging population and internal migration) for basic, social and welfare services. Human resource Development (HRD) as multi-facet field with its core functions is considered to play a major role in dealing with challenges of training and development specifically while implementing and managing organizational change (such as new municipality vision 2017). In general , knowing the potential and contribution that HRD has to offer through its main functions (training and development, organizational development and career development) in large organizations like city owned service organizations (hospitals, schools and social service etc.) during normal as well as tough times (such e.g. mergers, downsizing, reengineering etc.), to find empirical support for HRD theory and literature, it was very important to identify the role of HRD within Finnish municipalities in implementation of large scale change and incorporation of New municipality vision 2017. Meanwhile in order to do so, first it was necessary to outline HRD profile of Finnish municipality organization. This study vigorously attempted to produce HRD profile of Vaasa city organization (VCO) including its service organizations (SOs) to determine the role of HRD through representation of actual HRD programs used by them and their contributions to key areas (T&D, OD and CD) of organization to deal 10 with the challenges of recruitment, training and development of new employees as senior employees retiring from city organizations every year. Significantly, this study concentrated on the HRD practices in municipality of Vaasa that had also undergone the experience of merger with municipality of Vähänkyrö (Unification of city of Vaasa and the municipality of Vähäkyrö 2011). This study investigated the HRD practices of Vaasa city organization by using contingency framework of HRD proposed by Kuchinke‟s (2003: 299) with combination of Resource based view of organization (Collis & Montgomery 1995: 119). Meanwhile Suggestions proposed by local HRD practitioners to improve HRD programs, deal with HR development challenges and comply with municipality vision 2017 focused on their personal experience of being engaged in HRD programs. 12 HRD practitioners responsible for conducting HRD activities in those city organizations operating in Vaasa responded to this study. 1.1. Background The municipality reform began in 2005 with the introduction of the (PARAS) Project to Restructure Local Government and Services (Restructuring Local Government in Finland 2011: 3). Reform Policy aimed at securing high quality and equality of social and personal customer service all over the country, creating the conditions for strengthening local government finances for the development and operation of the urban expansion and to strengthen the municipal self-government and local democracy. Number of initiatives has been introduced through the PARAS project. The most dramatic change has been the gradual reduction of Finnish municipalities from 415 in 2007 to 336 in 2011 (Kolehmainen 2011: 1-3). The goal of this initiative has been to create a system of governance that will ensure that high-quality services continue to be delivered by local governments in the future. 11 1.2. Purpose and conceptual framework of study The HRD literature indicates that there are few investigations on HRD functions and practices within city owned service organisations (hospitals, social care services, schools etc.), In particular, none have been found which were carried out in Finland. Thus, the primary purpose of this study was to describe the HRD infrastructure of Vaasa city organisation (VCO) to develop clear understanding of its HRD practices and role in responding to its HR needs. The conceptual framework of this study was based on contingency perspective of HRD proposed by kuchike (2003: 299). He argued that HRD is practiced differently in organizations by job-titles responsible for them. These variants in application of HRD practices are result of consciously made decisions by organizations; these choices are likely to be influenced by their unique organizational characteristics (e.g. type of industry, size of staff, type of services and products they provide). Empirical findings were used to support the kuchinke framework that demonstrates the contingent nature of HRD practices. Research premises was Vaasa city as it provided suitable grounds for HRD research, qualitative data was collected through semi structured interviews to outline a HRD profile that represents the type of activities occurring in Vaasa city organisations (VCO), barriers to HRD and future HRD programs in VCO as proposed by local HRD practitioners to improve their effectiveness. The researcher hoped this research facilitate the HRD efforts of VCO in order to deal with HR challenges ( e.g. recruitment and T&D) posed by macro level changes (aging workforce and internal migration from rural to urban areas) , It offers expert analysis and delivers implications that are widespread to other medium-sized municipalities, especially to those which belong to the 2nd largest group of municipalities by size of their population (ranging between 40000-100000) that includes 14 other large municipalities each with city staff of over 4000 employees. 12 1.3. Research questions Based on the information provided by local authorities and practitioners, this research sought to describe (a) the HRD profile of Vaasa city organisation i.e. three main HRD functions (b) local HRD strategy to respond to HR challenges (c) barriers to HRD programs (d) Future HRD preparations and directions for new municipality vision 2017. To guide the investigation and subsequent data analysis, the following research questions were postulated: 1. What are the Human resource development (HRD) systems (Training and development, organisation development, Career development) within Vaasa city organisation (VCO)? Two sub-questions are 2. What are the barriers to HRD in Vaasa city organisation in fallowing activities related to training and development, organisational development and career development? 3. In opinion of local HRD professionals, How HRD practices can be improved within VCO to incorporate new municipalities vision 2017?BUDGETING 1.4. Delimitation Although this study specifically collected data via interviews with HRD professionals responsible for HRD functions in Vaasa city organizations, the implications of results is not only limited to Vaasa municipality, instead their generalization across medium-sized urban municipalities is potential scope of this study. 13 While the primary focus of the study is the HRD systems within municipality so it was necessary to identify the relationship to macro level such as process of restructuring of local municipalities. Since the perception of the interviewees are influenced strongly by the past, present and anticipated context of Finnish municipalities, the interview questions were derived from these contexts. 1.5. Limitations of the Study This study investigates current HRD practices in one municipality while the process of merger of municipalities is co-incidental event at the time of study being conducted, As the restructuring of Finnish local municipalities is underway and will continue in future till 2017, this is beyond the scope of study to discuss the process of merger or role or contribution of HRD programs during the different stages of restructuring. The results of this study were geographically limited to the Vaasa municipality. This study was limited to present time while Vaasa municipality was moving toward incorporating municipality vision 2017 in coming years. Moreover, results of this study are limited to HR or HRD professionals who were involved in HRD programs in local municipality. The results of this study are limited to the instruments used. This study gathered information at a single point in time. The data for this study is all self-reported. 14 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK This chapter is divided into two main sections. The first section introduces the conceptual framework of this study that discusses the contingent HRD framework and its applicability to the study, the second section presents an overview of the human resource development, with review and explanation of its definitions and functions. 2.1. Conceptual framework The conceptual framework of this study was based on contingency perspective of HRD proposed by kuchike (2003: 299-300). Kuchinke argued these organizational factors such as industry (types of services and products), size, structures, and other unique characteristics that are unique to individual organizations influence and shape the HRD practices in these organizations. HRD is used in differently by HRD practitioners that often depend on their personal views and perception of HRD as field, that variance of selecting and implementing different HRD programs highly influenced by organizational factors that vary from one organization to another. The variance in the application of HRD by practitioners is not merely a natural occurrence, but rather a result of purposeful deviation from normative HRD and conscious decision by the organizations to regulate HRD activities in order to implement most adequate preceding programs to meet the organization‟s specific needs. Kuchinke pointed out that variance in HRD activities in organizations; provide bases for exploring empirical support to the argument that HRD practitioners carefully consider specific organizational factors and outline HRD strategy based on value priority criteria that emphasize on which and how to develop a particular human capital while also determining the category of those skills and expertise that are of least priority on the development scale. Kuchinke warned that HRD field tends to be over-generalized if its models and theories were applied a) without empirical support and b) without considering the particular 15 organizational factors, this is very likely to over-emphasize on what should be done in organizations, Instead of presenting what is actually occurring. Three contingency factors that may influence shaping HRD practices in organizations were outlined by Kuchinke (2003: 299-303) include; HRD structure and staffing, HRD services and products; and HRD planning, delivery, and evaluation. HRD structure and staffing refer to key organizational characteristics, including industry/sector (e.g., public/profit/non- profit organizations) and organization size. HRD service and products are the type of actual programs and services offered and provided by the HRD or T&D department in organization. Contrary to the literature that implied that HRD has been widely implemented on different levels of organizations, Support of Empirical research to this argument has been largely absent, reflects that originations based on available resources and value of particular HRD activity, concisely decides how (strategy) and which HRD program is to be implemented to meet its specific needs. The final component of HRD planning, delivery and evaluation refer to the actual implementation and execution of selected HRD models and programs which is result of conscious planning process to choose most effective ways how to apply HRD with its multi facet levels at organization to best meet its specific needs related to training development, production and service delivery. Actual practices reflects the variance of application of HRD in organizations, They simply but purposefully select particular individual or set of HRD activity which are most appropriate to meet their needs, purpose and objectives. Simultaneously, this customization of HRD models and practices to “make a fit” between delivery of HRD product services and organization‟s specific needs also leads to leave out number of HRD activities or steps which are estimated to be ineffective, wasteful in terms of time and money or supposedly unnecessary as better off not implementing or proceeding them by far. Kuchinke further pointed out that selection of development activities out of extensive HRD program list and excluding others or partial execution of some based on how much value is achieved in return after completion of each step of the (whole) process. 16 For instance, Hite and McDonalds‟s (2006: 372) examination of diversity training in large and small organizations found out that size is one of the most common variables in determining the nature of HRD in organization. Large organization appeared to conduct intense and thorough diversity training whereas in contrast most small organizations tend to conduct awareness-only-training and often skip or inadequately conduct need assessment and evaluation the impact of training. Similarly, Flat organizations deem to offer more training activities than career management opportunities, whilst, According to ASTD state of the art industry report (2010: 173) on training evaluation, Even large organization mostly do not conduct program evaluation on Kirkpatrick‟s (2006: 172-173) all four levels for many different reasons (e.g. lack of expertise and time or it‟s not required by a funding source etc.). These fallowing influences, such as standardized regulations set by city or state, size, needs and resources may shape common practices that based on value system shared by the group of HRD practitioners or individual working in HRD capacity in industry, organization or department. Empirical research found that personal differences (education level, job level, nationality), six different HRD value orientations and organizational characteristics influenced how HRD practitioners perceived investing in HRD programs, employee development and HRD‟s contribution towards society and organizations (Bates and Chen 2005: 350). Resource based view (RVB) of firm was used as foundation for analyzing and evaluating kuchinke‟s contingent perspective of HRD, RVB outlined an analytical premises to find empirical support for kuchinke‟s contingent framework. RVB suggests that organization pro-actively categorize its resources top-to-bottom on the basis of their uniqueness and level of demand to run all the necessary operations, simultaneously organization should continue to develop its resources through outlining a priority criteria to largely invest in those groups and individuals who offer distinctive capabilities and expertise that has high value for organization for its survival and having competitive advantage (Collis & Montgomery 1995: 142; Sloman 2003: 115). As organizations differ from one another in 17 their individual characteristics (type of industry they operate in, size, structure), they also vary in their level of resources and potential external opportunities available to them. Resource based view suggest that origination‟s decision of investing in particular development of skills and expertise based on their demands for organization and availability in external environment in term of how quickly they can be replaced, appropriateness in terms of value (economic value) to organization. Organizations vary depending on these fallowing factors a) demands for type of skills and expertise to produce unique goods and service b) availability of external opportunities in operative environment in which they operate (Collis & Montgomery 1995: 143). Snell, Lepak and Yondut (1999: 704) argued that investing in intellectual capital is a flexible criteria that should be based on value (demand and appropriateness) and uniqueness (scarcity) of individuals to organizations, for example organization should spend less on development of employees who offer set of common skills and expertise which are widely available in the external environment and can easily be replaced or outsourced. On the other hand, it‟s wise to investment more in development of human capital that represents high (demand) and distinct value for organization, as a consequence, that stock of exceptional human talent which is more instrumental to competitive advantage should be managed differently than others. Most large Organization conduct training activities on regular basis for employees on all levels, working in different jobs, however development activities are focused on those individual employees and groups that offer skills and expertise that are unique and highly required by organizations. Decisions regarding whom to offer development opportunity and how much efforts are to be spent are tied up with cost effectiveness and return of value (of some sort) to organization. For instance, city organizations ( Hospitals, schools or technical services) offer basic (orientation) training to nearly all employees to prepare them for their immediate jobs, in similar ways they prefer to offer only basic training to employees working in jobs such as cleaning , basic city maintenance (Gardening tasks e.g. cutting grass) or least qualified jobs that require short training and minimum work experience 18 (information desk receptionist , kitchen helper or personal assistants to a patient or elderly). It‟s easy to find replacement for these job categories due to large availability of workforce with common skills and short training required to perform these tasks. While in comparison to skilled technicians and nurses whose jobs require a certain level of qualifications, skills and experience which are difficult to replace in term of their uniqueness and shortage, organization finds it wiser to invest in development of that group of employees to maintain the supply of special skills required at all costs for the uninterrupted business operations (Production) or service delivery. In comparison to most popular „systematic training model‟ which is embedded in the „Instructional System Design” (ISD) that has been largely criticized by HRD new-age empirical researchers. Gordon & Zemke (2000: 135) contend and criticize ISD model as it being too slow to meet today‟s training needs, conventional, if used as directed, it produce bad results by emphasizing very little on evaluation and it clings to the wrong world view. it‟s viewed as normative model in literature, this model has gained popularity and it‟s use is labeled as best practices without having debate and empirical support on its side (Sloman 2003: 26). Due to less relevancy of systematic model of training to large organizations, this study used contingent HRD framework proposed by kuchinke as to be more appropriate for this study since city organization is consist of public service units which are not only different from profit organizations and other non-profit organizations but also from one another in term of service delivery and range of other organizational variables. These public sector organizations employed by city (e.g. hospitals, social services, schools etc. ) are regulated and managed by the city government and central city administrative office, they all certainly share the similar righteous purpose of delivering low-cost but quality public services and goods to the citizens. However besides that common purpose and value system which they share which is back bone of public sector organizations, they are indeed different from one another in terms of their organizational size, the type of services they provide to citizens and unique workforce consist of individuals and groups hold specific set of skills and expertise (Teachers and 19 subject specialists, doctors & nurses, engineers and technicians etc.). Since, These PSO‟s due to their unique organizational characteristics, workforce consist of individuals from various professions and their specific needs related to development, these organizations also incline to differ in their HRD practices. These Finnish Public sector organizations (PSOs) are dependent upon funding from city government to provide range of public services (Health & Social care, education etc.) to the municipalities‟ inhabitants. Though they are regulated city and managed by central city admin department, mostly they independently plan and organize their HRD activities according to their own needs. Presumably, Vaasa city‟s public service units are uniquely engaged in conducting HRD activities independently, however HRD profiles focusing on type of activities occurring in these service units and differences among them has been largely absent in the empirical research literature. This study attempted to explore and produce the HRD profile of city organization including its service units (representing how commonly or differently these public service units are engaged in HRD activities. Exploring the variance of application of HRD among PSO‟s through representing occurrence of HRD will complement and strengthen the contingency framework of HRD that would help reduce the overgeneralization and over-emphasize of HRD. The findings provided help support and expand the argument provided Kuchinke‟s (2003: 299-300.) in the contingent HRD framework combined with Resource based view (RBV). 2.2. Human Resource Development This section is organized in two parts. The first part provides an overview of theories in HRD. The second part discusses the definitions of the HRD and its core functions. This study included all three areas (functions) of HRD; Training and development (T&D), organizational development (OD) and Career development (CD). 20 2.2.1. Theories in Human Resource Development HRD as inter-disciplinary field has many homes, its philosophy and efforts are focused on development of individuals, groups and whole organization. There has been on-going debate on the parameters of the field due to the common use of the term HRD since 1980s. In this respect; several HRD researchers have provided the underlying theories of HRD over the course of time. Jacobs (1990: 66) identified that HRD is integration of various bodies of knowledge (as shown in Table 1): education, systems theory, economics, psychology, and organizational behavior are theoretical foundations of HRD. Table 1. Interdisciplinary bodies of knowledge of human resource development (Jacobs 1990: 66-68). Bodies of knowledge Education System Theory Economic theory Psychology theory Organizational behaviors Contributions 1.Adult learning theory 2.Methods and media 3.World of work orientation 1.System analysis 2.Things as systems 3.Systems management & control 1.Macro economic level 2.Micro economic level 3.Mega economic level 1.Goals, incentives, feedback, reinforcement 2.Career counseling 3.Person environment interaction 1.Structure 2.Climate 3.Culture 4.Group dynamics Relevant theory Adult learning theory General system theory Chaos theory Features Theory Human capital theory Scarce resource theory Sustained resource theory Gestalt theory Behavioral theory Cognitive theory Compensation theory Motivation theory Leadership theory 21 Because of its interdisciplinary nature, HRD can be viewed from several different perspectives (Jacobs 1990: 67). Jacob argued that these bodies of knowledge interact in complex ways to form the discipline called HRD, each of these fundamental disciplines have made a different and unique contribution to HRD. Some researchers (Chalofsky & Lincoln 1983: 205; Harrison and Kessels 2004: 205) have identified employee learning in the workplace as the core discipline of HRD. From another perspective, it has been suggested that systems theory provides the most logical underlying structure for HRD (Jacobs 1989: 68, Swanson & Holton 2001: 16). Furthermore, Ruona and Lynham (1999: 207) proposed that human capital theory can help the field of HRD by defining its “intended purpose” is to enhance learning, human potential and high performance in work-related, it views people as the most valuable assets by developing adults‟ work-based knowledge, skills and expertise to increase individuals or groups‟ productivity for the benefits of organization. 2.2.2. Definitions of Human Resource Development Differences in perspective also lead to different definitions of HRD (Swanson & Holton: 2001: 4). HRD researchers have proposed various definitions of HRD, suggesting their own perspective. McLean and McLean (2001: 322) proposed a global definition of HRD and defined HRD as “Any process or activity that, either initially or over the long term, has the potential to develop adults „work-based 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”. Furthermore, McLean (2004: 269) proposed the notion of National HRD (NHRD) which underlines the idea that (national) context should be considered while implementing HRD models and theories to an organization. He argued that some countries have recognized the links between developing human resources and national productivity and performance, which is also reflected in the definitions of HRD. 22 Hamlin and Stewart (2011: 205-206) present a definitional review and comparative study of HRD definitions. The continued debate on the definitions of HRD can be captured by a major perspective: 1) learning versus performance. Learning versus performance: In defining HRD, there has been a debate on learning versus performance. Some HRD researchers (Jacobs & Washington 2003: 351; Swanson, 1995: 206; Swanson & Holton, 2001: 4) believed that the primary purpose of HRD is performance improvement. Similarly, Swanson and Holton (2001: 4) defined HRD as “a process for developing and unleashing human expertise through organization development and personnel training and development for the purpose of improving performance”. The performance can be targeted to the levels of the individual, work-process, and organization. The performance paradigm of HRD mainly focuses on improvement of performance, but it appears to consider work place learning as intervention for acquiring competencies to improve employee performance and organizational effectiveness (Jacob & Park 2002: 4; Yorks 2005: 205). In contrast, other researchers (Stewart 1999: 206; Watkins & Marsick, 1995: 2) believe that individual development and growth through learning enhances organizational effectiveness, primarily emphasizing individual learning as an outcome. For example, Watkins and Marsick (1995: 2) defined HRD as “The field of the study and practice responsible for the fostering of a long-term work-related learning capacity at the individual, group, and organizational level of organizations”. In addition, Hamlin (2004: 206-207) argued that intended purpose of HRD is also to bring about organizational learning, change and development, the integrated use of HRD functions and purpose of learning intervention is to improve individual and organizational effectiveness through facilitating a planned change. Supporter of performance paradigm provide a critique by arguing that if the field of HRD focuses only on learning or individuals, then it is likely to end up being marginalized as a staff support group. 23 However, Swanson and Holton (2001: 145) point out that whether the focus of HRD is defined in terms of learning or performance, both views hold the following concepts in common: • A value for learning and development as a way to individual growth • The idea that organizations can be improved through learning and development activities • A commitment to people and human potential • A deep desire to see people grow as individuals • A passion for learning 2.3. Human Resource Development Functions Although everyone does not agree about the definitive boundaries of HRD within HR, most HRD scholars agree on the following as the three central components of HRD: organization development, career development, and training and development (Nadler and Wiggs 1986: 5; McLagan 1989). Table 2, is a descriptive listing numerous programs and other components that might be included in the domain of human resource development. Mclagan (1989: 50) identified fallowing three main HRD functions: Training and Development (T&D): Training and educational programs that provide the competencies to meet current and future work expectations Organization Development: systematic planning for change in human and structural processes to facilitate change among individuals, groups, and organizations Career Development: educational and experiential programs to meet the needs of organizations and appeal to the interests of individuals 24 Table 2. Human resource development programs and interventions (DeSimone and Werner 2012: 224-512). Employee Development Organization Development Career Development Types of Training Basic skills Managerial (e.g. interpersonal skills) Technical Training Methods Off-the-job (Classroom) On-the-job Self-paced learning Training Approaches Small groups large Group Individuals Training Techniques Lecture Presentation Conference/Discussion Experiential techniques (e.g. Role play/, Business games, Behavioral modeling, Case studies) Training Media Live trainer Media-led training Printed materials (e.g. instructions, work books) Computer-based trainings (computer aided instruction e.g. web, training networks, multimedia) Human Process-based Team building Self-managing teams Diversity Cultural interventions Conflict resolution Stress management Exercise and fitness interventions Employee wellness and health promotion programs Surveys feedback Organization transformation Goal setting Leadership training Performance appraisal Total quality management Organization commitment Safety training Problem-solving groups Employee assistance program Management development High performance work systems Structural Redesign Policy change Task redesign Job redesign Service reforms Workflow redesign Information technology Career Planning Employee development Systems Job postings Continuing education by professional associations Vocational preference Company-Sponsored continuing education Management by objectives Tuition assistance programs Replacement or succession planning In-house development programs Career Management Job rotation Job assignments Career appraisals Job enrichment/redesign Internal placement system Mentoring systems Career Counseling Assessment center Management by objectives Career paths and ladders Supervisor training in career discussion Career information handbooks 25 2.3.1. Training and Development An employee‟s competence includes knowledge, skills, and abilities that can be developed through human resource development programs. Training and development T&D is process that focuses on changing or improving the skills, knowledge and attitude of individuals. Training typically involves providing employees the knowledge and skill needed to do a particular task, though attitude change (stress management training or sensitivity trainings e.g. sexual harassment training) may also be attempted as if needed for a job role or improving performance. Table 3 illustrates a slight difference between training and development. DeSimone & Werner (2012: 11) describe training as more focused on new employees and their orientation to new job roles, whereas development activities have long-term focus on employees‟ growth to prepare them for future responsibilities, while also increasing the capacity to perform their current jobs. Large organizations (Public, city organizations and MNC‟s) organize both T&D activities, generally type of training activities include skills and technical training (e.g employee orientation or training on collective agreement), while development activities include such as counseling, coaching, management and leadership development training, once employees have become proficient at their current jobs, HRD activates should focus more on development activities (DeSimone & Werner 2012: 11). Table 3. Training versus development: a comparison (Ketter 2006: 11). Training Development Focus of activity Current Future and also current Use of work experience Low High Goal Preparation for current jobs Preparation for future work responsibilities Participation Required Voluntary 26 Each city organization (e.g. hospitals, city‟s technical department) has its own training department that independently organizes activities according to its specific needs. The training focuses on developing professional competence in order to meet its own aims, values and service objectives. In general, to comply with standards of training set by national or local training boards, city organizations are legally bound to provide all those types of trainings to its employees that are necessary to prepare them to perform their current jobs. Traditionally, these types of organizations use Combination of training modes such as qualification trainings, in-house courses, and external training courses and planned work experience. There are many other forms of training or development, among them, in very brief terms, are; mentoring, distance learning, study visits to other departments, jointly organized training seminars with other authorities ( e.g. private organizations or professional bodies), participation in inter-departmental study groups etc ( Fowler 1988: 50-52). Finnish city organization includes their employee education, training and development as an essential part of their organizational strategy. Due to large number of retirements of city employees, City organizations are facing pressure of recruiting and training of new and relatively younger employees, city has focus on its training and development activities to immediately integrate the new replacements in the system to maintain delivery of quality services. Human resource managers in large organizations ranked training and development as the most important functional area that they have to deal with to maintain the flow of services and organizational performance (DeSimone & Werner 2012: 4). Due to increase in organizational performance and profitability as result of T&D activities, organization continue to maintain large training budgets and spend generously on T&D. (ASTD) estimates that U.S organization spent 134.1 billion $ on employee learning and development in 2008, and 125.9 billion $ in 2009. Similarly, Vaasa city organization estimated its (staff) training budget of a total 1.64 million Euros in 2011, which was approximately equal to 0.92 percent of employees‟ annual salary (Vaasa Staff Report 2011: 24). 27 There are variety of T&D models to choose from, organization tend to pick one which is most functional in practice to produce the desired results as part of any T&D activity. Most authors and their models focus on either learning or improvement in performance as main outcome of any training. Swanson and Holton (2001: 4) proposed and promote ADDIE model which core purpose is to improve performance, they point out that TD has a five- phase process: analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate (ADDIE). This TD process, which is based on the ADDIE model, is rooted in the instructional systems development (ISD) model that has been dominant in the field of HRD for over two decades. Similarly, numerous contemporary performance focus (systematic) training models also intend to help individuals prepare to meet their job performance requirements (Cowell, Hopkins, McWhorter, Rochell and Jorden 2006: 465-466). Jacobs and Washington (2003: 5) use another term for TD: employee development. They explain, “Employee development refers to an integrated set of planned programs, provided over a period of time, to help assure that all individuals have the competence necessary to perform to their fullest potential in support of the organization‟s goals”. They point out that employment development involves the learning of all employees in organization and can be delivered through such programs as off-the-job and on-the-job training programs, educational programs, seminars, job rotations, self-study materials, and mentoring programs. They argue that because HRD primarily relies on improving organizational performance through employee development, those efforts, in the end, increase productivity and profits of an organization as well as the job satisfaction of its individual employees. Harrison (1992: 4) also asserts that training and development provides learning experiences in the workplace in order that organizational mission and goals can be achieved. Learning is at the core of all HRD activities, He argues that training and development activities are to be aligned with the organization‟s goals so that through enhancing the skills, knowledge, learning ability and motivation of employees, there will be continuous organizational as 28 well as individual growth. Indeed, City organization (municipality organization) should have major focus on workplace learning, performance and development of administrative, technical and professional staff within its local authorities and service units, to supply adequate skills for their effective functioning to provide necessary public services for the benefit of community and whole nation. As discussed by Harrison (1992: 17-25) that nationally agreed standards related to education and development are likely to shape individuals‟ perceptions of their learning and learning needs, and to influence how employers articulate the learning needs of their employees. Similarly, achieving performance through keeping learning in center of development policy seems to be consistent with Finnish national HRD (NHRD) policy that intends to promote individual/adult learning in communities as well as at workplaces. For instance, Finland just like other Scandinavian countries, including free Heath&Social Care, provide education free of cost (through preschool up to university higher education) to all of its citizens which is evidence that its national education and development policy is based on offering equal and fair learning and development opportunities to citizens of all ages. Due to this general attitude that places great emphasis on individual learning which is rooted in its national education policy and system, mangers in Finnish city organizations are likely to hold similar view of T&D in which providing learning opportunities to employees is assumed a mean to attain necessary skills to meet current and future job demands along with improving individual and group performance which ultimately ensures the delivery of quality public services and citizens‟ satisfaction. However HRD practitioners in city organizations are also very likely to hold different views on HRD that are influenced by personal and organizational characteristics in order to meet their unique organization‟s purpose and needs, they must differ from one another in tern of holding training perspectives, using types of training programs and approaches and ways in which they conduct those activities. 29 2.3.2. Organization Development Cummings and Worley (2009: 479) define “Organization development (as) a System wide application and transfer of behavioral science knowledge to the planned development, improvement, and reinforcement of the strategies, structures, and processes that lead to organization effectiveness”. They provide five main concepts of organization development (OD); first, OD is intended to implement changes in the strategy, structure, and/or processes of an organization, a department or work group, or an individual role or job. Through various OD programs, top management teams interact through problem-solving processes within the group and solve the company‟s problems in strategy and structure. Second, OD applies and transfers behavioral science-based knowledge and skills that includes both micro-concepts such as leadership, group dynamics, and work design and macro-concepts such as strategy, organization design, and international relations. Third, OD involves in a process of planning and implementing changes in order to diagnose and solve organizational problems. OD plans can be frequently revised during the change process. Fourth, OD also concerns change on a long-term basis; that is, new activities are stabilized and institutionalized within the organization through OD. Finally, OD is designed to improve organizational effectiveness. OD is concerned with solving an organization‟s problems and achieving its goals and objectives (Lyntham, Chermack & Noggle 2004: 479). It is associated both with high performance (e.g., financial returns and productivity) and with high quality of work life (e.g., motivation of effective employees who perform at high levels). Organization development can be divided into categories change process theory and implantation theory, it suggests that there are many different views of change management process, since the contexts of the needs for system change vary greatly across different organizations. 30 Change process theory seeks to explain the dynamics through which change is initiated and implemented to achieve organizational improvements. Lewin Kurt (1958: 480) depicted “change process” that occurs in three phases; Unfreezing (readiness), moving (adoption) and refreezing otherwise known as institutionalization. While, Implementation theory focuses on specific intervention strategies designed to induce changes, it is used as a problem-solving method which is foundation for most OD interventions. Organization members and OD practitioners work collaboratively in small groups to collect data and diagnose problems prior to taking action, develop an action plan to implement solutions, and finally to evaluate results after of the intervention (DeSimone & Werner 2012: 482, 491 and 492). Similarly, Fernandez and Rainey (2006: 513) expanded change process model and proposed several steps involved in implementing a process of planned and systematic change to develop human expertise for improving individual, group, process, and organization performance are: (a) asses the need, diagnose the problem and provide a plan (c) design and develop internal support for the change and overcome resistance (d) Ensure top management (internal) and external support network (e) institutionalize and implement desired change. (See appendix: Popular Change Management Models in Practice). Which model is selected depends on circumstances and personal preferences. The important thing is that structured and coherent change is in place. 2.3.3. Career Development Career Development (CD) has emerged as part of HRD functions that address the question of how careers and adult lives develop over the time in predictable, common sequence of stages (identified by Jacobs and Washington 2003: 6) describe a taxonomy of human competence that ranges from novice, specialist, advanced specialist, expert to master levels). The overall process of CD can be seen as ongoing process by which individuals progress through a series of stages, each of which characterized by a relatively unique set of issues, themes and tasks which include educational and experiential programs that meet the needs of an organization and respond to the interests of individuals (Greenhaus, Callanan, 31 Godshalk 2010: 400). Greenhaus and colleagues discuss that career development services in a particular organization are shaped by organizational goals, employee needs, profit margins, or resources available to be committed to career services. The sets of career related activities are referred to as career planning and career management. Career planning is defined as a “Deliberate process of (1) becoming aware of self, opportunities, constraints, choices and, consequences, (2) identifying career-related goals, and (3) programming work, education and related developmental experiences to provide the direction, timing and sequence of steps to attain a specific career goal”. On the other hand, career management is “An ongoing process of preparing, implementing, and monitoring career plans undertaken by individuals alone or in concert with organization‟s career system” (Storey 1976: 400). In fact, career development programs may differ in terms of purpose, values, organization culture, philosophy, and management practices. Overall, career development (CD) is an ongoing process that requires organizations and individuals (employees) to be involved in building a long term partnership and engaged in realization of the their career plans to achieve career goals. It‟s argued the CD is shrinking within modern organizations, as they continue to move from being vertical to flat structure organizations by reducing number of hierarchal layers, more they tend to offer less permanent employments and minimize the career development activities. Organizations have brought changes (e.g. less permanent, fixed-term) in typical employment relationships as to respond to downsizing, shrinking hierarchies, outsourcing, technological innovations and performance-based compensations (Werner & DeSimone 2012: 396). However even after occurrence of these changes in typical employment relationships, for numerous reasons the concept of CD in large organizations (e.g. public and city organizations) is still relevant and necessary (Werner & DeSimone 2012: 397). First, even after introducing contract-based jobs city organizations will continue to have long-term relationship with their employees to have the continuance supply of skills and expertise required to plan and enact mutually beneficial future for their own functioning and stability. 32 Second, since municipality organization are facing recruitment and training pressures due to (baby boomers) senior employees are leaving the organization through retirements every year, the availability of career enhancing assignments and career management activities can be used both as recruitment tool to attract employees and to join organization, and as a motivational tool to gain their full efforts, commitment and creativity. Senior employees are leaving city organizations as they reach the age of retirement, the set of skills which those experienced employees possess took years to develop, in fact as they leave, along with them those expertise will also depart from the city organizations which pose the threat of their shortage which is situation that must be avoided at all costs. provided the situation, CD opportunities can potentially contribute to the efforts of developing new and existing employees of city organizations to maintain the level of all necessary skills and expertise for execution of routine operations. While discussing the resource based view of the organizations and its implications to CD in large organizations, Gray and Herr (1998: 279) seems to agree with this approach by suggesting that managers integrate human performance with overall business strategies of a firm, so most organizations, primarily provide CD opportunities that have direct impact on the performance of their current workforce so they generate economic-value in return. Similarly developing those types of skills and expertise is essential because of having high demand for organizations. They propose that these activities and resources that a company provides to help its employees achieve their career objectives (career enhancement), coupled with the organization‟s own attempts to recruit, develop and move its employees according to its own short-term and long-term human resource needs (career management). For instance it is common practice among large organization to spend on development of those individuals and groups that have scarce or unique set of skills and expertise which are highly required by organization as those are essential for its functioning and survival. These individuals are difficult to replace due to the reason that kind of skills they offer are either scarce or take long period of time to develop (e.g. nurses or high-tech machinery operators). The decisions concerning offering CD programs are based on mutual expectation in employer and employee relationship, that is, if the employer make the 33 decision of investing in development of employees then these efforts must provide high- value of some sort (e.g. economic or performance improvement) in return to meet both parties growth related needs( Roeheling, Cavanaugh, Moynihan, Boswell 2000: 398). 2.3.4. HRD program evaluation Many organizations make strategic investments in HRD programs to improve their performance in their operative environment, so program evaluation plays a critical role in making judgment about the value of investing in specific HRD activity (e.g. T&D and OD programs etc.). HRD evaluation is defined as “The systematic collection of descriptive and judgmental information necessary to make effective training decisions related to the selection, adoption, value and modification of various instructional activities” (Goldstein, 1980: 168). Descriptive and Judgmental information both are collected during evaluation. Descriptive information provides a picture of what is happening or has happened, whereas judgmental information communicates some opinion or beliefs about what has happened. HRD program evaluation is process of using techniques for measurement and use of data concerning the outcomes of the training or HRD intervention. To determine the purpose of program effectiveness, and to make decisions after program is judged effective or ineffective, first it‟s important to define program effectiveness. Typically, effectiveness is determined with respect to the achievement of goals or set of goals. HRD effectiveness must be determined in relation to the objectives of a program or the one which is being examined. It should also address the stakeholders‟ (trainees, trainers, mangers etc.) point of views and the issues concerning program effectiveness of an HRD intervention (Werner & DeSimone, 2012: 168). Evaluation can serve a number of purposes within the organization. Zenger and Hargis (1982: 169) suggest three primary reasons to evaluate training programs: decision-making, 34 feedback, and marketing. According to Philips (1983: 169), evaluation can help to determine whether program is accomplishing its objectives, identification of strength and weaknesses of HRD programs which can lead to changes (stop it if you can‟t see the results or continue that activity if evaluation demonstrate its effectiveness), determine cost-benefits ratios of an HRD program (if Senior management wants to know), decide who should participate in the future HRD programs, identify who benefited the most and least from the program( to gain staff and management support), gather data to assist in marketing future programs and establish data base to assist management in decision making. Evaluation is critical step in the HRD process that provides useful information to multiple stakeholder groups. It is the only way to judge whether a HRD program has fulfilled its objectives. Thus evaluation requires collaborative work with training designers, training managers, trainers, trainees, managers, and possibly others. 2.3.5. Models and frameworks of evaluation A model of evaluation outlines the criteria for focus of an evaluation. Because HRD program can be examined from a number of perspectives, it is important to specify which perspective will be considered. Many different frameworks of HRD evaluation have been suggested. On reviewing the work on training evaluation in HRD literature, different types of evaluations have emerged as particularly common in organizations( shown in Table 4): Kirkpatrick‟s four-level framework, Philips‟ five-level framework, Holton‟s model, Galven‟s CIPP four variables, K, Brinkerhoff‟s six stages and Krainger, Ford & Salas‟s three category of learning outcomes (Desimone and Werner 2012: 172). While these different models and frameworks share some of the same features, they are also different in important ways (Kirkpatrick 1996: 172). However as variations exist in using HRD techniques by organizations, similarly the program evaluation is also done differently within them. ASTD report 2010 revealed facts about HRD evaluations carried out in companies that generally organizations do not collect fair amount of information on all four types of outcomes. 35 Tables 4. HRD Evaluation Models/Frameworks (Desimone and Werner 2012: 172). Model Training Evaluation Criteria 1.Kirpatrick (1997, 1987,1994) 2. CIPP (Galvin, 1983) 3. Brinkerhoff (1987) 4. Kraiger, Ford & Salas (1993) 5. Holton (1996) 6. Phillips (1996) Four levels: Reaction, Learning, Job Behavior, and Results Four levels: Reaction, Learning, Job Behavior, and Results Six stages: Goal setting, program Design, Program implementation, Immediate outcomes, intermediate or usage outcomes and impact and worth A classification scheme that specifies three categories of learning outcomes (cognitive Skill based, affective) suggested by the literature and proposes evaluation measures appropriate for each category of outcomes Identifies five categories of variables and the relationships among them: Secondary influences, Motivation elements, Environmental elements, outcomes, Ability/ Enabling elements Five levels: Reaction and planned action, Learning, Applied learning on the job, Business results and Return on investment Surprisingly, survey of 304 organizations reports: 91.6 percent collected reaction measures, 80.8 percent collected learning measures. However, collection and usage rates were not higher as they are supposed to be for behavior since 54.5 percent collected data on this level, 36.9 percent collected results measures and only 17.9 percent collected data on Return on Investment (RIO) (ASTD 2010: 173), it is apparent, those companies deliberately did not collected data on these critical levels, even though evaluating these steps can provide organization with such vital information. In practice, RIO is often 36 declared as MIA (missing in action) and this is despite the fact that training cost is a major expense in industries. 2.3.6. Barriers to Training Evaluation The use of evaluation model is to balance the needs and use of the evaluation determined by trainer and stakeholders. Despite the fact that many scholars and practitioners (Zenger and Hargis 1982: 169: Philips 1983: 169: Mercurio 2006: 167; Suutari & Viitala: 168; 2008; Desimone and Werner 2012: 173) assert that it is essential to measure training effectiveness, however its evident from ASTD report (2010: 173, as stated above), most organizations do not actually conduct systematic evaluation on all four levels of outcomes, if not at all. Evolution is neglected and partially left out on purpose by organization or the (manager‟s) decision not to conduct comprehensive evaluation is often influenced by common reasons which can be called primary barriers inhibiting evaluation, those are presented below. Top 10 barriers to evaluation in public sector and financial service organizations (Hill 1999; P.P. Phillips 2003; Gomez 2003: 226-227), due to these fallowing reasons evaluation is neglected. 1. Cost in person-hours and/or capital (due to limited budget or it‟s too costly). 2. Not required by the organization. 3. Lack of expertise in evaluation: lack of knowledge and skills or lack of experience in evaluation. 4. Lack of evaluation methods and tools: unavailability of data, evaluation activities limited to reaction sheets and statements of learning outcome, lack of common cost framework, and methodological limitations of financial returns measurement. 5. Organization members view evaluation as a time-consuming and laborious task. 6. Little perceived value to Organization, as members don‟t believe the results will be used; data are collected and not analyzed or used. 37 7. Lack of organizational support for evaluation: unavailability of resources, organizational confidentiality practices or policies, fear of negative financial return, blind trust in training solutions. 8. Organization members misunderstand evaluation‟s purpose and role. Organization member fear the impact of evaluation findings. 9. Organizational leader think they know already know what does and does not work. 10. Previous experiences with evaluation have been either a disaster or disappointing. 2.4. Summary Municipalities are fundamentally different than Profit-oriented organizations in composition, Purpose, and mission. As, result, Municipality organization generally attend to the needs of its residents as consumers and must balance sufficient supply of capable workforce to meet demand for service delivery by its citizens. This environment creates a challenging situation for HRD practices on local government level. The municipality organizations may deviate from prevalent training and development, program evaluation and organization development HRD models and activities compare to large private corporations as due to contingent nature HRD practices as suggested by kuchinke (2003: 299-300). Literature and previous empirical research suggests occurrence of HRD activities on regular basis in public and government organizations at large scale since these organization operate with staff consist of hundreds of professions, these organization in general are bound to standardize their training and development activities by government legislations and labor acts. Simultaneously due to their unique organizational characteristics (e.g. size, Industry and structure, type of services they offer), these organizations vary from each other the way they use and apply HRD practices and models. These differences in HRD practices within these large organizations are influenced greatly by their individual needs related to employees‟ training and development (e.g. technical sector conduct more technical training compare to education and social sector, doctors training essentially differ from civil engineers or accountant etc.), similarly resource based view suggests that 38 organization make decisions related to employee development activities depending on their demand for the organization to run its essential operations and what value these development related investments bring in return to the organization (e.g. economic value of some sort such as profitability through improved performance or innovation). The HRD framework suggests that many HRD models and theories have to be empirically validated with different organizations‟ HRD practices; absence of empirical support to theory tends to over generalize HRD models to many different types of Organizations. Many HRD related models and activities may have range of applicability in Finnish municipality organization, As no HRD research on Finnish local government had been found that outlines profile, types and nature of HRD activities so unfortunately the complete theoretical analysis and comparison were limited by the amount of empirical research outlining the occurrence of HRD activities in Public and profit organizations. While it was apparent many HRD activities were occurring in public organizations and presumably in municipality organization as they were heading towards new municipality vision 2017, the specific type, nature the effectiveness of their HRD activities, as well the applicability of its integrated functions and models remained unclear, so for that reason, this research attempted to explore these areas to outline HRD profile of Vaasa city organization to find empirical support for Kuchkinke‟s (2003: 299-300) contingent framework of HRD. 39 3. METHODOLOGY This chapter focuses on the research methods used in this study. This chapter includes five basic sections: (a) overview of the research design, b) a case for this HRD research (c) data collection, and (d) data analysis. The fallowing section outlines detail procedure how this study was completed. 3.1. Overview of Research Design Given the exploratory and investigatory nature of the study, this study employed qualitative research design to describe the nature of HRD in Vaasa city (Municipality) organization. This study used semi structure interviews to answer the research questions. The research participants of interest were HR/HRD practitioners who worked in the area of Vaasa region and were responsible for HRD activities in Vaasa city organization and its operative units (e.g. Hospital, Schools, Bureau of social services etc.). Data was gathered through self- designed Interview questions, the interviewing style used for interview was informal to make it conversational, spontaneous and situational. This study benefited from qualitative research design, qualitative research focus on narrative description of events in which constant comparison are usually made in order to seek better understanding of some particular, natural phenomenon under uncontrolled conditions (Creswell 1998: 13-24). Furthermore, the interview as qualitative approach is useful when the researcher intends to supplement, validate, explain, and reinterpret the qualitative data obtained from the study. Twelve in-depth semi structured interview were conducted with HR/HRD practitioners and department heads/managers working in different public sectors (health, social care, education and technical) in Vaasa city. English language was the primary means of communication in the interviews. However, Finnish translations of the interview questions and definitions of key terms were also provided along with original English version. With 40 the interviewee‟s permission, the interviews were tape-recorded. Generally, the interviews were scheduled for approximately 55 minutes. A procedure used in the development and execution of the present study is presented in the fallowing section: 3.3. Municipality of Vaasa: a case for HRD research Vaasa city organization and its staff working in various public sectors were the sample population for this research, enterprises included, it employees almost 6 334 personnel (Vaasa Staff Report 2011: 7-9) which makes it largest employer in the city (Vaasa largest employers 2011). According to forecasts, during 2011-2015, 731 (11.5%) personnel including fixed-term will retire from city organizations. Up to forecast, Year 2015 is expected to be a record year for retirement. The baby boomers are soon to be retired, that activity will increase in coming years by fallowing the similar trend as in rest of the municipalities country-wide. Within less than 10 years one fifth is projected to reach the pension age. In the future Aging employees and their retirement are big challenges for the staff at work. That is driving situation which pose great challenge of recruitment and training of new employees to integrate them immediately in the system to meet the growing demand of its citizens for municipality services. It calls for municipality organization to focus heavily on key areas of HRD such as organizational learning and development and include them in HR strategy of city organization to ensure the staff capability of municipalities to better respond to the organizational needs to achieve PARAS objectives of improving service delivery and citizens‟ satisfaction (PARAS reform). 41 3.4. Data collection and respondents demographic information This section is divided into two parts. The first part describes the data collection and second describes respondents‟ and their organizations‟ characteristics. The research data was obtained from selected human resource managers/development professionals (that also included training officers and organizers) from these fallowing five public sector organizations; Administration department, Technical services, Education, Social and Health Care which are employed and managed by Vaasa city government. A total 12 study participants from five above mentioned services sectors were included in this study. Their Education level of these participants was quite high. Of the 12 HRD practitioners nine had master‟s degrees and two had doctoral degrees. The position and title of HRD professionals varied as is shown in Table below. All the participants with various titles depending on the type and size of their organization were involved in human resource development functions within their organization. Generally, the title “HRD professional” was non-existent in municipality organization, none of the respondents were working with job title as Human Resource Development (HRD) officer in those organizations so due to that reason other individuals with titles parallel to HRD professional responsible for organizing and executing HRD activities in those organizations were interviewed as best alternative informants. The City organizations and respondents for this study met the selection criteria. The admin office was contacted to identify all the suitable informers, online personnel telephone directory was searched to get their contact information. In first round, email including interview proposal was sent to selected candidates. In case of no response to the emails, telephone call was made to the participants to obtain their consent to participate in research. Most interview appointments were scheduled on telephone, once HRD professional accepted interview proposal, the researcher emailed the interview guide to them. Face to face interviews were conducted at the respondent‟s office/organization, at the end of the interview researcher asked HRD 42 professionals to identify at least two HRD professionals who are working in their organization or other sector in Vaasa city. The overall response rate in this study was 80% as initially 15 people were selected and contacted for interviews but out of them all, 12 respondents agreed for semi- structured interview on the practice and potential contribution of human resource development programs in local governments. The primary reasons for those who declined to participate in interviews were either due to their inability to schedule on-site interviews or they were unable to communicate fluently in English language. Their busy schedule and issue of language barrier ultimately led to their elimination from the study sample. Of twelve in total, 10 of the interviews were conducted on-site and the other 2 participants due to their inability to communicate in English language agreed to provide written answers to interview questions in Finnish language which were later translated to English for analysis. All of the respondents agreed to voice-record the interview. Interview occurred between July 2012 and March 2013. Table 5 and 6 presents information and statistics related to respondents; their organizations, job roles and work experience. Besides the language barrier which was expected by the researcher at the very initial stages, Researcher successfully overcame the communication barrier and collected rich qualitative data from the key respondents which supplied sufficient amount of information to guide analysis and conclude the findings of this study. 43 Table 5. Descriptive statistics related to the respondents, their organizations and work experience. n Percent Respondents by Service Sector Education 3 25 Health Care Services 3 25 Social Care Services 1 9 Technical Services 2 16 General Administration 3 25 Respondent’s Organization n Percent Size of Organization VAKK 3 25 160 Vaasa Central Hospital 3 25 2300 Bureau of Social and Health Care Vaasa City 1 9 1603 General Administration Vaasa City 3 25 850 Technical Department Vaasa City 2 16 673 Number of Years at Current Position 2 - 5 years 9 75 6 -10 years 3 25 Number of years in the organization 2 - 5 years 3 25 6 -10 years 6 50 11 - 15 years 3 25 NOTE: Total number of employees excluding temporary and other personnel 44 Table 6. Interviewees‟ Pseudonyms, information related to their organizations, current positions and job roles. Interviewee Organization Current Position Type Veera Administration Office Vaasa City Human Resource Director General Administration Sari Administration Office Vaasa City Head Nurse City Health Department Anneli Administration Office Vaasa City Management Consultant General Administration Eveliina Bureau of Social and Health Care Vaasa City Human Resource Manager Social Care Services Tiina Vaasa Central Hospital Education Planner and Trainer Health Care Mikko Vaasa Central Hospital Planning Manager Health Care Leila Vaasa Central Hospital Training Officer Health Care Mikael VAKK Head of Department Education Kimmo VAKK Executive Director Education Susanna VAKK Project Manager Education Julia Technical Department Vaasa City Development Manager Technical Services Janne Information Department Vaasa City Head (Director) of Department Information Services For each questions, the results are presented based on information provided by HRD professionals from five different types of public organizations. An analysis of the results from all organizations and participants is presented in chapter 4. 45 3.5. Instrumentation Interview guide for the HRD mangers/officers focused on exploring the nature and types of HRD practices in Vaasa city organization. Finnish translation of interview questions was prepared and paired up with English version for the ease of understanding for Finnish speaking interviewees. The questions were organized around what and how certain training and development, organizational development and career development were conducted and why municipalities were engaged in these types of HRD activities. For instance, first section of the interview guide focused on nature and practices of HRD functions (T&D, OD and CD) to outline HRD profile of city employed organizations. The first section also encompassed questions focused on the role of HRD in organizational environment in which it operates. Researcher‟s supervisor reviewed the interview guide for validity. In addition to that, the researcher tested the interview guide with two HRD professionals working in municipality organization. The individual included in the pilot study were included as part of the study. During the interview, the researcher paid keen attention to the responses given to the question based on the intent. The pilot study with HRD professionals showed that it was necessary to change the order of some of the items on the interview guide, so that the interview could flow more smoothly. 3.6. Data Analysis The interviews were content analyzed by research question. Each research question contained a main premise, which was used by the researcher to reduce large amounts of data into smaller number of analytic segments. Semantic analysis was used to identify codes, themes, and patterns of data obtained from interviewees to observe information 46 provided by them in order to develop a deeper understanding of their insights on focused areas of HRD (Castellan 2010: 7). In summary, the fallowing represented the data analysis process for the interviews. 1. Participants responses were collected through interviews 2. Reponses organized based on three main research questions focused on these fallowing areas; HRD functions and activities in city organizations, barriers to HRD and recommendations by HRD practitioners to improve HRD within their organizations. 3. Carried out content analysis; analyzed each respondent‟s responses against each research question and guide topics (each question was looked at across all participants). 4. Color coded the emergent themes based on interview guide topics with help of qualitative analysis software MAXQDA 11. 5. Identified the frequency of respondent‟s responses against each emergent theme, e.g. grouped frequencies of responses for occurrence of HRD activities, Frequencies were then written in percentages. 6. Displayed results based on research question using rich text descriptions and examples from data. 7. Supplemented results with percentages. Overall the data obtained through interviews were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Quantitative was used to provide basic statistical description whereas qualitative was used to produce the rich text description and provide examples. 8. After the analysis was completed and validated, findings were presented under each research question in next chapter. Major conclusion, implication and recommendations on the findings are presented in 5 th chapter. 47 4. EMPIRICAL FINDINGS The purpose of this research was to examine the types of HRD activities occurring in service organizations (SOs) of Vaasa city, potential contribution and use of HRD in dealing with current Human Resources challenges, barriers to HRD activities and initiatives proposed by HRD professionals to improve local HRD programs. HRD activities were broadly grouped into three areas: Training and development, organization development (OD) and Career development. The types of HRD activities occurring in five different service sector organizations employed by local government were described. The barriers that limit these service organizations were examined. Finally the recommendations suggested by the HRD professionals were examined for improvement of HRD programs in SOs. This chapter presents the findings and results for each of the main research topics. 4.1. HRD systems and profile of Vaasa city organisation Research question number one addressed the nature and types of HRD practices in five different types of Service organizations (SOs) of Vaasa city. To address this question HRD professional from all five types of organisations were asked to identify and discuss the HRD functions (training and development, Organizational development and Career development) in their organizations. First, using the data from participants, this section describes the nature of training in 5 different types of SOs of Vaasa city, Finland. 4.2. Training and development activities in Vaasa city organization Interview respondents were asked to indicate if their organisation engaged in training and development activities. All interview respondents from Education, Health and Social Care, Technical services and General administration indicated that their organization engaged in Training and development activities. Interviewees identified the types of Training, Training locations Training approaches used, Training Methods, Training Media and training 48 activities and courses evaluated in their organization. It aimed to provide percentages depending on the types and number of training activities indicated by each organisation. Individual training activities are summarized in Table 7, the different types of service organizations (SOs) varied in types and frequency of training activities organised and occurred in them. Vaasa city organization (VCO) offers a diverse array of training opportunities. As shown in Table 7, Technical training is provided the least often, with 66 percent of the service organizations (SOs) offering this type of training, and general training is offered the most, 100 percent of the SOs provide new employee orientation, which is an employees‟ first chance to learn about a city‟s rule, regulation and policies. Simultaneously, 75 percent of the SOs provide management training to their staff working in management positions, which is organised by central admin (HR) department. Table 7. Type of Training offered by Vaasa City Organisation (VCO): Respondents (n=12). Training activity f % General Training (Employee orientation etc.) 12 100 Basic skills 4 33 Managerial Training (Management skills) 9 75 Technical Training (Regulation training) 8 66 Note: Respondents were permitted to choose from multiple responses Firstly, All respondents mentioned that their organizations organise both On-the-job and off the job training activities, overall on the job and in-house trainings are most commonly practiced in organisations (shown in Table 8 below). Within service organizations, each division and department organise basic training and special trainings for their staff. In general, there are two types of training activities organised within VCO, Firstly, each service organisation and its departments organise their own training for their staff 49 depending on their individual needs, for instance tuition reimbursement programs include offering Swedish and Finnish language orientation courses to City employees to ensure the delivery of customer/client services in both languages. Vaasa central hospital offers specialized trainings for both doctors and nurses. Mikko (Planning manager at Vaasa central hospital) indicated that there are many training programs organised at the hospital for employees, he said, “Hospital‟s training centre offers different types of in-house training and courses for doctors and nurses, sometimes our staff also attends training and educational seminars organised in (external) training centres in other cities (shown in Table 8). Similarly Susanna project manager from an educational institute and Evelinna human resource manager from bureau of social care also indicated that they offer on the job (OJT) in house training and also off-the-job (external) training which are sometimes centrally organised by the admin office or jointly organised with cooperation of other (even private) organizations, for instance management training and orientation on collective agreement, course on entrepreneurial skills for teachers etc. She further said all units have specific training days in a year on which they attend some kind of training either as individual or in groups. Secondly, City administration (Human Resource department) also organise centralised development activities for city employees working in different city organisations (COs), for instance City Human Resource director indicated that city admin office organise courses on leadership development and management skills ( called Esimiespassi) for the administrative staff working in various city organisations. In total 135 city managers from various sectors participated in that program which occurred between years 2012-2013, usually the duration of the training is almost 12 months, the trainees meet once or twice every month and work on different projects and assignments which involve in depth group discussions. The discussions have themes and agendas (planning strategy etc.), problem-solving groups are organised and assigned objectives which are usually some type of complex problem faced by the organisation. Training falls into two broad categories: 1) Policies and regulation and 2) administrative 50 skills. Training in the policies and regulation category is designed to provide managers with a working understanding of both internal, external laws and guidelines that govern the workplace environment. Examples include training on equal employment opportunity, Finnish employment laws, collective agreement, work health and safety, sexual harassment. Administrative skills training is intended to develop a manager‟s capacity to perform specific personnel and management functions including planning and designing a strategy, human resource planning, recruiting, training, leading and disciplining employees. More fundamental training about organisation‟s rules, procedures and regulations are offered by all of the responding organizations. While over 60 percent of respondents indicated that their SO‟s offer training on governments‟ regulations, ethics, and technical skills. Basic skills are offered as less as 33 percent due to the fact that FCOs recruit employees who already have relevant professional qualification so offering training in this area is not always necessary. Training on use of computer and information technology is offered to majority of city employees by all major VCO. The growing deployment of information technology due to its importance in increasing work efficiency in nearly every aspect of public work creates an increased need for training in this area. Service organizations (SOs) organise in-house computer and IT training with house-expert if available, otherwise there is possibility of either hiring outside IT-expert or outsourcing the whole IT related trainings. In this regard, sometimes Organisation acquires the services of computer experts from IT and system Provider Company (vendors) to deliver training on special IT courses and softwares. Kimmo executive director of VAKK indicated, “Currently our organization is implementing new enterprise resource planning system (ERPS) and we have bought the expertise of a public agency FACTIA which is providing training to our employees on using this system. While laughing, he said, This ERP is taking lots of our energy, time and resources but then we are also expecting greater results from it.” 51 Interestingly all Interview respondents showed similarity in using common methods for implementing training by their Service Organizations (SOs). Overall, (shown in Table 8), on the job, off the job (external courses), self-studies, informal methods (job shadowing and mentoring) and groups were reported as most frequently occurring activities. Table 8. Training methods and approaches used by Vaasa City Organisation (VCO) indicated by HRD professionals (n=12). Training methods and approaches f % On the job 12 100 Off the job 12 100 Groups 12 100 Small Groups 12 100 Self-directed studies 12 100 Informal (Job shadowing, mentoring, coaching) 12 100 Note: Respondents were permitted to choose from multiple responses Respondent‟s organisations varied in using Learning techniques and media (show in Table 9 below). Traditional Class room style presentation is the most commonly used method for delivering information during implementation of training activities. Discussion as second most used method of training by education, health and general administration compare to other sectors, which is mainly used for management training or development discussion not for general and technical training. Role play and simulation are least commonly occurring activities within organisations, whereas usage of role play was indicated by only 2 respondents from education and general administration sectors, similarly simulation was used only sometimes or very rarely at central hospital. 52 Table 9. Learning methods used by Vaasa City Organisation for implementing training activities (n=12). Training Methods Welfare sector (n=8) f % General Administration & Technical Services (n=4) f % Total percentage Class room presentation 8 66 4 34 100 Discussion 4 33 2 17 50 Role play 1 8 1 8 16 Simulation 2 16 - - 16 Note: Respondents were permitted to choose from multiple responses, Welfare sector= Education, Health and Social care. Respondents indicated that their organisation employ combination of different media for implementing a training activity, live trainer (teacher), printed material and computers are used almost always by their SOs depending on the type of training (see Table 10). Table 10. Types of training media used by Vaasa City Organisation for implementing trainings activities (n=12). Training Media f % Live trainer 12 100 Instructional videos 5 40 Used written and printed materials 12 100 Web 12 100 Note: Respondents were permitted to hold multiple responses and discuss each element of this category. Veera director of human resources indicated that usage of online training has become more common by the SOs, Many online courses are being offered to staff by various SOs, virtual training networks have been made available for training groups, where they have access to the online study material, they can communicate with the instructor and also each other, 53 share their learning experience and leave their feedback on currently occurring activity. Veera said, “Online training networks can be more effective if all the technical issues are resolved before training has begun and especially when trainees know how to properly use the computer and online networks, most of the time the problem is on trainees‟ side they lack computer skills and have difficulties in using computers and softwares effectively”. Moreover, Sari Head Nurse indicated occurrence of technical issues related to computer- based training and how their organisation resolves them to make it effective specifically when using softwares and online training networks. She pointed out, “There is one software which is being used in hospitals by nurses in Finland, it had some technical issues in the past that hindered the effective usage of it, so that issue has to be resolved first in order to learn to use that program, if we want any customization in the medicine software according to our special needs, unfortunately it‟s not always possible to do so. Sometimes software providers make customised changes but then there times when they are not able to do so due to the software‟s limitations then we either have to wait for the customization or have to manage with what‟s available and work with the our limitations”. While discussing the Training planning and need assessment, respondents from all five sectors indicated that training need assessment is done through conducting development discussions between management and staff (department heads and employees), analysing and screening the operative environment, new changes and advancements in particular field of profession (technological or medical advancements and break through). Veera, Kimmo and Mikko (representing Admin office, Education and Healthcare respectively) brought up that in public sector Training planning, design and development are frequently guided and influenced by the legislations, National surveys (social and health), Top management‟s decision and department‟s own assessments (which is done jointly by heads, supervisors and employees). The training activities related to assessment, design and development are reported to have occurred sometimes and frequently by Interview respondents. Susanna project manager 54 indicated that these training activities occur on regular basis in our organisation “we only need to do assessment if we organise new and different activity, otherwise assessment is not needed especially for existing programs and courses because we have already done the planning for those programs, so organising training is a kind of activity which occurs on regular basis”. Within respondents‟ organisations, the training planning involves steps to choose the appropriate training techniques, learning methods, defining course objectives, use of experts, and developing course materiel (Shown previously in Table 9 and 10). 4.2.1. Training evaluation activities in Vaasa city organization Overall, as summarized in Table 11, the interview respondents indicated the most frequent types of training evaluation involved measuring a learner‟s reaction or satisfaction of training and the application of training in the workplace. Trainees‟ reaction (level 1) is the most frequently used level of evaluation with respondents indicating that 83.33 Percent of their programs are evaluated at this level by using the simplified reaction questionnaire. Table 11. Methods used by Service Organisations (SOs) to evaluate training and development programs (n=12) Methods f % Measured the trainee‟s reaction or satisfaction of the training 10 83 Used Reaction Questionnaires 10 83 Post-program groups discussion 6 50 Note: Respondents were permitted to choose from multiple responses. 6 respondents from four different organisations representing half of study sample indicated that information on level 1 is also collected through post-program group discussion between management and trainees. This involves management and employees having group 55 meeting at the end of program where trainees give their verbal feedback on the execution of the recently conducted training activity. Apparently Level 1 is the predominant level of evaluation used in Vaasa city organisation (VCO). The level 2 (learning), level 3 (on the job application), level 4 (results) and level 5 (RIO) are the least used levels of evaluation. The use of level 2, 3, 4 and 5 is very low and least frequent is due to the reason that VCO did not have any formal system developed for training evaluation. Interview respondents indicated that there was not any foremost and frequently used method for evaluating training on all five levels by their organizations. However some interview respondents indicated that some methods which are used sometimes for evaluating training on level 2, 3 and 4 by their organizations. Mikael and Sari mentioned that, “on the job application of training through direct observation to evaluate trainees‟ learning is practically possible in their organization”. Saari head nurse indicated that the skill demonstration is used for nurses‟ training because they have to show if they can perform particular task or not. For instance if they can give CPR or injection to the patient, these tasks can be assessed by the supervisor immediately after the training on the job by asking nurses to demonstrate what they have learned. There are some written exams (Test) related to the medication that nurses have to pass in order to be certified specialists, these certifications are accepted by all hospitals nation-wide. These two respondents each representing educational institute and central hospital indicated that whether trainees have learned something from the training can be assessed by their supervisor at work who can observe their performance on the job. Usually supervisor does pre-post comparison through observation that if there is any improvement in employees‟ behaviour or performance by the end of program when trainees have returned to their workplaces. However these two respondents further explained that there were not any indicators for learning and performance available to them with which they can actually make pre-post skill comparison and measure the actual (behaviour) learning outcomes. 56 Veera argued that unavailability of evaluation system makes it often difficult for us to actually calculate the learning or performance outcomes of single training program. She said whether it‟s less or more difficult to measure the outcome of training depends on the type of training, for instance if training has caused behavioural or attitudinal change in employees, whether it‟s possible to collect information regarding these outcomes through observation or using simple evaluations forms, after all improvements in employees‟ attitude are difficult to measure. It‟s more difficult to isolate a single training course as being responsible for that outcome. Program outcome (level 4) is a measure which is rarely used to evaluate training by Vaasa city organisation (VCO). Very few respondents indicated use of employee or trainee satisfaction as methods for evaluating programs at level 4 of a program (show in Table 12). Three respondents from Vaasa central hospital, VAKK and General administration indicated that typically trainees satisfaction is one of the most important factors considered in evaluating the success of program. Mikka and Sussana jointly mentioned that, “we don‟t directly measure the training results for program effectiveness; instead we use employees‟ feedback on particular training, if it‟s good, we consider it‟s effective and if we receive negative feedback and we need change something, we make changes. Employees can come any time and ask for changes but usually the feedback is received at the end of a program”. Table 12. Use of methods for evaluating outcome (level 4) of training by SOs (n= 12). Methods f % Improved learning 4 33 Improved performance and skill development 3 25 Used data for reporting and documentation 6 50 Note: Respondents were permitted to choose from multiple responses Interview respondents were asked to determine the focus of training evaluation in order to 57 define program‟s effectiveness. All respondents from sector of Education, Health care, Social care, General administration and Technical services reported that they determine the program effectiveness in terms of its outcomes related to learning, performance and few times return on investment (RIO). Overall respondents ranked performance and skill development as top priority outcome of program effectiveness (shown in Table 13). Learning was ranked second and RIO third and least measured indicator of effectiveness. Interestingly, Education and General Administration on average indicated differently by placing greater emphasises on learning as foremost and valuable indicator of training effectiveness. Interestingly city‟s Health, Social and Technical sectors jointly positioned improved performance as a major indicator to determine the value and usefulness of particular program. Surprisingly these organisations altogether ranked RIO as least used indicator to determine the results achieved from a program. Table 13. Service organizations identified their focus of training evaluation in order to determine program outcomes (n=12). Focus of Outcome of training Education n=3 HealthCare n=4 Social Services n=1 General Administration n=2 Technical Services n=2 Average of program outcome focus Improved learning 1 st 2 nd 2 nd 1 st 2 nd 2 nd Improved performance 2 nd 1 st 1 st 2 nd 1 st 1 st Return on investment 3 rd 3 rd 3 rd 3 rd 3 rd 3 rd Note: Respondents ranked out program outcome of training between top priority and least concern (measured). 58 Respondents comments also reflect that training is seen as frequently occurring activity in their organization and due to limited time and resources the focus is mostly on organising and conducting a program and not training evaluation which is due to the fact that organisations regularly use same training program number of times and they are already aware of its effectiveness and possible results. Veera also indicated that, “feedback and information collected for training evaluation is often used for the purposes of reporting and documentation but not always to reflect results”. She further argued that training effectiveness is easier to evaluate when its objectives are pre-determined. All interview respondents reported that instead of RIO, budget and its allocation are one of the main concerns when it comes to organising training. Similarly, how training budget is spent and utilised is also a major concern of management and organisers, despite of quality of training and results that it generates. Most respondents reported that they are not engaged in calculating the RIO because their organization do not have any requirements or pressure from the funding source (local or central government) to calculate RIO as part of program effectiveness. And they further brought up issue that financial benefits of individual training activity are very difficult to calculate in large organization like Vaasa City‟s, but on the other hand, it will be very interesting for them if they had a system with which they can measure the financial returns of training program and evaluate its organisational outcomes. The City Organizations conduct program evaluation primarily as informal and optional activity as part of training. These Organisations evaluated program only to the extent necessary to fulfil a general requirement. Most of City‟s service units do not conduct systematic evaluation on all levels, primarily due to unavailability of such evaluation system; furthermore it‟s not a mandatory requirement so they are not put under pressure of conducting evaluation by their funding sources. City mangers clearly acknowledged the importance and potential benefits of training evaluation information for achieving greater outcome from a program and nevertheless all of them indicated that their organisation have 59 already taken the initiative of developing a systematic evaluation which is in progress and such system will be implemented soon. Meanwhile many also indicated that the reason systematic program evaluation is not done more often is because their organisation has yet not defined the potential outcomes of lengthy and time consuming systematic evaluation so they are still not sure what kinds of long and short term benefits can be achieved from program evaluation information. 4.3. Organization Development activities within Vaasa city organisation Interview respondents were initially provided with list of organisational development (OD) activities and asked to determine whether their organisation was engaged in OD activities. All respondents indicated that their organisation was engaged in OD activities. Results showed that SOs are most frequent in Organizational transformation activities, Human process-based are the second most frequently occurring OD activities and structural redesign programs were ranked as least frequently used by their SOs (shown in Table 14). These organisational development activities are categorically discussed in the fallowing section. Off the Organizational transformation activities, Leadership training was the most commonly occurring activities in SOs. Whereas Goal setting, problem solving groups, selection of policies and forming strategy were discussed and reported as core elements and techniques being used as part of leadership training. All respondents indicated that they personally and someone from their department/organisation was participating in the leadership development training (Esimies passi) organised by the City‟s central Human resource department (see Table 14). 60 Table 14: Type of Organisational Development activities by Vaasa City Organisation (n=12). Types of OD activities f % Human process-based/Self Awareness programs Conflict resolution 2 17 Stress management 2 17 Cultural, climate survey 8 67 Organizational transformation/Individual and group change Centralised leadership training 12 100 Performance appraisals 12 100 Clear job description 12 100 organisational commitment 5 42 Total quality management 2 16 Developed information system 5 42 Development discussion 10 83 Structural redesign programs Work flow\Task redesign 3 25 Used Lean management 1 8 Developed/ redesigned strategy 2 17 Note: Respondents were permitted to choose from multiple responses, responses related to non-practice of any of these listed above OD activities, were automatically excluded from the frequency. The majority of respondents reported that leadership training is used to develop the management and leadership competencies needed to perform the jobs of city managers in their respective organisations. This kind of training aims to prepare them for current and future leadership roles. Veera City director of Human Resources (HR) indicated, “This year HR department organised training for 333 city managers from various sectors. This training is of 7 days and there is one training day every month and overall it last almost a year due to additional fallow up meeting 61 days”. Development of strategy was mentioned by the respondents as part of leadership training and initiative taken by the city administration to increase the employee participation in decision making. Forming a strategy by organising trainees in problem solving groups which are given possible scenarios to develop flexible plans by having group discussion was mention by the respondents. Veera and Anneli indicated that development of strategy include goals setting, selection of policies through discussion groups. In seven days of training, every day there is new topic, issue and critical problem for which groups find possible solutions. First trainees learn problem solving techniques and then by using the acquired knowledge and competency they find the most appropriate solutions. Anneli further emphasized that employee should participate more in planning process and development of a strategy, she said, “I have worked with city administration on issues such as goal setting, strategy development, and quality management. it was emphasized during the discussion that employees should be encouraged to participate in planning so they become more aware of the importance of their jobs which helps them link up their goals with service units‟ mission”. As part of individual and group OD activities, respondents reported that performance appraisals, job descriptions, organisational commitment are frequently occurring activities in their SOs. Interestingly, total quality management (TQM) was reported to be in practice by four respondents altogether representing three different service sectors (Health, Education and Administration), Two of them indicated the importance and practice of Quality Management in their organisation. Examples of responses stated in their own words: 62 Mikko planning manager of Vaasa central hospital stated, “We are consistently working on improving the quality of customer/ patient care services by using quality management techniques and focusing on patient as stakeholder. Hospital is presently engaged in developing health and safety practices for patients as part of country-wide initiative”. Kimmo exective director at Vakk reported,“TQM is very important, it‟s included in our objectives and planning. As training institute we always try to improve the quality of our services by having discussions with our client companies”. However contrary to the responses mentioned above, two of the respondents, one each from education and administration denied the practice of total quality management, a combined response stated below: “We had discussion on TQM techniques with management however we haven‟t decided yet whether to implement a centralized or decentralized TQM across city organisations”. Organizational commitment (OC) as individual OD activity was indicated as in practice by many of the respondents, respondents from different organisations mentioned that their organisations were involved in improving employees‟ commitment and motivation towards their jobs as well as organisation. However the responses related to what types of initiatives to improve OC were taken by the management and how often these activities were occurring varied among respondents in different sectors. Two respondents from educational institute, two from hospital and one from administration sector indicated that organisational commitment is very important and their management is focusing on increasing it. The two of the responses are as follows: “It‟s very important.., regarding improving OC, we have taken the initiative of making communication more open so everyone knows what‟s‟ happening, we hope it will improve the employee job commitment”. “We have taken the initiative of improving employee participation through having them involved in the strategy planning and goal setting.., it is assumed to increase the employee job awareness and help us building mutual trust.., and we appreciate employees for their contribution and good performance”. 63 At the contrary, three other respondents, 2 representing sector of Education and one Health discussed on the effectiveness of activities occurring to improve OC and possible factors affecting the level of OC in their organisations, two respondents from educational institute said, “Most of employees are working on contracts that are renewed/ extended when old one expires, also new employees are not given permanent or long-term contracts so they are always uncertain about their job security as if their employment will continue after specific duration or not, this negatively affects the commitment of employees towards their organisation”. One respondent from hospital even indicated the level of Organizational commitment varies among work force of different job levels (e.g. staff and management) in their organisation. She said, “Organizational commitment is critical factor to measure and increase, it varies on different job levels, perhaps nurses are more committed to organisation as they stay for longer period with the organization but doctors tend to switch to other hospitals if they get the better job and it‟s simply because they have more job opportunities available to them here in Finland”. While identifying the OD activities from the category of Human process-based, they said that their organisations implemented some of the programs. They indicated that they use Conflict management, Stress management, culture survey and sometimes team building in their organisations. One respondent elaborated on the usefulness of cultural climate survey, she said that recently we had decided to do culture survey once in two years that has been very useful here so due to that we had brought some changes to its contents to make it even more useful tool for service improvements. Upon asking, Most of the respondents from said that they use the centralised culture survey administered by the city administration department except one Planner at Vaasa central hospital said that they have their own team who does the cultural assessment. 64 Conflict resolution is indicated to be in practise by two respondents one from each sector education and administration, whereas two respondents from administration and health, both said stress management was used by their SOs. Department director said: “They used conflict management effectively in their organisation and due to that their staffs is capable of working efficiently during conflict situations”. Planner at Vaasa central hospital elaborated, “Generally stress management sessions are organised for all employees however special therapy session are organised for those who have recently experienced or dealt with stressful situation (e.g. trauma) that helps them dealing with that kind of situation since hospital is very stressful workplace”. Most of the respondents indicated their Service Organizations (SOs) were sometimes engaged in OD activities concerning structural redesign. Respondent mentioned policy change, strategy redesign and work or task redesign were those activities which occur less frequently compare to other OD activities. Management consultant, planner at Vaasa central hospital and director of educational institution indicated their organisation were engaged in task and work redesign. Planner from Vaasa central hospital elaborated how they were involved in work redesign; she said that they were working on development of workflow process for most of jobs at hospital to improve the employees‟ job awareness. She further explained that they had deployed lean management techniques to develop the work flow process. Two respondents from administration indicated the process of strategy development that was essential part of leadership training organised by the central HR department, process involved planning in the form of considering possible scenarios and developing flexible plans through group discussions. Whereas the city strategy redesign as still in progress was indicated by one of the respondents from technical services, she reported “City strategy is currently being redesigned and proactive human resource planning project has been started. I believe them to be implemented to achieve its goals.” 65 While discussing the deployment of Information technology by the Service organizations (SOs) and its contribution to improve quality of client services or organising HRD activities across organizations, respondents shared multiple instances of using information technology to either conduct training program by building training networks and virtual teams or organising specific training on individual work related Software deployed by their SOs. Whilst some reported the contribution of IT in reengineering the work processes and customer/client services through improving them or revolutionising various health and social care services through reducing the processing time per client by making the services speedy and more accessible to the customer/citizens. Director of City‟s Information Department indicated, “We are doing new things every year, networking, virtualisation and using new softwares”. Tiina from Vaasa central hospital indicated that she organised training when they implemented new IT system at the hospital, she further shared her experience of developing a new deductive system, “I developed a special deductive system for adults that I implemented with help of my team”. Kimmo said that they were currently developing a new Enterprise Resource Planning System; meanwhile they were having training sessions on usage of that new ERP system. He further reflected on the benefits of investing in new ERP system development, “New ERP system is taking plenty of time and resources but we are also hoping to have high returns on this investment”. Head Nurse Saari indicated the deployment of different medicine related software that are being used at the Vaasa central hospital that provide supplementary aid to nurses for calculating medicine for patients “ This medicine calculator is very helpful, effective and it being used in most of hospitals in Finland”. Development discussion is another most commonly reported individual activities by the respondents. Majority of the respondents said that their organisation used development discussions as single handed tool for the planning of OD related activities. Multiple respondents said that their top management hold meeting with middle management and also 66 staff where OD related issues are thoroughly discussed which leads to initiatives, proposals and planning of these activities on all levels of organisation. 4.3.1. Effectiveness of OD activities in city organizations During the interviews the respondent were asked to give their opinions on the effectiveness of organisational development activities in their organizations based on their individual experience of either organising OD activities or being involved in planning of such activities. They were asked to indicate their responses in form of Yes/NO (yes= Effective, No= Ineffective) to determine whether their service sector organisation (SSO) provides suitable (support) environment to conduct these particular OD programs (shown in Table 15). Those respondents who did not clearly indicate their response and rather said “They were not sure of what to respond”, their responses are not included in frequency Table 15. Most of respondents shared their thoughts and experience on using various OD programs and their effectiveness depending on their personal observation, capacity and knowledge. Majority of respondents said that these fallowing Organizational transformation OD programs were effectively being used in their SOs: Annually or bi-annually held Development discussions, centralized leadership training program (Esimies passi- Leadership Pass), Goal setting, organisational commitment, performance appraisal, clear job descriptions, Employee/Customer feedback, problem solving groups ( See Table 15). Educational cooperation of SOs with universities and poly-technique institutes was indicated to be growing that was another aspect which was assumed to better organise Training and development activities. 67 Table 15. Type of OD activities identified by respondents (n=12) as to be effective or ineffective within Vaasa city organisations. Types of OD activities F % Human process-based/Self-awareness programs Individual/group change OD programs 12 said Yes 100 Performance appraisals 12 said Yes 100 Clear job description 12 said Yes 100 Used goal setting 6 said yes 50 1 said No 8 Organizational transformation/Individual and group change Organisational commitment programs 6 said Yes 50 3 said No 25 Total quality management 2 Said Yes 16 Cultural, climate survey 12 said Yes 100 Conflict resolution 3 said yes - Team building 6 said Yes 50 2 said No 16 Developing information system 5 said Yes 42 Development discussion 12 said Yes 100 Structural redesign programs Changing structure of organisation 10 said No 83 Work flow\Task redesign 6 said Yes 50 Deployment of IT 12 said Yes 100 Revising/ reforming policy 11 said Yes 91 Revising strategy 8 said Yes 67 Using downsizing 12 said No 100 City‟s Leadership training 9 said Yes 75 2 said No 16 Note: Multiple responses were available to respondents; those who did not provide a definite response (e.g. Yes/No/do not know) for any of these listed OD activities, are not included in frequency (f). On the other hand some respondent were critical of management of these abovementioned OD activities and their actual outcomes to the organisation. Kimmo (Executive director) 68 indicated, “Leadership program is not so beneficial for the experienced managers or bosses, there is nothing new to learn for them but on other hand, it‟s useful for new and young manager/bosses who are attending it the first time, some training sessions focus heavily on implementation of management techniques that do not have great implications to some of the trainees‟ organisations”. While discussing the Organizational transformation/work management OD activities, respondents reported that planning a strategy, Team building, conflict resolution, culture survey was considered to be effective in practise at their respective city organisations. Respondent were asked to identify and discuss various organisational-wide activities that were considered to be effective and also those which were assumed to be least effective and useful in practice at their organisations. Respondent identified specific OD activities concerning structural redesign from very effective to least effective (if ever implemented by their SOs) or somewhat unnecessary. Majority of the respondents from various SOs indicated that OD activities related to strategy redesign, policy change (policy reforms) work redesign, and deployment of new IT were experienced to be practically effective. They elaborated that their Service Organizations (SOs) had brought changes multiple time in their career related to work methods and techniques, introducing new methods to improve service delivery are considered easier to implement by their SOs compare to other kinds of structural changes like downsizing and outsourcing. On contrast, respondents consistently indicated that organisational wide structural changes such as downsizing, staff reduction and outsourcing had not been used as popular tools for services improvements or reforms by their SOs. Response that reflect the non-practice of these OD activities and the arguments why these SOs were not engaged in implementation of such programs include: “Brining structural changes are more difficult to implement, for instance firing people as 69 result of reforms is very challenging to do in here... Reforming jobs is possible but restructuring the organisation is different thing, Employees resist against these kinds of changes...” 4.4. Career development activities within city organisation Respondents discussed career development (CD) as an important component of HRD. They identified the use of career development by their SOs. Their responses represent the view and perception shared by the participants that the purpose of career development was to promote individual growth along with organisation‟s growth. They discussed the CD programs and opportunities offered to employees at different stages of their career by their Service Organizations (SOs). The responses focused on programs related to Career management and Career planning. As summarized in Table 16, interview respondents indicated that career management activities that their SOs were frequently engaged in entails workforce (planning) forecasting, coaching, mentoring, performance appraisal, and tuition assistance programs. Management by objectives was reported as least practised activity by the respondents. Veera indicated that city organisation had budget to spend on employees‟ education and development programs. Response stated in her own words, “City organisation has cooperation with different training institutes and universities (VAKK, VAMK, University of Vaasa etc.). Besides on the job training (OJT), every year 2-3 employees take up professional and educational courses (Diplomas) in these institutes which cost up to 6000 Euros per person”. Besides plain identification of occurrence of CD activities, Many Interviewees‟ responses showed variations in which CM activities occur at their SOs. Two of the responses stated: “Mentoring and coaching are also in practise but more visible in education sector”. 70 Table 16. Type of career development activities offered to staff by Vaasa city organisation (n=12) Types of CD programs f % Career planning activities Employee development Systems 8 67 Provided informal Career counseling 5 42 Used job rotation 8 67 Offered Professional diplomas/ certifications 4 33 Offered tuition assistance/ higher education programs to individual employees 4 33 Temporary assignments 2 16 Career management activities Workforce planning & forecasting 12 100 Conducted Performance appraisals 12 100 Used mentoring 6 50 Offered research opportunities to employees 2 16 Note: Respondents were permitted multiple responses, their responses related to non- practice of any of CD activities listed above, were automatically excluded from the frequency (f). Opposing to former response, one respondent from education sector indicated in sceptical but concern tone, “There should be proper mentoring but here it‟s not formal and seemingly MBO is also far from practise in here”. Two respondents from health sector reported in the same way: Leila (Training Officer) reflected on the needs to improve mentoring “Mentoring should be 71 emphasized more and aim at transferring work knowledge from senior to other (junior) employees and also across the organisation”. Saari (Head nurse) similarly indicated, “We use mentoring among nurses but not among head nurses”. Interview respondents identified the occurrence of Career planning activities at their respective Service organization (SOs). Employee development systems, Job rotation and job relocation were reported as most frequently occurring activities, while career counselling (latter) and vocational preferences take place sometimes, Temporary assignment as least frequently occurring individual activity ( which was at least not identified as part of CD) in their SOs. Respondents identified that their SOs had employee development system established through which employees were offered various personal growth and career development opportunities. Though multiple respondents indicated that offering of employee development opportunities to employees depends on if their job requires a specific kind of expertise or personal growth and management sees an economic value of some sort to organisation in providing that development opportunity to individual or group then decision is made on these bases. One out of many similar instances indicated by the respondents includes: “Organization invests in development and growth of those individuals or groups who offer skill and expertise which are needed by the organisation, for instance Hospital offers two separate career paths to nurses and doctors”. Some respondents argued that employees are given guidance, coaching and opportunities like tuition-reimbursement as part of career development however this depends a great deal on employee‟s job level, personal motivation and drive to take up those kinds of opportunities and utilise their skill and talent on optimal level. Tiina argued that CD system needs some improvements and it should encourage employees to focus on their job development and personal growth. She said, “In our organisation you 72 have to get more education in order to get promoted. While discussing this issue, she shared her hospital work experience and indicated, “It‟s easier to do job rotation or enlargement in this educational institute than central hospital but it also depends on personal interest to sign up for job rotation programs”. She also suggested that her organisation should make CD policy clear to employees to fully inform them about their career ladder and future job promotions in order to encourage them to focus on personal growth and also to avoid misunderstandings. Likewise, Veera pointed out that even though in general job rotation (JR) was is in practise by the SOs and this opportunity was available to most of employees in various sectors, but besides their initial interest towards JR, later on, much less employees actually signed up for those job rotation programs as part of career development activity. 4.5. Barriers to use HRD in Vaasa city organization (VCO) The second research question was intended to identify the barriers and challenges to HRD in VCO which are negatively affecting the performance of HRD programs and obstructing their successful execution across the city organizations. Interview respondents discussed this issue and indicated various barriers which limited the scope of HRD in their organisation. Respondents identified barriers that already existed and hindered the current HRD programs in one way or another (training and development, Organisational development and career development). As summarized in Table 17, the interview respondents indicated the barriers of non-existence of strategy for integrated use of HRD, lack of HRD expertise and knowledge (professionals) and limited number of staff for proper organisation of such activities were frequently responsible for the SSO‟s limited engagement in HRD activities and their poor performance. 73 Table 17. Barriers to HRD activities within Service organisations identified by respondents (n=12) Type of Barrier f % Lack of integrated use of HRD (functions) 10 88 Limited staff and expertise to conduct HRD activities 8 73 Financial cost 6 57 Time required 4 32 Note: Respondents were permitted to choose from multiple responses, Frequency (f) do not reflect responses of those who failed to provide a definite response for this category. The comments of interview respondent‟s focused on lack of HRD integrated strategy, lack of HRD expertise and limited staff to conduct HRD activities as the frequent barriers limiting HRD activities. Other barrier, such as lack of financial resources and time were also mentioned, whilst latter (time) which was reported relatively with less emphasis. Multiple respondents indicated that their organisation fallow the training and development system which either planned and implemented by the organisation itself or channelized by the central administration office, however they indicated that their Organisations lacked HRD integrated strategy that communicate the scope and possible outcomes of implementing HRD and its components as whole and due to that reason they were engaged in very limited or selective organisational development activities, program evaluation and career development activities. Veera indicated that city HR strategy includes different T&D plans however it does not specifically include the Human resource development strategy per se. In general, city organisations are responsible for planning and conducting training and development activities independently for their staff according to their own organisational needs, but administration office also organise training activities at the large scale for the whole city 74 employees for instance Leadership training for management staff. Most FCOs use development discussions as part of organisational development which held annually or bi- annually as identified by the respondents. The individual organisations did not have detailed HRD plan or strategy that specifically focused on its three major functions (T&D, OD and CD); furthermore development plans included only few organisational development programs that reflected less emphasis on this aspect of HRD by SOs. Similarly respondent elaborated that HRD plans should integrate with city HR strategy otherwise organisation will not provide suitable environment for implementation of several important organisational development programs and their execution will remain very difficult in city organisation: Julia said, “City‟s Human resource (HR) strategy is in development stages, HR strategy seemed to include some development plans but overall that it is not effective to meet the staff development needs against emerging organisational needs”. Moreover Janne said, “ it was the responsibility of central HR department to plan and channelize OD organisation-wide activities and then communicate with other departments otherwise SOs will keep using a limited set of developments programs which proved to be insufficient to meet the their development needs”. While discussing barriers and challenges concerning T&D programs, respondents from various SOs identified and discussed multiple factors which affected the organisation and performance these activities. Multiple respondents indicated that employees were not given any kind of training or travelling allowance to participate in off-the-job training activities. They jointly elaborated, “those employees who participated in activities which were organised far from their work or home (in other cities) which required some kind of travelling (by car or bus) and stay in other cities, were not given any kind of training allowance or benefits as part of compensation”. However these respondents mentioned that training day is considered as normal paid working day so they did not identify non-existence of such training allowance as big issue and only indicated it the upon asking. Nonetheless some respondents shared instances of lack of support by management or work colleagues to make employee‟s participation possible in training 75 session through making arrangements such as flexible work-shifts, work from home and providing system of workload sharing by co-workers for employee who is away for attending a training session. Several respondents identified the issues related organising and executing T&D activities in their respective SOs. Lack of sufficient staff was single issue which was brought up multiple times by the respondents while discussing the challenges related implementation of HRD activities. According to respondents this factor alone was cause of creating barriers to HRD activities in various ways and these can be categorised in two groups, First: those HRD activities which were currently in practise but faced challenges. Second; those activities which city had already considered in planning but could not implement due to existing barriers. While discussing barriers to those T&D activities which were in practise, Leila indicated, “At hospital, training new employee (medical interns and nurses) is big challenge because we work with limited staff and they are too busy to focus on both work and taking care of trainees at the same time. Staff considers training new employees as an extra duty which they do in addition to their actual job. We have the funds but not enough people to train new employees”. Simultaneously systematic training evaluation was brought up as one of those individual activities which were considered initially in planning by city administration but yet to be developed and implemented across the city organisation. The primary reason for unavailability of such evaluation system was either lack of expert (evaluator) to develop such system or lack of sufficient staff to conduct thorough systematic evaluation. Veera elaborated with self-confessing but concerning tone that city administration had expertise in providing trainings but on the other hand, they were also short of full-time training planner and evaluator who could help select the right methods and techniques for training and evaluation system. While discussing the lack of practise of some of the 76 important HRD activities, Tinna and Janne indicated, “the primary reason of lack of systematic evaluation and less emphasis on OD activities in FCOs is lack of HRD oriented planning which again either due to lack of HRD experts or organisation being understaffed to conduct these activities”. Lack of HRD knowledge related to planning and implementation was also identified to be a reason of placing less emphasis on OD activities by SOs or not including detailed HRD plans in organisational strategy. Interviewees‟ responses reflected a contrast of opinions concerning the issue of financial resources and it‟s relation with more or less occurrence of HRD activities in SOs. It seemed that limited financial resources was a major concern of both city administration and individuals representing SOs however former (Top management) indicated the availability of sufficient financial resources to organise various HRD programs whereas latter (middle/line management) identified limited finances and in some case insufficient funding as reason for including very limited number HRD in development strategy. Veera indicated, “Lack of finances or limited training budget is not a problem, we do have enough funding available, this year, and the annual training budget has been increased from 0.82 % (2010) to .92 % of employee‟s annual salary. In 2011, Vaasa city‟s training budget accounted for1 640 000 Euros, while HR department spent 129000 Euros on training and development (T&D) of city staff. In total, budget of 1.64 million Euros had been spent on employees‟ T&D programs during last year (2011) by Vaasa city, However the initial target of increasing training budget to 1 percent of employees‟ annual salary, had not been achieved during 2011”. Similarly some other respondents from VCOs indicated that funding or money was not a big issue, it was not the primary factor hindering the HRD activities, in their opinion it was not correlated with organising more or less HRD activities by their Service organizations (SOs). Simultaneously similar respondents identified the limited number of staff and lack of HRD experts was the reason that their SSO was engaged in little or less HRD activities. The group of interview respondents that considered financial resources (Money) as one influential factor related to a degree with which their SSO was engaged in particular HRD activity, one of their responses includes: 77 “We deal with financial constraint all the time during training planning. We cannot send everyone so we only send limited number of employees on training every time, sometimes top management‟s concern is that how much money is being spent on particular training so spending the entire budget is often associated with successful execution of particular program than actual outcomes ( e.g. ROI)”. Multiple respondents indicated that the lack of management support for conducting several important HRD activities was primary reason that their SSO was not engaged in those activities. Some speculated that reason why systematic program evaluation was not done at all levels was because their management had might not been aware of its benefits. While other indicated that the reason why financial benefits like return on investment of training activity were not calculated because it was very difficult and challenging task to do that in city organisation. At the same time respondents showed interest towards return on investment. They said that it would have been very interesting and beneficial for their SSO and management to know about financial returns of particular activity which would help them to decide whether to continue investing in it. Few respondents indicated that their management sometimes do not encourage or support plans and ideas regarding introducing and implementing new development activities. They said that they had very little control over training plans and they had to organise them just by fallowing the pre-determined instructions. They also indicated that they had experienced resistance from employees when introduced new program or brought changes to previous ones. It was pointed out that there is on-going negative attitude toward new development plans or management strategy. They elaborated that they were not aware of any change management planning or strategy which was implemented by top management to deal with these issues related to employee resistance in their SSO. Some indicated senior employee show relatively more resistance to changes in work methods and techniques due to the fact that they were soon to be retired so they were not willing to change their learned work ethics and techniques because they did not see great deal of future benefits of investing their time and efforts in new learning. Surprisingly the barrier time was indicated by respondents from service organizations 78 (SOs) as critical and always challenging but somehow manageable. SOs mostly deal with time issue by choosing best alternative available. HRD activities were planned only if it was possible to organise them. Respondents indicated that during training they deal with time issue by sending limited number of employees on training so the rest can cover their jobs to keep the routine operation going smoothly. Though others identified the critical nature of time management which might affects the execution and performance of particular HRD activity. Sometimes lack of time was directly related to SOs being understaffed and did not have sufficient number of employees to conduct those activities (e.g. conducting systematic evaluation of hundreds of trainees attending city‟s leadership program) or too busy in delivery of public services. 4.6. The suggestions by local HR professionals to improve HRD in city organisation HRD practitioners were asked for their suggestions on what can be done in the future to improve and facilitate HRD practices in City organisation or in other words Service sector organisations. Many of the participants‟ perspective on the future were centred on the rectification of the current systems of HRD in SOs as discussed in previous section or directions regarding how to eliminate the barrier to HRD in order to enhance the performance of various programs. The researcher asked HR (D) professionals to describe their suggestions as part of initiative to fix the problems related to various HRD programs which were first identified by them during the interview. 79 4.6.1. City HRD professional‟s suggestions The researcher asked the 12 HR(D) practitioners to give their suggestions on how they could improve the current HRD functions in their respective City organisations. The study participants identified multiple broad suggestions, which were content analysed and categorised into 10 major suggestions. Table 18 lists 8 major suggestions ranked by interviewees. Table 18. City HRD professionals‟ suggestions on how to improve their role and HRD practices within their organisations in future (n=12). Enhancing the role of HRD practices f % 1. Key actors should commit to recognize and promote HRD knowledge, practices and integrated use of all three HRD functions 10 83 2. City strategy should include detailed HRD plan and each SSO should have clearly outlined HRD action plan to conduct the necessary programs 10 83 3. Central HR office should become actively involved with Service units 9 75 4. Partner with HRD knowledge experts to form HRD oriented strategy 9 75 5. Establish HRD support network within and among various SOs 9 75 6. HRD plan with greater focus on goal-oriented training programs 8 66 7. SOs should have better change management plan 7 58 8. Focus of on both employee development and service delivery to citizens 6 50 Note: Each Respondent was encouraged to give multiple suggestions to improve HRD functions and concerning issues. Of the twelve HR (D) practitioners, 10 (83%) said that they would enhance the status of HRD in their SOs. Participants identified that management and employees in various sectors were not fully aware of the HRD knowledge and its significant contributions to organisations and development of services. Many suggested that management attitude 80 towards HRD practice should be improved first to enhance its status in the city organisation. City (Top level) management should promote the use of HRD programs among service units, establish HRD unit, and improve the existing HRD system. 10 (83%) Respondents said that city organisation has the advantage of implementing a centralised policy and strategy across its working units, due to that HRD practices can be standardised and channelized to achieve optimal results. Central head office can introduce clearly outlined HRD action plan within service organisations and it should encourage individual SOs to form their own need based periodical HRD plan so the SOs has the autonomy to keep the planning process flexible and decentralised. HRD planning should be part of organisational strategy and planning process, HRD unit can step up and take initiative of providing knowledge and expertise to help design customised HRD plans for each SOs (Hospital, schools, Bureau of social services etc.) depending on its unique nature of services and special staff development needs. City managers said though they have training and development plans and system established to conduct in-house on-the-job and off the job training activities but having a HRD action plan including training evaluation, Organizational development and career development functions could help them to better organise the activities that focus fairly on every development areas. They said the clearly outlined action plans could identify objectives, strategies and milestones to assist to detail their programs to better manage them. 9 (75%) respondents suggested that HR head office should establish a HRD support network with city Service units. City HR department should get more involved with SOs for development of HRD plan. Most of SOs are engaged in routinely occurring training activities if the staff development needs have increased then organisation is still working with limited resources (training staff and budget). Specifically respondents from health and social said that their need more staff to organise timely and greater number of T&D activities to meet of skill development needs of new employees to match increased requirement of service delivery to citizens due to growing number of elderly clients and internal migration. Similar respondents said that combination of HRD action plan and 81 sufficient training staff would help them to better respond to the increased training needs to better manage the service delivery. Managers and training officers from SOs said that they would want City HR department to become involved with them to better respond to the changes occurring in the working units. They said that SOs are under heavy workload of providing basic services to the clients (citizens) and they are involved in day-to-day operations along with employee development and employees‟ overall satisfaction with job so it would be great help if there is better support system as in a sense that if there is HRD units that can also coordinate with their training staff and share their work load of organising training activities this would solve their staffing problem by supplying sufficient training staff. 9 (75%) managers suggested that they should be able to temporary higher outside HRD expert to either do the planning or organise these programs while the other suggested that there should be possibility of rotating training officers among different service sectors in case if one department temporarily needs additional training staff. Furthermore 9 (75%) of them said they would establish a better support and communication network within their service organisation and also between them and central HR department. City managers said a better network could be built through better communication and more interaction among them. They identified that for employee commitment and job satisfaction this support and communication network is critically important. Employees (Trainees) should be able to have level of trust in management that they can always come to talk to the people and have all of their inquiries answered and issues sorted out. Training officer indicated growing networking among their organizations and other educational and training institutes as positive sign. On the other hand they emphasised on active involvement of city HR department in both staff and service development through improving communication channels and face-to-face meetings with SOs‟ management would be a good step towards HRD system improvements. 8 (66%) respondents said that training plan should place a greater focus on its objectives, 82 job relevance and its timely delivery to employees. Training should not be assumed as just routine activity, depending on its nature it‟s critical to know whether training has achieved its set objectives or not, to achieve that goal, a good training evaluation system comes quite handy. Training plan should also include appropriate evaluation methods and it should reflect the true results to demonstrate whether it has performed well or below the standards. HR should develop training evaluation by coordinating with service units‟ training staff and provide the essential resources for its effective execution. Most mangers said that leadership training organised by admin office was effective and city should continue organising such kinds of sessions. While commenting city leadership training in particular, three respondents said that they found course contents and sessions either irrelevant or they were less helpful for planning or improving work strategy. Respondents from various SOs indicated that finical resources were big concern in training planning. 6 (50%) respondents indicated that limited financial resources were barrier to training and development and was the primary reason that their SOs decided not to organise those activities. while 5 respondents (2=Health, 1=social and 2=technical services) said that they need immediate increase in training budget to organise more necessary trainings with equal opportunities for employees and to improve HRD systems. Three (25%) respondents said in their opinion, its better if new employee who is replacing a senior employee (who is going to be retired), trained by that senior retiring employee. Otherwise the employee soon to be retired would not be able to transfer his knowledge and expertise to new employee, because currently the system is that new employee joins the organisation when the senior employee has already left the organisation and the knowledge is being lost. 7 (58%) respondents said that would like to implement a change strategy to anticipate and manage change process better in their SOs. They said that they have fairly good communication channels developed so change strategy could be used to facilitate the 83 workforce planning and recruitment process by keeping it right on schedule as when senior employees continue to retire meanwhile new employees join the organisation. Staffing process should go smoothly to sustain the level of skills and expertise required by each service organization (SO) to respond well to the increased demand of service delivery due to population increase in cities (due to municipality mergers, internal migration and urbanization). Respondents identified that due to timely workforce planning, their SOs were prepared to deal with the staffing challenges which were expected to occur in fallowing years immediately after the large numbers of employees have retired from city organisation. Most of them were optimistic about their SO‟s system and capacity to deal with upcoming situation of losing experienced employees through the availability of sufficient pool of eligible candidates to choose from. Most of them elaborated that their organisation has done the workforce planning and from the observation and previous recruitment experience, they were confident that their municipality offers a sizeable pool of candidates to meet the staffing needs of each service area (Education, health, technical services etc.). At the same time, Few respondents were little anxious and mildly concerned about the other sector organisations regarding their workforce recruitment planning. Two respondents (16%) one each from education and information department pointed that they would like to know how the Finnish health sector planning to deal with the situation of large number of retirements (doctors and nurses) and what is the city‟s administration planning in this regard. However they identified that their SO‟s HR planning is greatly benefiting them in order to keep hold of workforce shortage. Moreover, Most of them pointed out that they did not necessarily have to make changes into their staff training programs because they find them as to be up-to-date to prepare and fulfil the learning needs of young workforce. They suggested that recruiting new or young employees should be seen as great opportunity to bring in fresh knowledge and embrace the prospect to bring improvements through changes which were not possible through old workforce who were not willing to initiate the changes. 84 6 managers (50%) from service organizations (SOs) said they would place greater focus on staff development in accordance with demand of service delivery. They said providing goods and services to public at large are their SO‟s main objective and responsibility. They would focus more on those HRD programs that ensure the delivery of uninterrupted, fair and quality public services to the citizens. 4.6.2. Summary Findings concentrated on the nature and types of HRD activities which were occurring in different sector organisations (health & social care, education etc.), in most cases, the organisation‟s management, planners, working unit‟s heads and supervisors with coordination of training officers (in-house and outside experts) were involved in conducting different types of HRD activities independently for their employees primarily depending on individual Organisation‟s needs. Sometimes development programs (e.g. leadership training) were centrally organised by city HR department for the city employees at large. Training and development activities were most frequently occurring activities within SOs. Relatively most city owned organisations (sector wise) were engaged in organisational development (OD) activities with less emphasis, however the instances of occurrence of these activities highly varied to the type and nature of these Organisations (Hospitals, educational institute, social services, technical services etc.) as suggested by kuchinke‟s (2003) contingent framework of HRD. Most service organizations (SOs) seemed to use a minimalistic approach to OD by either selecting limited number of OD programs or except in some case when organisations reported the usage of some unique OD programs (enterprise resource planning system, lean management etc.) to either develop or improve a management system or service. As organisations continue to move from being vertical to flat structured, the career development (CD) activities also deemed to decrease with reduced hierarchical layers in organisation. Somehow, most of those organisations were fairly involved in organising career development activities, typically, CD opportunity is offered specifically for the 85 purpose of career advancement (e.g. future promotions) by SOs, it was reported as something tied up with employees‟ level of qualification, intrinsic motivation and more importantly demand of their skills and expertise for particular Organisation. The lack of integrated use of HRD functions which often influenced by the fact that HRD is not incorporated into organisational strategy of service organizations (SOs), while Insufficient number of training staff to conduct HRD activities was another underlying assumption of most of the respondents, in identifying barriers to HRD in SOs. System of Training evaluation was also another area which was not completely developed due to lack of use of evaluation experts in city Organisation or non-usage of HRD expert by city administration for this purpose. Financial cost of training was reported as sometimes influential factor in selection of programs but not a barrier to HRD by interviewees. The staff of these organisations who was engaged in performing HRD activities, in their opinion, these fallowing suggestions seem to have priority to improve the overall planning process of HRD in city orgnization; enhancing the status of HRD as field of knowledge and expertise, integrated use of HRD, using a complete process model of HRD, integrating HRD in strategy, increased coordination among Service units (Hospitals, social services etc.) and central HR administration. Another group of suggestions focused on the organising and executing HRD activities, participants viewed as essentials to make HRD programs effective in city organisations which include; using HRD specialist, both training staff and central HR staff should be proactive and take leadership roles in employee development, T&D programs should be result-oriented. HRD should be cost-effective by selecting those programs first which aims to improve performance and add economic value to the service delivery. A group of respondents emphasised on managing change process better by implementing age management practices in combination with sensitivity training to address the issue of increasing workforce diversity in service organizations. 86 5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The primary purpose of this study was to draw Human resource development (HRD) profile of a Vaasa municipality organization to explore the nature of its HRD practices by posing a main question 1) what are the HRD systems (Training and Development, Organizational Development and Career Development) in Vaasa city organization including types of HRD activities that are taking place within its operative service units (city owned public sector organizations). In addition to that, two sub-topics sought to outline premises for question 2) what are the barrier to use HRD and question 3) in opinion of local HRD professionals, How HRD practices can be improved within VCO to incorporate new municipality vision 2017? Interview as data collection method was used in this study, 12 HR (D) professionals who were responsible for planning and organizing HRD activities in five different Service organizations (SOs) of Vaasa city participated to provide information for main research questions and underlying HRD related issues. Qualitative data collected from respondents was used to present HRD profile of Vaasa city organization including its Service organizations (SOs) as overall rather than providing individual profile of each of them, primarily because those SOs are managed and employed by Vaasa city which regulates and standardizes HRD practices within SOs done by implementing common HRD practices which all SOs has to comply with, however the planning process of HRD activities is decentralized within SOs. HRD profile was then used to demonstrate the actual practices, occurrence of HRD activities in terms of their types and nature, However different opinions and perspectives related to application of HRD practices provided by interviewees was considered an additional opportunity to compare practices among different types of Service organizations (SOs) to enrich qualitative analysis and to support study‟s conclusions. Of the total 12 interviewees, three were from education, three from health, three from general administration, two from technical department and only one represented bureau of social services Vaasa. Relatively small representation especially from social services and 87 technical services posed a limitation to generalize empirical findings to all service units to some degree, although more participation of interviewees from these sectors had offered better chance to supply more qualitative data which could have helped to reflect realistic view of HRD activities fairly in all five SOs. Anyhow due to relatively fair representation from education, and health and general administration on one hand, regulation of common HRD practices and their standardization across SOs by Vaasa city organization (VCO) on the other, moderate generalization of results, conclusions and implications to VCO through one compact profile was likewise possible. This section provides conclusions of empirical findings drawn from discussion. It presents the conclusion related to each main research topic. Conclusion 1: The findings suggested that occurrence of HRD activities vary among SOs, however simultaneously, the HRD profile including planning process, nature and execution of those HRD activities reflected similarities among them in most cases. Interviewees from different SOs reported common and specific occurrence of HRD activities by exhibiting a fairly comprehensive perspective towards some HRD practices while opportunistic approach towards others in Vaasa city organization. While analyzing each of HRD domains separately, empirical data of the study suggest that Service organizations (SOs) were more frequently engaged in conducting training and development activities compare to organizational development activities which support the argument as suggested in literature of HRD in large organizations. McCoy (1993: 108) advocates that usually large organizations conduct training and development function by dedicating a considerable amount of budget and efforts towards this HR function by organizing comprehensive activities to provide diverse array of T&D opportunities to employees while organizational and career development activities are kept under minimal use, they are conducted to lesser extent or if there is opportunity available or in some case only if they must do it for instance conducting a formal performance appraisal of employees or building a skill assessment center. SOs plan appropriate T&D activities for 88 the staff to develop skills and qualities essential to perform their current jobs and also to prepare them for the future job changes and new roles (Werner & DeSimone 2012: 11). However age is also seen sometimes negatively associated with number of development opportunities offered to employees (Swart, Mann, Brown and Price 2008: 251), some City mangers might see that providing development opportunities to older employees are not needed as they are viewed as more skilled and less likely to leave the organisation, therefore development programs are not considered as good or necessary investments. This view is fairly consistent with SOs, since they did not utilize the total development budget (equal to 1 percent of employees‟ annual) salary in 2011, as initially planned (Vaasa Staff Report 2011), because according to their workforce skill assessment, most of SOs‟ staff was already skilled and did not need the development in major areas. Conclusion 2: The occurrence of training and development (T&D) according to their types and nature showed similarities in SOs. SOs did not vary from each other in conducting training and development (T&D) activities in terms of their types, techniques and use of implementation methods due to the standardization of common training practices by city organization across SOs. However SOs because of being independent in planning of T&D activities, they do vary in terms of how often they assess, plan and organize those activities depending entirely on their own needs. All Service organizations (SOs) provide more general and awareness training (employee orientation), followed by managerial training and technical training. This existing trend found empirical support, Werner & DeSimone (2012: 263-265) suggested that large companies provide managerial training to administrative staff to prepare them for leadership roles, general training is offered to employees to have them aware of work place related rules, regulations and procedures. While technical training that includes an apprenticeship program to provide trainees with a need to meet continually changing job requirements with combination of class-room instruction and on-the job application is used to relatively lesser extent in some of the SOs. 89 Most SOs asses the needs when conducting a new kind of training course, otherwise, they do not feel the conduct need assessment for old and routinely organized courses due to their unchanging nature and contents. Conclusion 3: SOs showed variations and conformity at the same time in conducting organization development (OD) activities. SOs differ from each other in terms of types of OD activities in which they were engaged. However SOs specifically showed similarities with each other by engaging in limited number of OD activities by adapting minimalistic and need based perspective towards organizational development. While looking at the Organisational development activities in Service organizations (SOs), Results indicated that SOs are more frequent in organising individual/group change activities, while activities related to Organization transformation/work management occur to little lesser extent and structural redesign including organisational-wide programs were ranked as least frequently (as sometimes) used by their SOs. Some organisational transformation and Structural redesign activities and how often they take place varied among different SOs. SOs were engaged differently in organising activities related to human process-based and structural redesign, the use of stress management and conflict resolution was indicated by only by two interviewees for each program. Apparently area of stress management was more developed in Vaasa central hospital than others, while respondents from Vakk indicated the implementation of conflict resolution techniques to ensure the organisational capacity to effectively operate under unusual and undesired circumstances. Similarly, respondents from Hospital indicated they were recently involved in using lean management to residing their work systems and Vakk was engaged in implementing an entrepreneur resource planning system. Therefore it‟s apparent that Health and education sectors are more frequent in organizing organizational transformational activities than Social services and Technical sectors. 90 Conclusion 4: How often SOs are engaged in conducting career development (CD) activities varies among them, but they showed conformity in terms of using activities of similar types and implementation techniques, they were also similar in using criteria for career advancement outlining grounds on which candidates qualify for specific CD activities which aim to prepare them for future roles and changes in responsibilities as result of promotion or job enrichment, decision criteria related to offering CD opportunities is seen as an investment that is mutually beneficial for both employees and organization. Career development programs and their use reflected least fluctuations among SOs, Tuition- reimbursement was indicated as most common development activity to encourage employees to higher their qualifications through degree programs and certifications organised with collaboration of other education institutes and training centres (e.g. University of Vaasa, VAMK and Vakk.in addition to that, job rotation, informal mentoring and career counselling were more or less frequently occurring activities in SOs. Even though most mangers employees motivation for personal growth is key indicator to determine how willing an employee is to get benefits of organisation‟s career development system, similarly SOs seems to focus more on the development of those employees who qualify for the criteria to receive development opportunities which include employee who offers unique and valuable set of skills and expertise that have high demand for organisation fallowed by their seniority and permanent-employment, due to all that, they are offered more development opportunities as management sees economic value of some sort to organisation in providing those kinds of opportunities to individuals or group (Roeheling, Cavanaugh, Moynihan, Boswell 2000: 398). Conclusion 5: Most SOs showed conformity in conducting training evaluation (TE) activities, Most SOs conduct TE by collecting and measuring data for level 1 (trainees‟ reaction) by using a questionnaire form. Even though, typically SOs also conduct evaluation on level 3 (on the job application) which is done through observation by 91 supervisor to evaluate trainees learning or performance, however none of them identified the availability of performance indicators neither a formal criteria to facilitate and guide the process of judgment for level 3 (on the job application). This study found a support from an earlier study done by ASTD (2010: 173) that reported similarly that Level 1 is the dominant method in large organizations fallowed by Level 2 (learning) and level 3 behavior (on-the-job application), likewise those SOs least frequently measure level 4 (results) and almost never measured Return on investment (RIO) of HRD activity, due to unavailability of system to calculate results of training and (specifically in case of RIO) difficulty of calculating RIO in Vaasa city organizations, were the main reason listed by respondents (Hill 1999: 226). Performance and skill development was ranked highest fallowed by learning second and financial benefits third (lowest) by most of respondents as main outcome of any training activity, however respondents from Education sector indicated Learning as a central focus of training activity. Conclusion 6: SOs indicated top three barriers to use and implement HRD programs, they ranked lack of integrated use of HRD functions as top barrier fallowed by llimited staff and expertise to conduct HRD activities second highest, these two were identified to be the most common barriers hindering the effective implementation of HRD programs. Interestingly, financial cost or lack of funding was ranked third by respondents, some did emphasize that it does influence the planning and selection process of HRD activity, however management is often more concerned with utilization of funds allocated to a program. Surprisingly, Time was ranked lowest as something which is critical but manageable, however it is not considered as something that limits the application of HRD practices. This study‟s findings differed from those previous investigations (Hill 1999; Gomez 2003: 226) which listed financial cost/per person a top barriers discouraging and limiting the use of HRD programs in large organizations. 92 Conclusion 7: Overall suggestions given by HRD professional of different SOs to advance HRD practices in Vaasa city organization were linked to improve the management of HRD in service units. Top management, line-managers, and HRD professionals could enhance their role by committing to promote HRD knowledge and practices by incorporating detailed HRD plan into strategy, specifically central Human resources department should get actively involved with Service units in planning and implementation of important HRD programs and supply all the expertise and resources required to develop HRD support network among Service units. Other set of suggestions require taking practical actions to improve overall HRD in SOs through defining change management strategy on all levels of city organisation to address issue of age management in relation with HRD, using a full functioning HRD model, emphasizing more on use of action learning rather than traditional training, increased use of customised development programs that fulfil the unique knowledge and skill acquisition needs of specific group of experts by avoiding one program fits all approach, improving mentoring and coaching systems of SOs and focusing more on those HRD programs which are result oriented either in terms of learning or performance this can be achieved through using a appropriate training evaluation system to determine their value and contribution to organisation. The respondents suggested that relatively younger workforce joining the SOs, should be seen as opportunity to introduce new changes to improve existing HRD systems. Future research can focus on HRD practices in larger Finnish municipalities; they provide sufficient grounds for large scale HRD research. A qualitative study with combination of mixed methods (survey and interviews) to collect data from even larger sample from more than one municipalities will allow expand the empirical findings of current research through providing sufficient data to outline HRD profile of larger municipalities, also use of comparative approach can lead to interesting findings to demonstrate the variations or similarities among large and medium sized municipalities in application of HRD practices, that can further help the field in expansion of knowledge based on actual practices and contingency view of HRD. 93 REFERENCES ASTD State of the Art Industry Report (2010). American Society of Training and Development (ASTD). In: Human Resource Development. 6 th Edition, 173-174. Eds. Desimone, L.R. and Werner, M.J. Canada: South Western, Cengage Learning. 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Toward Evidence-Based HRD through HRD Professional Partnership Research. In: What is HRD? A Definitional Review and Synthesis of the HRD Domain, 206-7. Eds. Hamlin, B. & Stewart, J. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Available 03.09.2011: www.emeraldinsight.com/0309-0590.htm Kolehmainen, Ari. (2011). New Municipality 2017: Vision of the Future of Local Government. Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities. Available 10.April.2012:http://www.localfinland.fi/en/authorities/Documents/Article%20on% 20Restructuring%20Local%20Government%20in%20Finland.pdf Local Government Reform and the New Municipality 2017 Programme. Available 01.06.2012:http://www.localfinland.fi/en/authorities/newmunicipality2017/ Municipal Personnel. Available 22.3.2012: http://www.kuntatyonantajat.fi/en/municipal- personnel/pages/default.aspx 98 Municipal Sector. Available 22.3.2012: http://www.kuntatyonantajat.fi/en/municipal- sector/pages/default.aspx Population and Migration. Available 08.05.2012: http://www.vaasa.fi/WebRoot/380444 Ruona, W. E. A. and Lynham, S. (1999). Toward a Philosophical Framework of Thought and Practice. In: What is HRD? A Definitional Review and Synthesis of the HRD Domain, 205-207. Eds. Hamlin, B. & Stewart, J. (2001). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Available 03.09.2011: www.emeraldinsight.com/0309-0590.htm Stewart, J.D. (1999). Employee Development Practice. In: What is HRD? Definitional Review and Synthesis of the HRD Domain, 206. Eds. Hamlin, B. & Stewart, Jim. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Available 03.09.2011: www.emeraldinsight.com/0309-0590.htm Swanson, R. A. (1995). Performance is Key. In: What is HRD? Definitional Review and Synthesis of the HRD Domain, 206. Eds. Hamlin, B. & Stewart, Jim. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Available 03.09.2011: www.emeraldinsight.com/0309- 0590.htm Restructuring Local Government in Finland (2011). The association of Finnish local and regional authorities and Sutton, Tyler. Public Sector Digest. Available 10.April.2012: http://www.localfinland.fi/en/authorities/Documents/Article on Restructuring Local Government in Finland.pdf Unification of City of Vaasa and the Municipality of Vähäkyrö. Available 03.05.2012: http://www.vaasa.fi/Link.aspx%3Fid%3D1209753&usg=ALkJrhjen_J2RMTC6pqC rDlXcNKVqbT2g Vaasa Staff Report (2011). Available 15.10.2012: http://www1.vaasa.fi/henkilostopalvelut/pdf/htp_2011.pdf Vaasa Largest Employers (2011). Available 05.09.2011: http://www.vaasa.fi/WebRoot/380444 Yorks, L. (2005). Strategic Human Resource Development. In: What is HRD? Definitional Review and Synthesis of the HRD Domain, 205. Eds. Hamlin, B. & Stewart, Jim. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Available 03.09.2011: www.emeraldinsight.com/0309-0590.htm 99 APPENDICES Appendix 1. Interview cover letter (English version) Dear ABC, Subject: Interview request My name is shadab iqbal , I am a master‟s student of Public Management at the University of Vaasa Finland. For the fulfillment of the degree, I have proposed a research project on the “Exploring the Practice of Human Resource Development in Finnish Local Governments (FLGs): HRD experience of Vaasa Municipality Organization”. This research involves interviewing human resource managers and human resource development practitioners of Vaasa Kaupunki regarding these following areas; HRD functions (Training and development, Career development, and Organisation Development) and barriers to HRD practices in Finnish Local Governments (FLGs). If you are involved in planning or executing HRD programs for the employees of Vaasa Kaupunki in any sector (Social and Health care services, Education, General administration etc.), then I invite you to participate in this research. Your participation will be much appreciated and will add a significant dimension to the research project. The interview would take up about 40-50 minutes of your time. All responses from interview will be kept confidential, anonymous and used only to help improve the effectiveness of human resource development programs in FLGs. In order to ensure the accuracy and reliability of your responses, I would like to ask your permission to (voice) record the interview. The interview will be scheduled between OCT and FEB, 2013. Therefore, kindly let me know if you could participate in this research or not, by phone call, text message or email. Once you are willing to take part in interviews, I would contact you shortly to schedule the interview and provide you the actual interview questions beforehand. Thank you so much for sharing your time and consideration. If you have questions about the research project or interviews, you can contact me, Shadab iqbal at (+358) 44-3090337, on facebook: shady young, via email: shadab.iqbal@student.uwasa.fi or my thesis supervisor Prof. Ari Salminen at the University of Vaasa, email: ari.salminen@uwasa.fi 100 Appendix 1.1. Interview cover letter (Finnish version) Hyvä ABC, Aihe: Lupa haastatteluun Nimeni on Shadab Iqbal, ja suoritan hallintotieteen maisterin tutkintoa Vaasan yliopistossa. Olen kirjoittamassa lopputyötäni aiheesta ”Inhimillisten voimavarojen kehittäminen Suomen paikallishallinnoissa”. Tämä tutkimuksen empiria sisältää haastatteluja henkilöiden kanssa, jotka vastaavat, kouluttavat ja johtavat henkilökuntaa Vaasan kaupungissa koskien inhimillisten voimavarojen kehittämistä. Jos olette mukana yllämainittujen koulutusohjelmien suunnittelussa tai suorittamisessa Vaasan kaupungissa, kutsun teidät osallistumaan tutkimukseeni. Olisin erittäin kiitollinen jos voisitte osallistua tutkimukseeni, ja siitä olisi erittäin paljon hyötyä opinnäyte projektiini. Kaikki haastattelun vastaukset pidetään luottamuksellisia, anonyymeinä ja käytetään ainoastaan apuna inhimillisten voimavarojen kehittämisessä Suomen paikallishallinnoissa. Haluaisin pyytää teiltä myös luvan saada nauhoittaa haastattelunne tutkimuksen luotettavuuden lisäämiseksi. Haastattelu kestää noin 40–50 minuuttia. Haastattelussa haluaisin kysyä teiltä mielipiteitänne, ajatuksianne ja tuntemuksianne seuraavista aiheista: koulutusohjelmat, organisaation kehittäminen ja urakehitys. TING Haastattelut tapahtuvat syksyllä 2012 elokuun ja syyskuun välisenä aikana. Olisin kiitollinen jos ilmoittaisitte minulle, jos haluaisitte osallistua tähän tutkimukseen. Jos haluatte osallistua haastatteluun, ottaisin mielelläni teihin yhteyttä, jotta voisimme sopia kansanne ajan haastatteluun ja myös välittää teille haastattelun kysymykset etukäteen. Jos teille ilmenee kysymyksiä tutkimuksesta tai haastattelusta voitte ottaa yhteyttä minuun numeroon (+358) 44 3090 337, facebook: shady young tai sähköpostitse shadab.iqbal@student.uwasa.fi. Voitte myös ottaa yhteyttä ohjaajani Ari Salmiseen: ari.salminen@uwasa.fi kiitos paljon! 101 Appendix 2. Interview questionnaire (English and Finnish version) These fallowing questions focus on experiences of HRD professionals related to practice of HRD programs in their local municipality. Seuraavat kysymykset keskittyvät henkilöstöresurssien kehittämisestä vastaavien alojen ammattilaisten kokemuksiin suhteessa henkilöstöresurssien kehittämisohjelmiin heidän kunnissaan. (kysymyksissä alaan viitataan lyhenteellä HRD: in the questionnaire abbreviation HDR is used to refer to the field). 1. What kind of T&D activities are being conducted in your organization? Also name the different training methods used (e.g. class room training or informal methods such as mentoring and coaching). Millaisia koulutus- ja kehitystoimintoja käytetään sinun organisaatiossasi? nimeä myös erilaisia koulutus metodeja? (esimerkiksi luokkakoulutus, tai epäviralliset metodit kuten mentorointi ja valmennus) . 2. Please tell me about your systems related to training evaluation, what evaluation methods and techniques do you use. The reason why? Kerro menetelmistä koulutuksen arviointiin ja mitä metodeja ja tekniikoita käytetään. Miksi? 3. When measuring the effectiveness of training program, which one is the most important indicator of program effectiveness out of these followings: learning, performance or financial gains as result of the training? Why is it so? Mitattaessa koulutusohjelman tehokkuutta, mikä seuraavista on tärkein indikaattori ohjelman tehokkuudesta: oppiminen, osaaminen, vai taloudelliset hyödyt johtuen koulutuksesta? miksi näin on? 4. Discuss few important organizational development (OD) activities that are being conducted in your organization. The reason why? Keskustele muutamista tärkeistä organisaation kehitystoiminnoista, joita organisaatiossasi käytetään. Miksi? 5. Which OD activities are more and least effective such individual activities (e.g. employee feedback, clarification of job descriptions, revision of policy) as compare to Organizational-wide OD activities (e.g. downsizing, changing structure of the organization)? Miksi OD aktiviteetit ovat eniten tai vähiten tehokkaita yksilön toiminnoissa (esimerkiksi palautteenanto, toimenkuvan selkeytys, tarkistus ja toimintatapojen tarkistus) verrattuna läpi organisaation kulkevissa OD toiminnoissa kuten henkilöstömäärän supistaminen tai organisaation rakenteellinen muutos? 102 6. What kind of career development programs and opportunities are offered to city staff (both management and staff level employees)? Millaisia urakehitysohjelmia ja mahdollisuuksia tarjotaan kaupungin työntekijöille (sekä johdon että operatiivisen tason työntekijöille.) 7. Local municipality is facing recruitment and training challenges of new and young employees due to senior employees are retiring every year. In your opinion, are currently used HRD programs in municipality effective for dealing with these HR staffing and training challenges? How is that or Why not? Kunta kohtaa haasteita koskien työhönottoa sekä uusien nuorien työntekijöiden valmennusta vanhempien työntekijöiden siirtyessä eläkkeen piiriin. Omasta mielestäsi, ovatko kuntasi käyttämät HRD ohjelmat tehokkaita koskien yllämainittuja työhönotto ja valmennustilanteita? Miksi tai miksi ei? 8. Are there any barriers (e.g. financial resources, time or lack of expertise) in implementing Training and development activities in municipality, how do you deal with them? Onko kunnassa esteitä suorittaa koulutus ja kehitystoimintoja (esimerkiksi taloudellisten resurssien puute, ajan puute, osaamisen puutteellisuus), ja jos on, miten käsittelette niitä? 9. What are the barriers preventing you from program evaluations in organization, how do you eliminate those barriers? Mitkä ovat esteet jotka estävät sinua ohjelman arvioinnissa organisaatiossa, ja miten eliminoit nämä esteet? 10. You might have experienced some problems when using OD, what were those problems and how did you solves them. Sinulla on saattanut olla ongelmia käyttäessäsi organisaation kehitystoimintoja, mitä olivat nuo ongelmat ja miten ratkaisit ne? 11. If you had a chance to integrate HRD programs with municipality service reforms, what would you change? Jos saisit mahdollisuuden integroida HDR toiminnot osaksi kunnan palvelujen uudistamista, mitä muuttaisit? 12. What suggestion would you give to improve the effectiveness of HRD programs to meet the organizational needs (e.g. HR staffing, management and service delivery) of municipality? Mitä ehdotuksia antaisit parantaaksesi HRD ohjelmien tehokkuutta jotta organisaation tarpeet (esimerkiksi koskien henkilöstöhallintaa, johtoa ja palvelun toimitusta) kunnassa täyttyisivät? 103 Appendix 3. Interviewees‟ Pseudonyms and date of interview Interviewee Organization Current Position Date of interview Veera Administration Office Vaasa City Human Resource Director 7 .08.2012 Sari Health administration Vaasa City Head Nurse 20.11.2012 Anneli Administration Office Vaasa City Management Consultant 07.11.2012 Eveliina Bureau of Social and Health Care Vaasa City Human Resource Manager 02.03.2013 Tiina Vaasa Central Hospital Education Planner and Trainer 23.10.2012 Mikko Vaasa Central Hospital Planning Manager 30.11.2012 Leila Vaasa Central Hospital Training Officer 17.02.2013 Mikael VAKK Head of Department 9 . 10. 2012 Kimmo VAKK Executive Director 17.10.2012 Susanna VAKK Project Manager 19.11.2012 Julia Technical Department Vaasa City Development Manager 12.12.2012 Janne Information Department Vaasa City Head (Director) of Department 04.03.2013