Strategic Workforce Development

Abstract

Companies have now realized that human resource is the most crucial resource, whose capabilities have to be consciously developed to sustain organizational competitive advantage. The workforce development is a continuous process of developing knowledge and skills of employees. Recent research literature suggests thatthe human resource aspects should be included as an integral part of strategy formulation and execution. The workforce development process should be aligned with organizational strategic objectives in a way to ensure the best performance of employees. This insight has stressed the importance of developing strategic workforce development approach. The strategic workforce development ensures that employees have right knowledge and skills. Right knowledge and skills means the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve better organizational performance and sustainable competitive advantages. The inability to integrate human resource aspects into strategic value chain may create a failure trap (Gupta, Smith, and Shalley, 2006). This paper aims to explore conceptual development and process of strategic workforce development.