Human Resource Development deals with competence building and commitment building. Competence and commitment can be built on a continuous basis in a certain type of culture. If the culture is good, a number of things can happen. Hence, creating a culture becomes important in any organisation. The HRD culture should have the following characteristics.
- i) It should be a learning culture.
- ii) It should facilitate the identification of new competencies of people.
- iii) It facilitates bringing out the hidden potential and new talents of people.
- iv) It should help in developing new competencies.
- v) It should have built-in motivational value. In other words, it should have a self sustaining motivational quality.
- vi) It should enable people to take initiative and experiment.
- vii) It should enhance creativity and problem solving capability of people and
- viii) It should create team spirit and morale.
The OCTAPACE culture is an acronym of openness, collaboration, Trust, Authenticity, Pro-action, Autonomy, Confrontation and Experimentation.
Openness is where people feel free to express their ideas, views, opinions to each other irrespective of their level, designation etc., there are no barriers to such expression. People are encouraged to express and are heard when expressed their views are taken seriously.
Collaboration is the culture where people are eager to help each other. There is a spirit of sacrifice for each other’s and for the sake of larger goals. People are willing to go to any extent to help each other to make sure that larger organisational goals do not suffer. Organisational goals particularly govern decision making and people do not have narrow departmental or team loyalties. Team spirit is high. Intra departmental loyalties don’t come in the way of inter-departmental collaboration.
Trust and Trustworthiness deals with a culture of people believing each other and acting on the basis of verbal messages and instructions, without having to wait for written instructions or explanations. When people say that they will do something or promise to do something, it is simply relied upon. There is no need for extra monitoring and control. There are no overheads to check whether people are mean what they say. The work gives by individuals, dyads or teams relied upon. In such a culture both trust and trustworthiness are of the highest order.
Authenticity is speaking the truth fearlessly and keeping promises once they are made. It is indicated by the extent to which people say what they mean and do what they say. In a way, it is the higher order than trust and trustworthiness. Individuals, dyads and teams can be counted upon not to make false promises. They never say, promise to commit things to please others. Whenever people speak they speak from their heart and are sincere in what they say. They also make full efforts to implement what they say and keep their promises. They do not need any follow-up and if they fail to do so, it is understood that it is because of extraordinary circumstances beyond their control.
Proactive culture is one that promotes initiative and explorations only the part of all individuals, dyads, teams and all employees. A pro-active culture encourages everyone to take initiative and make things happen. New activities and new ways of doing things are encouraged. Such pro-action may be in any area, including role making, role taking, work methodology, cost reduction, quality improvements, culture building Human Resource Management, etc., A pro-active culture encourages people to undertake new activities.
Autonomy is present if every role holder in the organisation irrespective of the level has some scope in his/her job to use discretion. The discretion may be in terms of work methods, decision-making, communication any such area. Every employee should feel that he/she has the scope for some discretion in his/her job. Higher freedom to choose what one wants to do, or the way he/she wants to do things the higher the autonomy. This has been the highest in quite a few educational and research organisations.
Confrontation is the culture of facing issues squarely issues are talked about and discussed. There is very little or no fear of hunting one another. Even if one has to hurt each other, the issue is a faced up to and not brushed under the carpet. People can be relied upon to treat issues as issues and not take them as a Personnel assault or get hurt. This culture enhances the problem-solving ability.
Experimentation is the orientation on the part of employees to try out new ways of doing things and experiment with new decisions. It characterises a risk-taking culture in the organisation without risks, there is no growth. Without experimentation, there is very little scope for renewal, rejuvenation and simplification of life.
Openness and confrontation go together. Autonomy and collaboration go together. Trust and authenticity go together. Pro-action and experimentation go together. These four pairs are the four corners of HRD culture.
For citing this article use:
- Rao, K. J. (2015). Human resource development climate a case study of research centre Imarat Hyderabad.
