18 1.6 HRD ISSUES HRD is a growing field. It is also a complex area.

As the knowledge based in HRDdeveloping, many issues are also emerging. These issues deal with structuring of theHRD function, creating HRD climate, the HRD instruments and processes for workers,HRD-OR-IR linkages, development of HRD professionals etc. These issues are dealtwith in the last part of this course. 1.7 AN OVERIEW OF HRD PRACTICES : TRENDS The Centre for HRD at XLRI, Jamshedpur surveyed the practices of 53 public andprivate sector organizations (Rao and Abrham, 1985). From this survey the followingtrends were observed :1) 1. About 32% of them had a formally stated policy focusing on HRD. Another59% did not have a formally stated HRD policy but claimed to emphasize it.It is only in 9% of organizations that there was no formally or informallyknow HRD policy 2. About 89% of the organizations surveyed had personnel policies thatemphasize continuous development of their employees 3. In 30% of these organizations there is a separate HRD department and inanother 38% of them the HRD function is a part of the personnel functionwith specially designated persons to look after it. 4. About 26% of the organizations reported to have fully development oriented performance appraisal system and another 62% reported to have appraisalsthat have development as one of the main objectives 5. Some form of identification of tasks and targets jointly by the appraiser andappraise, performance review discussions to help appraise recognise hisstrengths and weakness, appraisal feedback to appraise for improvement, selfappraisal, identification of development needs, potential appraisal, andidentification of factors affecting performance seem to characterise about 7-%of the appraisal systems. 6. About 55% of them had a definite training policy. For example, one of theorganizations surveyed had a policy that all the executives should be trained inall areas of general management. In 64% of them there is a separate trainingdepartment. 7. Fifty per cent of the organizations reported that they have someone to look after OD activities although 44% of them only had undertaken some ODactivity or the other by the time of the survey. In most of these organizationthe OD activity was focussed on team building and role clarity exercise.About 36% of them reported using OD for developing a work organization,26% for interpersonal sensitivity and personal growth and 15% on stress management