How to Optimize Human Development for Business

Every human goes through a development process. This development process starts from childhood down to adulthood and during this process, the human develops both physically and mentally. If we decide to look deeper into this process, we would discover that physical Human Development does not necessarily start at birth but at conception.

Human development is understood in different ways around the world. It can also be defined as the process of enlarging people’s freedoms and opportunities and improving their well-being. Human development is about the real freedom ordinary people have to decide who to be, what to do, and how to live.

Dr. Bob Aubrey’s Pillars of Human Development helps lay foundations for how companies can optimize human development for success in business, leadership, and work and also set human development culture and practices.

1. Define Your Human Development Purpose

For you to define a human development purpose, it often starts with a vision beyond simple profitability and growth and is often formulated and at the heart of a company’s mission statement.

Everyone knows and understands that a company’s mission statement must be an authentic expression of a company’s purpose, a living expression of its own vision of itself and its relationship with its environment rather than a marketing tool. Even though every company knows that the mission statement must be as enticing as possible, that does not mean it must not be as original as possible because if it comes across as a lie then it would hurt the company.

The company’s purpose should not just be a goal, a vision, or a mission, It should also be an ethical commitment and a foundation of the company culture.

2. Set Your Metrics

Human development has its own measurements which are in fact much more practical for management metrics than human capital. Human Capital.

Any sort of development—whether economic, political, biological, organizational, or personal—requires a framework if one wishes to know whether a change has actually occurred. In management, measuring human development also includes what the beneficiary reports about improvement used along with objective measures.

These include:

Goals or benchmarks that define the end-points
Strategies or plans for reaching goals
Measurement and assessment of progress, levels, or stages that define milestones along a development path
A feedback system to provide information on changes.

3. Make Managers and Leaders Responsible

Leadership research and practice have evolved in the past 20 years to recognize the importance of managers in developing people. Defining human development traits and behaviors for managers is a good start. But successful human development companies take measures to ensure that their managers actually develop people not only by training and exposure in leadership roles and skills but also by measuring what they do and making development part of the incentive and reward system.

Managers working as coaches can develop professional identity, help workers achieve aspirations and lifestyle balance, develop skills and performance behaviors, and set goals for a successful development path. Leaders of these managers have responsibility for organizational human development with key development indicators that link to the strategic development goals and strategy of the company.

4. Extend Human Development To All Workers And Value Chain Partners

Human development at work has evolved considerably during different phases of economic development and is again changing very rapidly. The idea of development as a career made up of jobs with ascending responsibilities in the same company until retirement is no longer a reality for most.

Human development, always reliant on the motivation and capability to develop oneself, has become more entrepreneurial with the advent of longer working lives, faster changes in jobs, and new models of management relying on contract workers.

The upside of today’s world of work means that people have more freedom and flexibility to decide what work suits them and see individual responsibility positively as an opportunity to keep learning and adapting to changes during a whole lifetime, irrespective of their initial education level.

With increased longevity, people will keep learning much longer than traditional retirement ages in most countries – not only because of the necessity for earning an income but also because they want to interact with others and be recognized for their contribution.

5. Redefine HR As A Developmental Engine

In most HR models, too much has been invested in personnel administration or trying to be a business partner. To have a human development function in a company you need people who come to it with enough basics in humanities and the social sciences to understand the concepts, to have a critical view of where things are going wrong, and to integrate new knowledge and practices.

Like product development and market development, human development is strategic, the difference being that you have two sets of goals and metrics — you need to achieve results for the business but also for the people you are responsible for, which is why human development professionals need to be ethics practitioners.

Human development professionals are both leaders and facilitators, working well enough with leaders, managers, employees to help them achieve their goals but also earning respect for their knowledge, expertise and judgment.

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