The Role of Organizations in Lifelong Learning and Development

Abstract

Human resources and their knowledge are the main asset of the European Union and they represent the innovation potential of every organization regardless of in which country it carries out its business activities. This potential must be developed through formal and informal learning, which is the objective and concept of today’s educational policy in most large organizations. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the tools for human resources training and development used in organizations operating in the Czech Republic. A questionnaire survey (n = 402) was carried out as part of quantitative research and the results were evaluated using descriptive and multivariate statistics (factor analysis). The results showed that training and development of employees is an integral part of HR activities in 82.34 % organizations in the Czech Republic; however, these activities are planned in only 29.3 % of organizations dealing with this area. The research results show that it is necessary to regularly evaluate the effectiveness of training and development of employees, focus on the development of managers in organizations and increase spending on training programs. With regard to the growing emphasis on increasing the competitiveness of not only the Czech Republic according to the Europe 2020 strategy, it is necessary that all employees enhance their qualifications.

Keywords

• competitiveness
• development
• employees
• human resources
• training methods
• Czech organizations