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Banja Luka College , Banja Luka , Bosnia and Herzegovina
In contemporary global business environment, where technology and information are available to everyone, organizations can build their advantage on only one resource – their employees, their talents, skills, motivation. Knowledge and learning organizations which continually promote the training of their employees and invest in their professional development become the driving force of the new economy and a source of competitive advantage. Thus, the battle for talents becomes the sharpest form of competition while the absence of unique skills makes us interchangeable, which leads us to the idea that lifelong learning is not only a requirement of time, but a prerequisite for survival in the profession and a source of employability. Opportunities for training and career development may be crucial in recruiting candidates for the job, affect motivation and increase commitment of certain workers to the employer and become a great strategy for retaining employees. Contemporary challenges such as the fact that rapid technological development depreciates existing knowledge and requires new skills, globalization causes greater mobility, multiculturalism requires understanding, the working-age population is itself aging due to decreased fertility and others enhance the importance of human resource development. The structure of the labor market, changes in the nature of work and values of employees, the rapid expansion of the Chinese economy, the tendency to achieve quality of products and services are just some in a series of challenges that assume a high degree of professional competence of employees. In the absence of qualified personnel in the labor market and formal education programs for required professions, enterprises will have to take on themselves the role of educators, provide appropriate training and development programs and establish systems that support continuous learning in order to renew their human capital. Since Bosnia and Herzegovina, on its path towards the European Union, during the recession and in the conditions of business environment complicated by complex governance structure, is confronted with numerous different challenges associated with investing in human capital, especially in a system of lifelong learning, we conducted the empirical research among 250 enterprises in Banja Luka to find out how local managers rate the importance of human resource development and whether the quantity and quality of training programs are positively related to the performance of their organizations. Although it is difficult to indicate the causal link between human resource development and the performance of an organization, the objective of this paper, in the context of systematized challenges of doing modern business, is to determine the importance of a strategic approach to development and the need to link employee development with business strategy.
contemporary challenges, knowledge-based economy, lifelong learning, learning organizations, human resource development
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