The significance of human resource has gained tremendous focus in the recent times. At the level of macro-environment, theories related to endogenous growth have suggested tat human capital accumulation is constituted of the main macro-economic growth engine. It is this important feature of HRM that makes organizations all across the world to address it and learn how to improvise it by strategic means. Small to medium enterprises in Australia play a pivotal role in modernized economies accompanied through a rich scientific research flow on economies of entrepreneurship and small businesses (Karami et al 2008). However, not much literature is present on the Human resource practices and its objectives within small to medium enterprises

1. HUMAN RESOURCE
DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY IN A
SMALL TO MEDIUM BUSINESS
ENTERPRISE
A Report on AMC Consultants, Australia

2. Table of Contents
Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 2
1. Nature of Human Resource Development strategy at AMC consultants, Australia ............... 2
3. Implications existing for ongoing practise and the prevailing theory ..................................... 4
4. Provision for adult learning, up-skilling, on-the-job as well as training and development
stemming......................................................................................................................................... 6
5. Evidence of Core Values ......................................................................................................... 7
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 7
References....................................................................................................................................... 7

3. Introduction
The significance of human resource has gained tremendous focus in the recent times. At the
level of macro-environment, theories related to endogenous growth have suggested tat human
capital accumulation is constituted of the main macro-economic growth engine. It is this
important feature of HRM that makes organizations all across the world to address it and learn
how to improvise it by strategic means. Small to medium enterprises in Australia play a pivotal
role in modernized economies accompanied through a rich scientific research flow on economies
of entrepreneurship and small businesses (Karami et al 2008). However, not much literature is
present on the Human resource practices and its objectives within small to medium enterprises.
This report has been developed to address the various human resource related strategies and
measures considered by small to medium enterprises for which AMC consultant, a small to
medium sized firm of Australia has been selected (Karami et al 2008). The scope of this report
lies in addressing the HRD strategy nature according to the organization’s members perspectives,
highlighting the important HRD strategy developing features explicitly and implicitly from the
perspective of business, current practices implications existing and the organizations prevailing
theory along with identifying whether there is evident of adult learning provision, up skilling on
the job along with practices to train and develop.
1. Nature of Human Resource Development strategy at AMC consultants,
Australia
Human resource management in accordance to company website of AMC consultants is all
about work force of organization being managed in a way that it is productive and highly
efficient. To manage a work force initially all that is required is the work force satisfaction and
this lies at the core of AMC consultant’s mission and vision when outlining their Human
resource development strategy (Karami et al 2008). At AMC consultants the satisfaction of work
force lies at the heart of the company and therefore human resource development to the company
is extremely important.
According to Anderson, it has been suggested that HRM researchers have ignored largely the
small to medium enterprises even after acknowledging that small companies can help in
providing elaborative empirical and scientific investigation because of the enhanced numbers

4. and contexts of marketing. It can be similarly argued that small to medium enterprises have
ignored often the main human resources values as the main assets to secure and maintain
advantage in the competitive environment. A similar perspective has been evident at AMC
consultants as well who did not implement any human resource development strategy until 2010
as evident from their company reports. After being highly exposed to the pressures in the market,
the organization recognized the advantage that it can enjoy from enhanced flexibility and
capability to become highly innovative.
This helped the company register the growth of their human resource employees at the centre
of the company’s growth (Karami et al 2008). The central perspective is that human resource
development should involve training the employees in traditional ways, developing the
organization and developing career of the employees. From this perspective, AMC consultant’s
human resource development nature lies in obtaining competence of its work force, development
of skills and quality along with motivating the organization employees towards organizational
commitment, henceforth leading to team development.
2. Key features of a Human Resource Development strategy that are explicit and implicit
from a business perspective
Human Resource Development strategy is often mentioned by the authors such as Becker et al
2001 and Ericson 2006 as a strategic human resource development concept. As an example, the
statement of Ericson in his research study in 2006 quoted that for being engaged in human
resource development strategy, it is required to understand the significance of human resources.
Furthermore, Lee 2003 argued that practices to develop human resources should be in alignment
with the human resource development strategy that addresses the human conditions underlying
assumptions and helps positively influence the condition of human resources in an organization.
At AMC consultants, as it is a small to medium enterprise based exclusively to provide
consultation to mining companies believed in strategic human resource development to be at the
core of the organization. From his perspective, Garaval et al, can be quoted who contended that
human resource development is applied in various perspectives and has wider activities that
vastly different from each other. Therefore a strategy to develop human resources should have 9
prominent elements according to Torres et al 2001 which are inclusive of managing change
proactively to ensure no influence of negative nature is experienced by employees, thinking

5. critically to develop human resources, ensuring that they are productive, ensuring their strategic
growth with the company’s strategic growth, recruiting and appraising and involving all
important stakeholders when discussing a training program related to development of human
resources. However, according to Garavan, 2001, on the contrary, the important characteristics
of a strategic human resource development perspective from organizations perception should be
inclusive of integrating the missions and goals of the organizations, gaining support from top
management, scanning the environment for negatively influencing factors, planning and
developing policies for human resource development, gaining commitment and involvement of
line managers, complementing the HRM activities existing in the company, expanding the role
of trainer’s, recognizing the culture and emphasizing on evaluation (Armstrong 2009). From the
perspective of AMC consultant, their fundamental policy lies in reduction of expenses such as
through training and development and so the role of HR professional’s in the company has
increased as the organization cannot provide the programs of training and developing the
employees and so various talented professionals are recruited and retained in order to follow the
key characteristics of human resource development strategy for SMEs (Armstrong 2009). The
strategy followed by AMC consultants is Knowledge management as an innovative strategic
human resource development strategy. Knowledge development is defined comprehensively as
the set of emerging designs and principles related to organizations along with structures and
applications that support workers knowledge in a dramatic manner to leverage the creativity and
ability of delivering enhanced value in business. Knowledge management for AMC consultants
is based on 3 factors as essential human resource practices inclusive of support from senior
management and leadership, a culture which is knowledge friendly and highly shared along with
a clear strategy to manage knowledge.
3. Implications existing for ongoing practise and the prevailing theory
The organizational level and the frontline phase are both used as an essential part of this
investigation which will be analyzed from the perspective of several strategies, systems and
technologies applied in the organization to analyze whether their HRD strategy that is the
strategy of knowledge management at AMC consultants is appropriate or not along with its
implications. It was evident from the data gathered on the organization’s closer outlook, the
frontline strategy and the organizational level strategy were both different and the related needs

6. to manage knowledge was also different. Personalization strategy was used by frontline level of
the company to develop and enhance employee development process ( Boxall et al 2008).
Frontline adopted the personalization approach to their needs of knowledge management by
creating new knowledge in an informal manner predominantly with limitedly gained knowledge
by learning methods of form nature. Other methods to create knowledge by personalization
strategy are inclusive of practice communities, on-the-job training and learning-by-doing which
will be detailed in the next section. On the other hand, at the organizational level, AMC
consultants were applying codification strategy to meet the needs of knowledge. It was evident
that the selected SMEs organizational level made use mostly of formal and explicit mediums to
create knowledge and to transfer it. This type of creating knowledge through formal methods s
inclusive of using external training organized and programmes to learn established externally
such as courses to train employees formally. From this scenario, it is evident that in the SME
there are 2 different strategies of knowledge management applied as a SHRD approach (Karami
et al 2008). The alignment between both the strategies was not apparent leading towards the
various implications in the future and hence failure of knowledge management as a strategy.
Explicit knowledge creation was done by the management level through technological
techniques and these techniques had several problems. The problems were inclusive of irrelevant
information production and saturation of information. These tools to knowledge management in
the SME were not able to perform the creation of knowledge and sharing it as an objective for
which it was initially applied. In brief it can be said that dependence on some selected
technologies of IT used for facilitating the knowledge creation and transfer means implied that a
dominant strategy of codification will crash with knowledge creation processes social orientation
present in the SMEs front line (Lekovic et al 2009). Furthermore, in the frontline there were only
few systems with recognition placed for actually encouraging and accommodating the creation of
tacit knowledge. This was due to the inadequate knowledge on managing the new knowledge the
company created and transferred across its frontline. It was evident that the frontline managers
had forged indirectly their individually created knowledge through the medium of practicable
community’s formation, learning by doing and making use of social media that provides transfer
of tacit knowledge. However no alignment between the strategies will lead towards negative
implications for the company in future.

7. 4. Provision for adult learning, up-skilling, on-the-job as well as training
and development stemming
According to Shick, 2005, there are several factors that present as advantage or disadvantage for
workplace development programs for employees and these are inclusive of attitude of the
manager and training commitment, requirements of job skill, work place firms, industry type and
rate and change in work place, market changes, change in customer needs, pressures of
regulations, conditions in the industry and culture of training (Mayrhofer et al 2010). According
to Schick, 2005, most SMEs that is approximately 48 percent indicated that the reason behind
investing in training related investments lies in the shortage of skill experienced by them. A
similar issue was also experienced by AMC consultants and due to this itself they adopted
knowledge management. For the development of their frontline managers, knowledge
management strategy known as personalization strategy was used. Frontline created new
knowledge in an informal manner with limitation on knowledge access and lesser knowledge
enhanced by formal methods of learning (Milikic et al 2008). These methods were inclusive of
communities of practice, training on-the-job and learning-by doing. Informal knowledge creation
has a main characteristic which lies in establishing and using practicable communities. At certain
situations employees with complimentary knowledge tend to form smaller groups and these are
those entities which share general practices of working, behaviors and objectives. These groups
are known as practicable communities which were formed in the selected MNS. The formation
of these groups was intentional and development did not spontaneously emerge.
Training through on-the-job forms an important knowledge creation and transfer proportion
across the workers in the frontline. This learning type is started with workers at the beginning
and across the employment course with lesser official amount and explicit directives given
formally. All functional aspects relate to frontline roles and positions were covered under this
informal type of training (Nikandrou et al 2005). Another method incorporated was learning by
doing and its significance lies in learning from what and how co-workers are performing and
producing actions. The front line employees learn mainly by actual performance and task
repetition when under on-the-job training but learning by doing is an approach where co-workers
provide training for tasks in majority and explain the frontline roles performance leading to
knowledge creation.

8. 5. Evidence of Core Values
The selected SME, AMC consultants, Australia believes in integrating its core values for
establishing a human resource development strategy and these core values are based on creating
knowledge for all the employees (Rasmussen et al 2010). This has been evident from the
company mission and vision related objectives in relation to human resources development
which lies in its core values. The core values are inclusive of open and honest communicating
technique, Integrity enhancement, respecting each other, diversifying and including along with
performing by comprehensive knowledge development.
Conclusion
From the perspective of this report, it was evident that AMC consultant, a mining consultancy
company understood the important of applying a human resource development strategy by
keeping it at the heart of their functions and also understood the important characteristics
implicitly and explicitly present when development a strategy for development of human
resources. Knowledge management was recognized by the SME as an important tactic to human
resource development strategically (Roca-Puig et al 2012). However the company had
misalignment of its SHRD approach leading to negative implications in future but with
alignment of its strategy and by appropriate training and development initiative takes across the
operations in the SME will result in development of its employees along with the developed
knowledge creation and transferability.
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