Government policy and human resource development

This chapter considers the role of government policies in promoting training and development in general, and especially policies designed to build sustainable growth by investing in workforce skills to raise productivity and performance. It is no exaggeration to claim that competence development is now explicitly and universally at the centre of social and economic policy, and not just education, training and employment policies, to a greater degree than ever before. This policy focus has been the result of inter-related political, economic, social, technological and organizational developments, each of which is briefly considered in the next section exploring the drivers of change. After outlining the changes promoting such unprecedented interest in human capital development, the following section traces the principal policy imperatives of international organizations and the strategies they have promoted. Section 4 explores how these policy imperatives have been taken up by supra-national bodies, contrasting the experiences of the European Union (EU) and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC). Given the diversity of constituent member states and member economies, Section 5 explores implementation by governments in each of these regions. Section 6 assesses the implications of the layered effects of global economic shift, the 2008 financial crisis and the unfolding post-2010 Eurozone sovereign debt crisis on efforts to increase human resource development (HRD). Finally some conclusions are offered on the challenges of developing policies for training and development in a rapidly changing world.