Understanding Organizational Development Department of Human Resources

All about Organizational Development Department (OD) you need to know.

Most of the times people ask the same question that what is Organizational Development Department and what does it do? My answer to this question remains the same and here is what you also need to know about the organizational development department.

Organizational Development Department is a domain of Human Resource Department that deals with the development of the organization by all means. Which means that everything that has to do with growth in the organization becomes a part of Organizational Development Department. Additionally, to make it more precise, we can say that growth of MAN, MACHINE, PRODUCT & PROCESS is what is dealt by the Organizational Development Department. Note, that not all or entire work is done by the OD where specialized tasks are given to specialized departments to work on, like payroll processing and recruitment. The OD department only takes care of some areas of Human Resources and rest works on the Strategic Management area of HR.

If we see in depth, the Organizational Development Department basically looks after below areas which are as:

1)     Lean – reducing the amount of wastes found in Man, Machine, Product or Process.

2)     Kaizen – Continuous improvement in all areas as mentioned in point 1, for which Performance Management System is involved for performance measurement and leading to Training of employees by the Training or Learning Management System.

3)     Strategic Management – to lead the organization and its goals to be more effective and congruent with the organizational vision.

4)     Culture & Policy Management – to control the organizational workings and maintain employee motivation and satisfaction to work in an organization.

This enables us to know that areas which ever concludes in

1)     Cost Effectiveness

2)     Growth & Development

3)     Sustainability

4)     Monitoring & Evaluation

5)     Forecasting & Analysis

6)     Motivation & Satisfaction

7)     Creating Limitations & Boundaries

Is all looked after the OD department.

Now in order to shorten and make things easy for you people below are some of the areas that are commonly looked after the OD department so that the readers may not confuse the above concepts,

1)     Policy & Culture Management – To define workplace limitations and boundaries along with providing a direction where all employees can work for a definitive goal.

2)     Strategic Management – to ensure the organization goals and management leads to Organizational Development and growth.

3)     Change Management – to bring positive change swiftly where employees are able to accept and adopt change to bring growth and development to the organization, whether it be new tools, techniques, process or anything else.

4)     Performance Management – to ensure

a)     Man power management – right amount of people are working in the organization to accomplish all provided tasks/ goals

b)     Performance Analysis – to ensure employees are working up to mark with full potential to achieve desired goals.

c)     Reward Management – employees working upto mark are equitably or equally rewarded to satisfy their needs and motivation.

5)     Training & Development – to grow and develop employees that are not working upto mark and require additional learning to meet their desired standards via various means such as:

a)     Coaching & Mentoring

b)     Employee Counseling

c)     Trainings which include class room and on job training.

6)     Entry & Exit Management – to ensure employees are well equipped with tools and knowledge to work in this organization and also to ensure that employee who is separated is acknowledged with right tools and techniques.

7)     Employee Engagement – Perform various acts and activities that not only motivate high performing employees but also bring them work life balance that is required by every single human.

8)     Employer Branding – to ensure that company is highlighted to all stakeholders with its activities that would/could attract the best talent, customers and investors to the organization.

9)     Quality Management – ensuring that the quality defined is maintained, sustained and or is grown over period of time to reduce the waste amount and cost incurred on those wastages.

Above are the common areas where the OD functions, where the product and other related areas are not included because these are some of technical areas which are dealt by the Quality Assurance Department in manufacturing concerns.

In short, Quality Management Department (QMS) and Organizational Development Department (OD) are the same, the only difference comes in the technical and non-technical functions of the working. Which is the only reason that OD falls under the roof of Human Resources and QMS falls under the umbrella of Production in many areas. Furthermore, the departments and their functions vary according to the need of the organization and its goals.

In many organizations, the sub-domains of OD may also be found separate, based on their work intensity and severity which again is defined based on the nature of the organization and its functions.

·       Note: Above information is based on my personal learning, experience and understanding from various professionals, reading materials and experience. You may also reflect your ideas and understanding for further and detailed analysis on the subject. Critiques are highly encouraged.