Adoption of Human Resource Development Management
Model for Group Planning
Maksims Kazakovs
Baltic Computer Academy Ltd., Tallinas 4, Riga, Latvia
Keywords: Automation, Competence, Development Planning, Factors, Human Resources Development.
Abstract: The human resources development management model that has been developed in previous stage of the
research allows to create information systems with functionality to automatize the human resources
development planning process. The author researched the model’s use cases and identified grope factors that
influence development planning. The present article describes two approaches to extend the model in order
to provide development planning in groups. Post-planning optimization approach is based on linear
optimisation methods and allows to preserve the full individualisation of development plans by combining
employees in groups with the same solutions in development plans. In this way, the group interests are not
realized in full scale in order to maintain full individualisation. Pre-planning optimisation is based on
competence gap analyses and provides better grouping with less individualisation. Both methods should be
implemented in a real system for better suitability.
1 INTRODUCTION
Effective human resources management consists of
several processes related to planning of development
of human resources. The key goal of these processes
if to create employees’ development plan (DP) that
have to ensure employees’ development up to a
certain level as regards competences and therefore
ensure also employees’ ability to reach the set
working goals, tasks and results in the specific
environment of an organisation. However, effective
planning of employees’ development is a complex
process that requires considering companies’ process
environment.
Applying competence-based human resources
management, during the study a model was
established in line with the defined framework of the
study (Kazakovs, 2013) that ensures planning of
employees’ development, which in its essence is
seeking and selections of the development solutions
(DS) individually most suitable for an employee in
line with the individual development needs
(Kazakovs et al., 2015). The model allow to automate
the planning process by analysing and selecting best
DS for every employee partially or entirely
automatic.
Though, some HR management information
systems offer employees’ development planning
functionality, it’s limited to manual planning and
includes no automation.
However, the developed model does not ensure
support of implementation process of these plans.
During the study, analysing model verification data
and studying application approaches, a necessity was
identified to supplement the model to ensure its
application to planning of development of the group
of employees in line with the requirements of the
model application environment. The issues regarding
planning of development of the group of employees
arose when creating individual employees’
development plans it is necessary to ensure
interaction of two or more development plans and
ability to implement those considering company’s
strategic view on employees’ development. A
situation forms in which the maximum number of
plans is not limited.
The goal of this study is to improve the human
resources development management model
(HRDMM) to ensure development planning of the
group of employees on the basis of the group’s
factors.
The following objectives were set to achieve the goal:
 To identify the group’s factors that influence
development planning;
 To develop approaches to optimize HRDMM
planning results for implementation in gropes;
Kazakovs, M.
Adoption of Human Resource Development Management Model for Group Planning.
In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2016) - Volume 2, pages 199-204
ISBN: 978-989-758-187-8
Copyright
c
 2016 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
199

 To verify whether the supplemented model works
in the real business situations.
2 APPLICATION
ENVIRONMENT FOR HRDMM
During the previous study activities, human resources
(HR) management experts recognised that
implementation of development activities in groups
helps to save resources, especially financial and time
resources (Jenkins, 2015). This refers to DS for full-
time study forms – courses, seminars, lectures etc.
Therefore, it was decided to seek for opportunities to
supplement HRDMM to ensure development
planning based on the group’s interests.
Development planning for the group of
employees, in line with HRDMM, is development
planning for each employee individually based on the
group’s interests, which is manifested as
requirements and limitations set for the development
process. These requirements and limitations can be
complied with by introducing changes in the
individual development plan or planning
implementation of development plans appropriately.
To understand how the set requirement can be
complied with, the following questions have to be
answered:
 Would the change of the selected DS facilitate
compliance with the requirements?
 Can the requirements be complied without
changing employees’ development plans but
changing logistics of the DS?
As a result, there are cases when requirements can
be complied with by changing plans and
implementation logistics. In these cases, the
representative of a company responsible for planning
of employees’ development has to decide on the
further action.
To clarify possible application scenarios of the model
under development and supplement the model in a
way it can be applied to as many business situations
as possible and provide support for business, a
discussion with 10 human resources management
specialists was organised within the framework of the
study:
● The goal of the discussion was to clarify business
situations in which HRDMM can be applied, in which
planning of individual employees’ development is
performed considering the context of the group of
employees and to identify group’s factors that
influence planning of employees’ development;
● Hypothesis of the discussion was: to ensure
compliance with company’s development strategy
and business interests when planning the individual
development of employees, the context of the group
of employees has to be considered;
● Criteria for the participants of discussion – human
resources management specialists with at least three
years experience in planning of employees’
development in medium-sized and large companies.
After the discussion, the obtained information was
summarised, content analysis was performed and
conclusions were drawn. All participants of the
discussion were informed on the conclusions and they
were offered to provide their comments that were
included in the description of the discussion.
Analysing the summarised business situations it
can be concluded that when planning development of
the group of employees, clients mainly chose to
determine the contents of training, the length of
development activities, venue and price, as well as the
composition of the development groups (DG).
Further research showed that these requirements can
be complied with the existing version of HRDMM,
however, the model has to be supplemented to ensure
the possibility to influence the composition of the DG
during the planning phase that will become the key
function of HRDMM of group planning.
3 EXPANSION OF HRDMM
The group’s factors identified during the study would
allow organising employees’ development process in
a shorter period of time and therefore would require
smaller amount of financial resources implementing
DS in groups. To ensure this, development plans have
to contain similar DS, as only in case of similar DS,
employees can be united in groups and these DS can
be implemented in groups. This refers to full-time
development methods, for example, courses, lectures,
seminars etc., however, it does not refer to
development forms by correspondence, for example,
e-learning, reading etc. By using development forms
by correspondence, only the financial factors remain
topical.
To make HRDMM applicable to development
planning of the group of employees, it should be
supplemented with components that would ensure
development of as similar development plans as
possible and in certain cases development of identical
plans or development of a universal development
plan, where the universal plan is the plan that ensures
development of employee and reduction of
ICEIS 2016 - 18th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
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competence gaps (CG) in the amount that is
acceptable by the company.
Find all DS
for the CG
reduction
Competenc
e gap
DS catalog
Filter DS
according
HRDMM
configuration
Generate all
possible DP
Calculation
of
hierarchies
OptimisationReady DP
Figure 1: Expansion of HRDMM with post-planning
optimisation.
During the study, two approaches were identified
how to achieve similarity of the development plans.
The first approach is the post-planning optimisation.
Figure 1: “Expansion of HRDMM with post-planning
optimisation” displays HRDMM schematically and
shows in which process phase it is planned to include
optimisation.
Find all DS
for the CG
reduction
Competenc
e gap
DS catalog
Filter DS
according
HRDMM
configuration
Generate all
possible DP
Calculation
of
hierarchies
Optimisation
Ready DP
Figure 2: Expansion of HRDMM with pre-planning
optimisation.
The second approach is pre-planning optimisation.
Figure 2: “Expansion of HRDMM with pre-planning
optimisation” displays HRDMM schematically and
shows in which process phase it is planned to include
optimisation.
To expand results of HRDMM with post-planning
optimisation, development plans with calculated
hierarchical indices Hn (Saaty, 1990) are analysed in
line with the linear optimisation approach,
combination of development plans is calculated, in
which development plans of several employees
consist of the maximum number of the same
development solutions and is the maximum amount
of hierarchical indices.
Graphically it has been displayed in Figure 3:
“Linear optimisation of development plans”, where
Emp1 – Empn – employees whose development is
planned, DS1 – DSn – development solutions on the
basis of which all the possible development plans
have been derived, H – hierarchical index calculated
on the basis of analytic hierarchy process (AHP)
(Saaty, 2008). In the example, development plans
have been arranged by the hierarchical index in a
Emp1 Emp2 Emp3 Emp4
H=0,50 H=0,37 H=0,41 H=0,62
DS1 DS1 DS11 DS5
DS2 DS2 DS21 DS15
DS3 DS5 DS12
DS7
DS4 DS9 DS14
H=0,40 H=0,36 H=0,38 H=0,55
DS5 DS5 DS5 DS5
DS6 DS16 DS8 DS20
DS7
DS10
DS19 DS21
DS4 DS41 DS17
H=0,35 H=0,24 H=0,15 H=0,47
DS8 DS7 DS24 DS18
DS3 DS3 DS3 DS19
DS4 DS4 DS14 DS27
DS9 DS16 DS19 DS9
Figure 3: Linear optimisation of development plans.
descending order and without optimisation group
interest employees would be offered development
plans with the highest hierarchical indices. However,
considering the group’s interests to ensure that an
employee is offered the same development solutions
and the implementation process of development plans
would become more efficient, another plans have to
be selected when teaching several employees at the
same time that have been highlighted in Figure 3 with
bold lines.
Emp1 Emp2 Emp3 Emp4
H=0,50 H=0,37 H=0,41 H=0,62
DS1 DS1 DS1 DS1
DS2 DS2 DS2 DS2
DS3 DS5 DS12
DS7
DS4 DS9 DS14
H=0,47 H=0,36 H=0,41 H=0,61
DS1 DS1 DS1 DS1
DS2 DS2 DS2 DS2
DS8
DS10
DS19 DS21
DS4 DS4 DS17
H=0,35 H=0,24 H=0,15 H=0,47
DS1 DS1 DS1 DS1
DS2 DS2 DS2 DS2
DS15 DS22 DS14 DS27
DS6 DS11 DS19 DS9
Figure 4: Pre-planning optimisation of development plans.
The key element of the pre-planning optimisation
is analysis of employees’ competence gaps and
seeking for common solutions. In the further planning
process these common development solutions are
introduced in the development plans as mandatory
and the remaining parts of the competence gaps is
processed in line with HRDMM. Figure 4: “Pre-
planning optimisation of development plans”
schematically displays development plans of four
Adoption of Human Resource Development Management Model for Group Planning
201

employees after the analysis of CG. Development
solutions DS1 and DS2 have been introduced in all
development plans (highlighted using bold lines in
Figure 4), the remaining parts of plans are different.
3.1 Post-planning Optimisation
of Development Plans
The approach of post-planning optimisation is based
on the linear optimisation methods. This rather simple
approach allows to solve the problem of employee’s
development automated planning for groups, that
isn’t solved in HR management yet.
The goal of development plan optimisation is
defined as follows – to find a combination of
development plans that includes the maximum
possible number of common elements (development
solutions) and the amount of hierarchical indices is
bigger.
Mathematically the goal of the optimisation can
be defined as follows:
=

:≤

(1)
where “G” is the group of employees whose
development is planned, D1, D2, ..., Dn – employees
in the group, n – number of employee in the group;
=



(2)
where “DP” is development plan, “DS” –
development solution, “S” – the permissible number
of development solutions in the plan.
In the first phase, all the possible combinations of
development plans “C” have to be summarised. E.g.
for 3 employees the possible combinations are as
follows:
C1 = DP1 + DP1 + DP1; C2 = DP1 + DP1 + DP2;
C3 = DP1 + DP1 + DP3; C4 = DP1 + DP2 + DP1;
……
Cn = DPk + DPl + DPm , where “k”, “l”, “m” –
number of development plans of each employee.
The number of combinations of development plans:
=+, or
(3)
=

∗

+

∗

+⋯+

∗

(4)
where “m” is the number of development plans for
employees.
In the second phase, the number of the same DS
have to be found in the combinations of development
plans “C” or the number of development solutions
that repeat in all elements of combination “C”.
Common elements of development plans are labelled
as “CDS”, then

CDS=DP1∩DP2∩…∩DPn
CDS∈DP1,DP2,…,DPn
(5)
In the third phase, combination of development
plans “CDP” with the highest number of the same
development solutions “CDS” and the highest
amount of hierarchical indices “H” must be found:

→




→
(6)
If compliance is ensured with these conditions,
development plans are selected for the group of
employees that ensure the maximally possible
compatibility of development solutions with other
participants of the group and thereby ensuring
compliance with the requirements the development
process can be executed in groups.
In the real conditions, such approach would give
limited results as it prescribes only combinations of
all employees’ development plans. In other words,
DS are sought that are attributed to all participants of
the planning group in different DP.
Practically, to organise group trainings, the
minimum number of participants is provided. This
allows to find the common DS more often because
they oughtn’t to be attributed to all DP.
As opposed the ideal situation that is described
above, in the real conditions the coincidences of DP
are usually more complex. Not all DP of one
combination “C” must have common development
solutions and one particular DS could be CDS for any
number of DP.

CDS=DPx∩…∩DPz
CDS∈DPx,…,DPz
(7)
where x….z are any DP from one combination of
development plans.
In one combination of DP the group of n
employees, the number of possible DG can be
calculated as follows:
1. If the number of DG participants is fixed – k, then:



=
!
!∗

−

!
(8)
2. If the minimum number of DG participants has
been prescribed – s, then:
=


+


+⋯+


+


(9)
For example, the number of combinations of
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development plans has to be found for the group of
12 people, if the minimum DG is 6 people. If each
employee would have only 1 DP, the possible number
of combinations would be DG=2,510.
If each employee would have 2 DP, the possible
number of combinations would be M=4,096.
The total number of combinations under analysis
is: AG’=AG*M=2510*4096=10 280 960
It would be a large amount of calculations which
can be performed only with the IT support.
3.2 Pre-planning Optimisation
of Development Plans
Pre-planning optimisation approach is based on
optimisation of the group members’ competence
gaps. CG of several employees are analysed and
compared to identify the common components and
seek for the most suitable development solutions. In
the further planning process, this development
solution is introduced in development plans as a
mandatory element. The scheme of process has been
displayed in Figure 5: “Scheme of process of pre-
planning optimisation of development plans”.
The results of the analysis of CG are summarised
and contain information on competences of all levels
(skill, skill group, etc.) (Judrups et al., 2015) out of all
CG, how many and which employees’ CG includes
this competence and how many suitable solutions
were found in the catalogue of DS. The example of
results of analysis has been summarised in Table 1:
“Example of results of CG analysis”.
Analyze in
how many
CG every
competence
presents
Competenc
e gap
DS catalog
Sort results
in
descending
order
Find all
suitable DS
Make
decision on
most suitable
DS
Ready DP
Manually by
operator
Automated
using AHP
Mandatory
DS incl ude in
DP
Individual
planning of
remain part
of CG
Budget check
Figure 5: Scheme of process of pre-planning optimisation
of development plans.
Manually or automatically selected DS are
included in the development plans as the mandatory
DS and cover part of CG. The remaining part of CG,
DS are planned in line with HRDMM.
In the next step the most suitable DS has to be
selected out of all selected DS. It can be performed in
two ways: manually, when the planning operator
takes decision on the basis of information provided
by an information system (IS) or automatically using
AHP (Triantaphyllou, Mann, 1995).
Automatic application of AHP to the group is
performed the same as when AHP is applied when
selecting development plan (Kazakovs, 2014b).
The completed development plans, if necessary,
are verified on the basis of financial indices.
When performing optimisation of pre-planning
group plans, the minimum number of employees has
to be defined in one DS implementation group. This
provides opportunity to organise development
process part in groups, selecting the most suitable
solutions for the group and selecting individually the
most suitable DS.
4 CONCLUSIONS
The human resources development planning can be
analysed from two viewpoints. On the one hand, to
achieve employees’ development efficiency and
development goals, in the planning process, when the
most suitable development solution is selected,
individual aspects have to be considered, assessing
development needs of certain employees and seeking
the best way to satisfy these development needs. In
this way an individual approach is ensured for the
planning of HR development.
On the other hand, implementation of individual
development plans becomes time-consuming from
the point of view of process, due to the high diversity
of DS. This causes increased expenses and
complications in logistics in implementation of
development plans.
When developing HRDMM approach to
development planning of the group of employees,
requirements were set to reach a compromise to
achieve efficient implementation at the same time
retaining individual planning preferences, combining
employees involved in development in groups, if a
full-time learning development method is selected.
Table 1: Example of results of CG analysis.
Title of profile’s
element
How many
employees lack
this competence
How many
DS were
found
Competence 1 12 3
Competence 2 11 4
Competence 3 4 1
…
Competence N 1 2
During the study, two approaches were developed
Adoption of Human Resource Development Management Model for Group Planning
203

for supplementing HRDMM with optimisation of
development plans:
1. Pre-planning optimisation within the framework
of which the needs of employees involved in
development process are analyses prior to
development planning. Competence gaps of
employees are analysed and common elements are
identified that are similar for several employees.
Suitable DS are applied to these elements that become
parts of the individual DS;
2. Post-planning optimisation analyses the
complete individual DP, in which DS same for
several employees are identified to join these
employees in one DG during the implementation
phase.
Verification showed that application of both
methods provides different results. This is because
optimisation is applied to different phases of planning
process. As a result, optimised plans are different:
Pre-planning optimisation can achieve
implementation of DG in the majority of development
needs, compared to post-planning optimisation.
However, this is performed by reducing the level of
individualisation in the development planning. In
other words, individual interests are ignored because
of the group’s interests.
Post-planning optimisation allows retaining
individualisation in full, combining in DG only those
employees with the same recommended DS. In this
way the group’s interests are not implemented in full
to retain the individual planning in full.
However, it can be concluded that both methods
provide good optimisation results. Decision as to
which method should be applied depends on several
factors. However, in real life, development planning
operator might want to receive the first and the second
result to assess them and make the decision.
An IS based on HRDMM and group optimisation
methods would provide new level of employee’s
development planning, that hasn’t been introduced on
the market yet.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research is a part of the project “Competence
Centre of Information and Communication
Technologies” run by IT Competence Centre Ltd.,
contract No. L-KC-11-0003, co-financed by
European Regional Development Fund.
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