Join the fight against poverty: utilizing HRD practices to support pathways to sustainable employment and decent work

HRD as a field has long been motivated by a humanistic view and concerns itself with national development, societal development, and critical issues in addition to performance improvement in organizations. For example, in 2006, an issue of Advances in Developing Human Resources (ADHR) explored national HRD policies and strategies on poverty alleviation in Brazil, Morocco, and the Philippines. In 2012, another ADHR issue addressed societal and community development linked to poverty alleviation. The same year, Storberg-Walker (2012), the editor of Human Resource Development Review (HRDR) at the time, called for a paradigm shift in the field of HRD for workforce development and public good. More recently, another past editor of the HRDR, Torraco (2018) argued for more HRD research to help break the self-perpetuating cycle that has trapped people of low-income and low education. The journal of Human Resource Development International is versed to this topic as well. A quick search using the keyword poverty yielded more than 60 publications in this journal. Scholars in HRD have acknowledged and encouraged studies that explore beyond organizational boundaries to look at different employment tiers and community development agencies designed to meet the specific needs of diverse groups of learners that include low-skilled and low-literacy populations.

A recent interaction with a local community-based organization led me to investigate the potential of HRD practices to elevate individuals from poverty through increased employability and career adaptive behaviours. This organization started as an emergency relief food pantry in 2004 and has been making a steady effort to consistently renew itself. In 2014, the organization re-evaluated the meaning of helping people and determined that the purpose was not only to relieve them from short-term emergency needs but also assist them in moving towards dignified living. The organization redesigned its programming to offer a relationship-based programme aimed at increasing participants’ social connection with the community, reduce isolation, and increase self-esteem through a dignified experience of being part of an organization. The relationship-based programme offers people the opportunity to sign-up for ‘volunteer’ work that will earn credit to shop at the store operated by the organization. While ‘volunteering’ at the store, the individuals socialize with other staff members, being part of a team. They also have opportunities to participate in financial education, computer literacy, GED training, personal development, job preparedness, adult education classes, and have access to a computer lab.

Recently, the organization initiated an evaluation process using structured interviews to track its progress and seek improvement ideas. The findings revealed very positive perceptions of the social relationship built through the ‘volunteer’ work. The participants reported being a part of an organization has improved emotional well-being, reduced the feeling of isolation and depression, and increased sense of belonging. The participants enjoyed the teamwork and expressed value in being needed. When asked for improvement ideas, the common themes were help with job contacts, additional earning opportunities, to be hired by the organization, and more social gatherings. During the process, we also learned that training programmes were not well attended and many had to be cancelled due to lack of participation. When probing further into the reasons for the lack of attendance in training programmes, it was evident that the economic constraints the participants have experienced impacted their career adaptive behaviour (Duffy et al. 2016). The people viewed time spent at training as time lost to money-making. They were not able to make the connection that the knowledge and skills acquired from training might improve their chances to secure sustainable decent work in the long term. What would HRD professionals propose to overcome this missed developmental opportunity?

Participation in the labour force is a commonly accepted solution to help people avoid or escape poverty. To make a long-lasting impact, they must secure sustainable employment and decent work. Sustainable employment means that if an individual is willing, s/he can remain working in one job or potentially move to other jobs. Decent work describes the kind of work that provides dignity, equality, fair income, a safe working environment, and social protection for families (Duffy et al. 2017; International Labor Organization 2009).

To ensure sustainable decent work needs three conditions: know-how (skills), know-whom (social network), and know-why (value) (DeFillippi and Arthur 1994). One must develop a career identity through the acquisition of necessary human and social capital to gain, regain, and sustain employment (McArdle et al. 2007). Know-how refers to an individual’s knowledge, skills, and ability to stay competitive by continuously developing and updating their skills and expertise to fulfil work requirements demanded by the labour market (Van Loo, De Grip, and De Steur 2001). Know-whom is about social network support. Through association with an empowering environment, a person can experience motivational development. This is especially important for people in poverty who must overcome not only institutional and situational barriers but also dispositional ones (Porter, Cuban, and Comings 2005). Being a part of a community or an organization can provide the necessary social interaction and support to positively affect individuals’ work volition and career adaptive behaviours (Duffy et al. 2016) and increase learning motivation and participation (Medin 2018; Prins, Toso, and Schafft 2009). Know-why is when an individual develops a positive state of mind towards work (Schaufeli and Bakker 2004; Hobfoll et al. 2003). An individual’s attitudes towards work impact a person’s ability to exhibit motivation, positive behaviour, and self-efficacy when engaging in job or job searching activities. Attitudes about work also impact career adaptive behaviours that describe individuals’ engagement in developmental, instrumental, and self-regulatory strategies in the re-employment process (Thompson et al. 2017).

To develop interventions to assist re-employment for people in poverty, HRD must address the issues of motivational deficits caused by marginalization and create effective pathways leading to decent work and sustainable employment by addressing all three conditions mentioned above. To reflect on the relationship-based poverty alleviating programme mentioned earlier, HRD professionals can certainly make contributions by providing skill-based training, and other HRD practices such as a structured mentoring and coaching to strengthen the programming. Moreover, HRD’s work must build on the success of the community-based organizations by incorporating skills training as part of the credit earning programming to help overcome the stigma of economic constraints of people in poverty. Obviously, as a field, we are not known for poverty alleviation with most of our researchers and practitioners active in performance improvement aspects of individuals, team and organizations. Human Resource Development International promotes all aspects of practice and research that explore issues of individual, group and organizational learning and performance. We are committed to a wide understanding of ‘organization’ and to exploring strategies and policies from all parts of the world. When opportunity presents itself, I hope more and more of us will take on the challenge to make a difference in people’s lives.