Human resource development is a set of activities that provide employees with opportunities to learn necessary skills. Focused most broadly, HRD seeks to develop people’s knowledge, expertise, productivity, and satisfaction, for personal or team gain, or for the benefit of an organization, community, nation, or, ultimately, the whole of humanity. HRD activities should begin when an employee joins an organization and continue throughout his or her career, regardless of whether that employee is an executive or a worker on an assembly line.

HRD programs must respond to job changes and integrate the long-term plans and strategies of the organization to ensure the efficient and effective use of resources. Activities such as coaching, team building, and organization development also are aspects of human resource development. To understand its modern definition, it is helpful to briefly recount the history of human resources development. The origins of HRD can be traced to apprenticeship training programs in the eighteenth century.

During this time, small shops operated by skilled artisans produced virtually all household goods, such as furniture, clothing, and shoes. Without vocational or technical schools, the shopkeepers had to educate and train their own workers. For little or no wages, these trainees, or apprentices, learned the craft of their master, usually working in the shop for several years until they became proficient in their trade. In 1809, a man named DeWitt Clinton founded the first privately funded vocational school, also referred to as a manual school, in New York City. These early forms of occupational training established a prototype for vocational education.