[3][4] Specific human resources targeted by NHRD policy or practice typically include personal characteristics like knowledge, skills, and learned abilities and aspects of physical and psychological wellbeing; examples of NHRD interventions include ensuring that general education curricula include knowledge critical to employability and wellbeing, assisting employers in implementing effective on-the-job training programs that promote both greater effectiveness and workplace empowerment, and working to benefit specific populations by, for example, aligning vocational education and training with maternal health services and nutritional support.
For example, South Africa has established a Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) which coordinates efforts from multiple governmental departments with the aim of stimulating “a culture of training and lifelong learning at individual, organisational and national levels...”.
[8] NHRD has been highlighted as distinct from HRD not just in terms of its level of analysis, but because it deals with social and intuitional issues often not considered by HRD practitioners (for example, maternal health and international policymaking) and because national governments, international development actors like the United Nations, and other civil society organizations both use the term and at times conceptualize NHRD separately from issues of either employee-related training or development.
[13] Crucial steps in this international progression have been the work by the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific towards integrated human resources policy provisions in national public policy in that region as expressed in the 1988 Jakarta Plan of Action[14] and subsequently a 1994 report by the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on Human Resources Development in the Public Sector.
Outside of the United States, NHRD initiatives include the nationwide vocational education and training systems of Germany and other European nations (see below).
[6][25] Efforts to accelerate skills development within a given region include active labor-market programs that, for example, provide income assistance alongside vocational education and training.
[26] The World Bank, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European Training Foundation (ETF), the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the G20, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have undertaken efforts to better understand and improve the skills of key populations, countries, and regions – prominently including people affected by poverty in lower-income countries.
For example, the World Bank has begun to directly measure skill levels instead of inferring them from existing labor-market information in urban centers in lower-income countries.
[33] The BGHG approach to NHRD has emphasized, among other things, multi-sector partnerships, empirically-based skill measurement and projections, and the creation of a community college model of vocational education and training.
Azerbaijan Bhutan Botswana Germany Grenada India Japan Kiribati Malaysia Mauritius Pakistan Saint Lucia South Africa United States