Competencies among human resource development practitioners according to disciplines and levels in Malaysian organizations

Malaysia is shifting from its current practices in human resources of training and development, to become more aware of trends in workforce competencies and their positive social and economic impacts. The lack of well-trained, experienced, and competent workers in job market create a gap between various levels and discipline in organization. It is a key factor that drives between success and failure in the organization performance. Hence, organizations are more aware of how to align worker’s skills with the tasks given to ensure that they are competent to undertake the job effectively. The new trend in workplace is to transform workers knowledge, expertise, and skills to prepare them to be more competent employees and better suited to the job market. Thus, this study examines the differences between human resource development discipline and human resource development level, in regards to the competency group in Malaysian organization. The findings of this study indicated that the Malaysian Human Resource Development practitioners perceived that competencies are important to the organization. However, this study found no significant difference between human resource development disciplines and human resource development levels in three competency groups. The results from this study have provided evidence that the competencies are keys for organizational performance.