Human resources is a term used to describe the individuals who comprise the workforce of an organization. The goal of human resource development is to help employees develop their personal and organizational skills, knowledge, and abilities so that the organization and individual employees can accomplish their work goals in service to customers. Human resource in an organization can be developed by

• employee training
• employee career development
• performance management and development
• coaching
• mentoring
• succession planning
• key employee identification
• tuition assistance
• and organization development

Human resource development can be performed in formal or informal ways:

• formal such as in classroom training, a college course, or an organizational planned change effort
• informal as in employee coaching by a manager