Investment Into The Professional Development Of Employees Of Eastern Croatia

Currently competent employees are less likely to stay equally competent when performing certain tasks over a longer period. The priority of every economic operator should be constant improvement of the employee’s quality i.e. permanent education. Investing in employees improves the economic operator’s market competitiveness and thus a stronger and more serious need for constant investment into growth and education of employees has been marked. If the economic operators did the contrary, they could not hope for survival based on obsolete knowledge and skills of its employees. This paper outlines the role and significance of professional development of employees as one of the governing processes and functions of the human resources management. The importance of investment into professional development of employees is foremost seen in creation of superior workforce resulting in increased income of both the economic operator and the region as a whole. The stated theoretic knowledge has also been tested in the research part of the paper, which shows to what extent investment into professional development of employees through various forms of training and education is present in five counties of Eastern Croatia and three counties of Central Croatia. The analyses of results derived from the research part of the paper show the need to continuously change the old paradigm of frequent lack of investment into human resources and impose a fresh view of investment into new knowledge of employees.