حمید رحیمیان

Purpose: education plays a key role in empowerment of human resources. Thus, the present research was done to present and validate the human resources empowerment model with emphasis on education in the ornamental and building stone industry. Methodology: this descriptive-analytical study was of correlation type. The statistical population consisted of the staff at Iran's stone statistics and information center as many as 425 persons in 50 companies. The sample size was determined 200 according to Cochran formula; this number was chosen through stratified random sampling method based on the occupational unit. The research instruments included demographic information form capturing gender, age, level of education, years of working background, and a researcher-made questionnaire ( 50 items), whose face validity was confirmed based on expert opinion, while its reliability was calculated using Cronbach alpha method on 30 staff as 0.95. The data were analyzed by exploratory factor analysis and structural equations modeling methods in SPSS-25 and Smart PLS-3 software. Findings: the findings indicated that empowerment of human resources has 10 factors of change and innovation, managerial functions, learning, development of human resources, behavioral factors, organizational factors, the strategic factors of organization, environmental factors, cultural and leadership factors as well as knowledge beyond the technical knowledge. The factor load of all of its items was above 0.40; the convergent validity of the factors was found above 0.60 using the average variance extracted method. The reliability of all of the factors using Cronbach alpha and mixed method was above 0.70. Furthermore, the human resources empowerment model with emphasis on education in the ornamental and building stone industry had suitable and acceptable fitting, and the empowerment of human resources with emphasis on education had a direct and significant effect on all of the 10 factors (P<0.001). Conclusion: given the suitable model of human resources empowerment with emphasis on education in the ornamental and building stone industry, experts and planners can take effective steps for empowerment of human resources through the 10 identified factors.