Navigating the HR terrain

All over the world, human beings play a crucial part in the organisational structure of businesses, starting from giving it a human face to helping it achieve its corporate objective. But while human beings are crucial to the existence and sustenance of every institution, managing them has never been an easy task for anybody anywhere.

This is understandable, given the challenges that come with aligning the work ethics of people of different backgrounds, personality traits, egos and understandings to achieve a common organisational goal.

Thus, until information technology takes over the functions of the human resource (HR) department (that is, if it will ever happen), managing employees will continue to be the single most daunting task a business will have to deal with.

This explains why employee management continues to feature in the list of top 10 challenges facing businesses all over the world.

To help expose listeners and business executives to the rudiments of HR management and its importance to the business, the weekly motivational radio talk show, the Springboard, Your Virtual University, dedicated its July 25 edition to the topic: 'The role of human resource development to organisational growth.’

It was the 11th edition of the series on Entrepreneurship and Business Growth, which started in May, this year.

The Head of Human Resources at CAL Bank, Mr Samuel Kwame Boafo, said although technology was fast becoming an immerse contributor to the growth of businesses the world over, human beings still remained the most valued assets of every business.

This, he said, was due to the fact that whatever innovation technology brings onboard, human beings would be called upon to implement.

"You will need people and you just don't need people, but those who are very skilled, smart and innovative to be able to turn your business around. There is so much pressure coming on businesses that you just cannot afford not to involve the key resource, which is the human resource, in your business endeavour," Mr Boafo said.

Recruiting the best staff

In a country where graduate unemployment is one of the biggest challenges facing the government, getting the right person for the job can be a daunting task for the HR executive.

This is obvious because on a daily basis, dozens of people roam the streets, searching for places where their individual skills sets could be applied.

This makes it difficult for companies to figure out who among the thousands is best fit to fill the vacancy and properly contribute to the advancement of the company's corporate objective.

In the midst of this, Mr Boafo advised that companies pay strict attention to technical skills requirements and attitude during the recruitment processes.

While admitting that it was nearly impossible to balance the two attributes in an individual, he said priority must be given to attitude, given that a skilful person with a bad attitude could create difficulties for the business.

He cited the situation where some football coaches sidelined skilful players with bad attitudes as an example where attitude and skills were needed to make a potential employee complete for the job.

Mr Boafo explained that leadership was key in influencing the work culture of employees.

"Leadership is critical in change management position because you become the role model. If you the leader find it comfortable doing something in respect of what you require of every employee, it becomes easier for me to say: 'look, he's the boss and he's doing it. I don't have any option than to do it,'” he said.

Corporate politics

Some of the challenges HR departments are facing in the corporate world are politics and the existence of power brokers in organisations.

In most institutions worldwide, various employees have different ambitions, which they advance by getting others in the business to join them.

Although this may appear menial to the corporate objective of the business, evidence abounds that they sometimes act to undermine smooth operations in the workplace.

While admitting their existence in the Ghanaian corporate environment, the head of HR at CAL Bank noted that management needed to handle such politics with care to ensure that they did not undermine the growth of the business.

"In the quest to gain, if you like, prominence and things like that, people resort to various gameplays to be able to achieve what they like. If it is done right, it may help build the individual but the way it manifests itself in the workplace is normally the negative form, where people push others down in other to raise themselves.”

“It may also be gossiping, bullying, backstabbing a co-worker and things like that, all in a bid to project one as the best. For a leader, it is difficult managing these things but the moment they come to your attention, you should be able to deal with them,” he said.

He explained that: “For example, if you have two salespeople who are trying to outdo each other through higher sales, it’s positive but when they do that just to gain prominence, then you the manager would have to step in and solve it,” he said.

He called for teamwork among employees, explaining that people achieved better results when they operated as a team.

He, however, added that heads of institutions needed to clearly communicate to their subordinates what the goals of the organisation were for employees to be able to work towards achieving them. –GB