Push For Regulations

The modern HR practitioner brings to the organization a competitive mindset; seeks to understand the goals the organization wants to achieve, and designs and implements HR systems and strategies to facilitate achievement of those goals. The intricacy of managing human resource to obtain optimum utilization requires certain specialist skills and these are the skill-set embedded in HR practitioners.

As HR Practitioners, we occupy a very strategic position in organizations and society at large. This is simply because we are the “experts” when it comes to areas of resourcing, training, motivating, managing and utilizing human capital.

As custodians of the policies and procedures of organizations, are we living up to our responsibility? Why have we been marginalized all these years as compared to our marketing and accounting counterparts? Admittedly, we may have contributed or allowed ourselves to be relegated to insignificance in organizations in Ghana. We find quite a number of our colleagues ducking and diving and allowing themselves to be pushed around by some CEOs or accountants, who have little or no clue about how to optimize human capital.

Though we admit that the practice of Human Resource Management has been in Ghana for some time now, its impact has been minimal due to varied reasons, some of which are:

1.Society is largely uninformed about the intricacies of HR practice

      2. HR is populated by diversely educated professionals, who are knowledgeable in other related professions. This diversity causes identification with differently constituted professions, example Industrial Psychology, Labour law, Industrial Sociology, etc.

      

   3.There are multiple points of entry into the profession from other disciplines, with the borders seeming endlessly permeable.

     

   4.The HR field has been known to be used to “dump” unsuccessful managers from other disciplines, greatly to the detriment of the reputation of HR. With no entry barriers, the quality of entrants cannot be screened.

For example, the HR Professional body in Ghana; Institute of Human Resource Management Practitioners-Ghana has been in existence for years yet, its influence is still very minimal as compared to other Professional bodies. Its lack of legal mandate (legislative instrument) has created a vacuum of regulating the practice of the HR profession in Ghana and contributed largely to the acute shortage of quality human resource management professionals in the country. The ripple negative effect of this are poor formulation and implementation of HR strategies, policies, procedures and systems; poor design, interpretation and implementation of employee terms and conditions of service; industrial tension and frequent strikes; poor work ethics, low employee morale and motivation, to mention a few.

If HR managers do not accurately anticipate the future and do not plan appropriately, they affect plans, machines, sales and numbers, and the people they lead. Therefore, to put the workforce into the hands of unqualified people is a recipe for disaster.

HR leaders in multinationals have moved to positions of influence and are very visible because they directly and indirectly touch everyone in the company; from entry to retirement, set the standards and norms for behaviour within the company, and coach other leaders to demonstrate the leadership brand.

It is against this background that regulation of HR is absolutely necessary and critical for industry. While it remains ideal to self-regulate and work with passionate and totally committed people, in a big system, this is rarely achievable. Regulatory minimum standards will have a profound impact on the quality of the profession.

Extensive consultations with HR practitioners and related bodies have clearly indicated that there is an awareness and acceptance of the necessity to regulate. There is also a growing acceptance in business that professional registration is a benchmark of quality and it is becoming more common-place to find registration required when applying for an HR position. With this, companies will appoint professionally registered HR practitioners to the top echelon of Human Capital Management as a measure of best practice. It is also believed that by setting a recognized and uniform standard of competence and professionalism, good governance will be enhanced and industrial strikes reduced.

All HR Practitioners in Ghana should come together and lobby the Ghana Government to endorse the process and enact a legislation to create a professional body that will provide training and expert advice in Human Resource Management and regulate the practice of the HR profession as is prevalent in Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and the UK.

By: Ebenezer Ofori Agbettor

Executive Director

Institute of Human Resource Management Practitioners-Ghana