Maternity and Paternity Leave

The term maternity leave sounds like a cliché within the labour environment in Ghana. In recent times however, some employers are into the practice of granting paternity leave to their employees. Yes you read right: paternity leave!

Article 24(2) of the 1992 Constitution guarantees the right of every worker to rest, leisure and reasonable limitation of working hours and periods of holidays with pay, as well as remuneration for public holidays. The right to rest and leisure means a right to leave with pay. The law attaches so much importance to rest and leisure for workers that section 30 of the Labour Act, 2003 (Act 651) frowns upon employees agreeing with their employers to waive their leave by rendering any such agreement void.

The Modern Day Interview

The history of finding the right person for the job dates back to 1792 BC, when tradesmen sought apprentices to teach their skills to. The modern day system of hiring can however be credited to Thomas Edison, the creator of the light bulb. It is said that Edison would get hundreds of applicants whenever he was seeking to add someone to his workforce. Edison, being the genius that he was, and in trying to find college graduates with knowledge comparable to his own, created a “test” for all prospective employees, which consisted of a series of general knowledge questions. Some were specific to the exact position Edison was hiring for, while others were related to topics such as geography and literature. Newspapers of the day picked up the story and other captains of industry began to use tests of their own in their bid to select the best person for the job. This process evolved into the system of hiring that we have today.

Getting Your Job Evaluation Right

In all organisations, there is an odd dynamic at play when it comes to remuneration. It does not matter how well-paid employees are, if they feel that they are paid differently (worse) to their colleagues, and they cannot see or understand the reason for this, they will be unhappy. One of the most important elements in remuneration is internal equity. When your internal equity is out of balance, meaning, when two people doing the same job, with the same inputs (education, skill, experience), are paid differently, one of them is bound to be unhappy. In a way, internal equity is far more important than external benchmarking.

Take, for example, two newly-qualified engineers; Engineer A is paid GH¢5,000 a month, when the average in his organisation is GHC¢4,000. Engineer B is paid GH¢6,000 a month, when the average is GHC¢7,000. Which engineer do you think is the happier?

Engineer A is the happier because relative to his colleagues, he is paid above the average and will feel valued and appreciated. Although Engineer B is earning more than Engineer A, Engineer B will feel under-valued and less appreciated. However, if Engineer B understands why there is a difference in salary, and what needs to be done to move to a higher salary band, the feeling of being undervalued can be changed into a drive for achievement.  To do this, we need to understand the differences in job rankings in an organisation.

Enter job evaluation: Job evaluation is about defining and comprehending the complexities of jobs in an organisation and how they fit together. Job evaluation systems require an understanding of the job being evaluated, including what is required of the person in the job (knowledge and skills), what processes have to take place (judgement required, planning and communication), and the impact the job has on the organisation. By evaluating all the jobs in an organisation and providing feedback to the employees, they understand where they fit in the organisation and what needs to be done to move to another level. This means that the process needs to be consistent, fair, transparent and credible. However, the perception of employees is that most job evaluation systems fail at this fundamental level.

The easiest and most cost effective way to change this is to include employees in the process. A computerised job evaluation system, such as HayGroup Decision Tree, is just such a system, which adds value, but at the same time, simplifies the process. Typically, computerised systems do not involve a full committee to evaluate a job. The system is loaded onto a facilitator’s laptop (making it portable) and the facilitator, incumbent, and the incumbent’s manager answer system-based questions to determine the grade of the job. By having the manager and the incumbent participate in the process, you immediately demystify the processes, making it clearer and perceptibly fairer. The incumbent immediately buys into the process and is far more willing to accept the results. Further, having chosen the most appropriate answer from a list, the incumbent has gained an understanding of what differentiators there may be in other positions, making it easier to justify different grades for similar positions in an organisation.

Where organisations inevitably fall short is after the job evaluation process: the process stops once the evaluation committee has verified the results and sent them off to Human Resources. Ideally, it is paramount that results are communicated to the organisation. Employees need to understand where they fit in the organisation, where other positions (note: not people) fit in the organisation and the relationship between the jobs in an organisation. Once an employee has this understanding, justifying differences in pay between jobs and also between individuals become much easier.

In South Africa, the amended Employment Equity Bill, which seeks to ensure that workers are paid the same for work of equal value was passed in the National Assembly in October 2013 and is expected to be signed into law in the near future. The bill seeks to end unfair discrimination by employers in respect of terms and conditions of employment of employees doing the same work, similar work or work of equal value, and protection against unfair discrimination.

The question is, is your job evaluation process able to help you with all of this?

By-Andrew Dickson

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