Randomly speaking, when I tell people HR is my profession (mostly to the average Ghanaian), they do not seem too impressed (about the role, not me). They feel just anybody can do the job. More sadly, I have walked into classrooms where all everyone seem to know about HR is “RECRUITMENT and FIRING”. The question is ‘Is that really all we do?’
I can confidently say NO, but that does not resolve the defunctive perception. To an extent, I feel like the market contributed to this error. HR is easily merged, and its functions performed by non-professionals. The effect of this wrong placement is that incumbents perform un-professionally and the people judge the entire profession by someone who is not even a professional, instead of the individual.
To all non-HR professionals, I want to tell you HR does more than recruitment and termination. HR engages in human resource development & planning, industrial engineering, organizational development & transformation, change management and industrial relations, amongst tens of others. HR is a specialized role and there is a significant difference when practiced out of ‘feelings’ by non-experts versus out of ‘knowledge’ by professionals.
My candid advice to companies that underrate the need for a professional engagement is simple. Take a critical look at the top players in your industry, do you see the HR team or function? The difference between your company and your top competitors is your HR – the people in your firm. If you still think HR is not important or cost-efficient to run, then you benchmarked the wrong companies. Strategic human resource management has a revenue-generating model which can only be executed by experts.
For the HR professionals who feel undermined, it is time to do the work better, not retreat in defeat. But I am worried that some people mostly remember or appreciate us in their ‘entry’ or ‘exit’. Why don’t they remember or appreciate what goes on in between? Is the role not effective enough, do we lack inter-departmental and managerial collaboration? What do you think is our biggest problem in the 21st century business world?
Great piece. I think the problem today in our part of the world is transition, via-a vis leaning. Most HR’s fail to transition from the days of personnel management to our contemporary HR today and feel leluctant to learn the current trends of the profession. We are too administrative driven instead of strategically positioning our respective organisation to really compete favourably in this rapidly changing world through strategy implementation of processes and procedures that can improve production, productivity and reduce cost in the process.
Hmm, that’s true that to a great extent, the transitioning has not perfectly sank in.
Great. Indeed learnt something new. C’mon nowww????????????????
Thank you Rachel 🙂
Great. Indeed learnt something new. C’mon nowww????????????????