July 5, 2017
Human Resource Management professionals have been charged to be more assertive on national issues since the profession plays a vital role in socio-economic development.
According to Mr John Mbroh, a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Human Resource Management Practitioners (IHRMP), the profession is a key element that should not be left out of the national discourse on pertinent issues.
He said since decisions of other sectors affect the HR sector and practice, there was the urgent need for the voice of HR professionals to be heard.
Addressing an elevation ceremony in Accra where the IHRMP conferred Fellowship on 20 HR professionals and associates, Mr Mbroh, a leading HR practitioner, urged the IHRMP to lead the way in making the profession more assertive.
Like other professional bodies such as the Ghana Bar Association, Ghana Institute of Engineers and Institute of Marketing, that occasionally express themselves on national issues, he said the IHRMP could do same by taking a position on contentious issues and propose solutions.
“As a professional institution, I venture and dare to pronounce that we have for far too long been enclosed within ourselves, and we have not been actively noticed on the national front.
“We have not taken a common stand on any contentious issue confronting our nation. Probably we are a little too cautious in these areas,” he said.
But he said the fear of being branded as straying into national political discourse should not be a deterrent since the fact remains that most of the management and governance issues that take political dimensions, affect the human resource.
For instance, Mr Mbroh, who chairs the Institute’s Fellows Status Committee, cited the issue of judgment debts which he described as not new to HR practitioners, yet they have remained silent in the national discourse towards providing solutions.
“Again, there are no political ways of appointing and terminating the appointment of a CEO. In the past few months in this country, there have been cases of appointments, transfers and termination of appointment of CEOs and other officials that have not been handled professionally.
“Recruitment into the Armed Forces and Police Service has been bungled beyond belief,” he said, adding that there are also real human resource management issues especially in the industrial and services sector that required urgent attention.
Regrettably, he said, “these cases have left astute observers wondering if we are bereft of human resource management professionals.”
“As HR practitioners, we claim to be the managers of the most important asset that any nation, company or institution possesses.
“We should not hold our silence,” he stressed, adding that “our country urgently requires our expertise as the nation’s open up for economic growth.”
In that regard, he recommended that the board of every public institution should have a solid HR professional representation.
By: Nii Adotey/adrdaily.com
