Experts urge HR professionals to lead change management

Human Resource (HR) professionals have been advised to lead change agents in their various organisations, as employee engagement will no longer be ‘business as usual’.

Experts, who also urged them to keep an open mind, argued that today’s workplace have the greatest generational mix, which makes human resource management more challenging as the Generation Z (Gen Z), come with more diverse ideas on what ‘work’ ought to be.

This is even as the Gen Z, whose ages fall between 16 and 23 years, are projected to account for 36 per cent of the global workforce by 2020.

To this end, HR managers have been asked to up their ante, as resource management is already impacting meaningful work, remuneration, employee engagement, and tenure.

Chief executive officer, CoLAB Project Implementation, South Africa, Karabo Moloko, identified four practical steps organisations must take to maximise and get the best from the Gen Z.

Moloko, was the guest speaker at the 11th Special Human Resource Forum of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPM), themed, “Mind the Gap: Engaging the Workforce of the Future.”
She urged managers to: “disrupt yourself, engage leadership teams, re-imagine work and embrace technology.”

Harping on the need to harness human capital in the age of multi-generational workplaces, she said organisations that can harness and leverage each generation’s strengths would win.

CIPM President and Chairman of Council, Olawale Adediran, noted that as the world keeps changing the need for HR professionals to be abreast of topical trends and development is crucial to one’s career growth and personal development.

He said the forum was aimed at exposing chief executives, HR directors and managers, and other senior executives and stakeholders in human capital management to global best practices, and providing insights that are applicable in organisations.