‘How HR professionals can survive emerging challenges’

To meet up with changing landscape across sectors of the nation’s economy and create flexibility for business growth, human resources professionals have been urged to become more functional to ease economy turbulence.

According to experts, who converged at a special seminar organised by Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) in Lagos, human resources experts must prioritise leadership and navigate in the face of growing challenges.

The experts stated that, relationship management, consultation, expertise, critical evaluation, global and cultural effectiveness, ethical practices are among factors that must be prioritised to beat emerging trends in the industry.

A keynote speaker at the event, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of Proscen and the immediate past CEO of MTN Nigeria, Michael Ikpoki stated that landscape in the business sector would continue to put pressure on CEOs demanding human resources experts to relate initiatives to organisational business priority and objectives.

Ikpoki, who spoke on Future ‘Ready HR: What the CEO wishes HR knows and does’; the HR and the CEO must speak up and listen to each other to bridge inherent gap.

“What I am saying is that why it is now important to bridge that gap is because of all the changes that are happening. The organisations have to be very adaptive and very quick. They must be very innovative and that cannot happen if you don’t have the right kind of people, structure, processes in the business. I think the reality is that in today’s world that gap has to be narrowed. There must be closer roads between the CEO and the HR teams,” he said.

Executive Vice President of Global Business Development, at the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), Howard Wallack said human resources professionals must have global cultural effectiveness even in local companies to meet up with rising global challenges.

Stating that experts must transit beyond the basses of HR, Wallack said boost in global trade and the expansion of transnational companies have resulted in cross-cultural workforces, adding that, critical evolution, global cultural effectiveness among others are necessary tool for HR experts.

Concluding a presentation on ‘Future Ready HR: Emerging Strengths and Success Competencies’, he said: “international assignments are on rise, emerging markets remains the future of the sector, high performance businesses are globalised, multinationals strengthen the economy, and key global challenges will persist for HR practitioners.”

Stanbic IBTC head of human capital, Funke Amobi stressed that experts must “position their HR functions in a manner that will meet business expectations”.

She said: “The future ready human resources practitioners require a strong blend of HR tools. You need strategic tools, operational metric tools, technological tools and business tools”