The Human Resource Function.

The Human Resource Managers Association, Uganda brings together people who be with people in organizations. These are the people who are responsible for Human Resource Planning, recruitment, Training, performance appraisal and all those functions that enable an individual to join an organization and work with minimum stress. This profession is pretty young in the country and has collected a large number of members. Members meet periodically and discuss a number of things intended to improve their ethos. On November 29^th, 2013 they invited CEOs to find out from them what CEOs expect from HR managers.

As MUBS Principal, I was on the panel of the CEOs. I guess that the association will publish what the others said but what was my view? First of all there is a tendency to believe in many organizations by many people that it is only the HR people who are responsible for people in the organization. This is a fallacy. Every manager in the organization has an HR function. If it is the Chief Accountant in the organization who has the primary responsibility over the people in his department, he should know his HR plan, should prepare a leave Rooster, should approve or recommend the various aspects an individual wants, he is also responsible for identification of training gaps and recommending the necessary training for his employees and also responsible for appraising an employee among other HR issues. The HR function in the organization is simply a custodian of the rules and regulations and provides guidance to the various processes and also the HR processes. 

With that background, as a CEO what would I expect from an HR manager? I said in the seminar that I do not expect the HR manager to bring to me for discussion hygiene factors. I would like to see the HR manager bring to me exceptions, unique cases of course with recommendations. I expect him to seek my views and agreement on thee difficult cases that come up in the organization but most important to be able to determine the strategic thrust of the HR issues in the organization. I expect the HR manager to tell me whether we are adequately staffed or under staffed or over staffed, what type of skills are required in the organization in the coming years, the challenges we are having staffing and such related matters. The discussion kind of centered around whether the HR people required a little more skills in non HR areas for instance finance and it was clear that there were two opposing camps on this matter. There is a feeling that the HR managers can never become CEOs because they cannot crunch numbers. I thanked the inventors of the MBA, whoever you are you can get exposure to the basic functions of an organization including HR, finance, accounting, operations, strategy and you can specialize in HR. My take from this is HR people need to understand the financial implications of HR decisions because at the end of the day for a business organisation it is the bottom line that keeps you in business.