By Victor Ahiuma-Young & Moses Nosike

Mr. Abiola Popoola, FCIM, is the President/Chairman of Council, Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria, CIPM. In this interview with Saturday VanguardBusiness, he speaks on the role of Human Resource (HR) management in nation building,  the challenges facing HR management, its future in Nigeria among others.

Popoola: Skills enhances HR

Excerpts
How have you been able to address the problems of quacks in HR practice?
The issue of quacks is a key concern for us. A quack is somebody who does not have the requisite qualification, requisite knowledge, requisite skills,  to do what he is doing and that is the issue about incapability. Many organisations have people in HR roles who don’t have the required skills and knowledge. Our approach is two folds.

The first approach,  is to offer such quacks opportunity to come and upscale their knowledge by providing them with training.  So,  the institute  provides opportunity for HR practitioners to upscale their knowledge.

We do training to affect different aspects of HR,  recruitment, personnel management, strategic change,  we offer training to help such quacks  to fill up their gaps.  That is the first thing but our major thrust is to  offer opportunity for people to upscale their skills and knowledge.

The second approach of course,  is to begin to go to organisations and challenge their choice of head of HR.  We are concerned even at the public sector. Many public sector organisations and agencies, those who head administration in those organisations don’t have the knowledge and the skills and you can call them quacks as well.

As you rightly said, when you have a quack as the head of the function,  of course,  that quackery will spread across the organisation.  So,  how are we affecting change in this area?  Number one is to offer such “quacks” opportunity for upscaling their skills by offering them training.  Secondly, we are planning  to actively  challenge organisations about the qualifications  of the heads of their HR functions in playing their roles.

How has CIPM contributed to nation’s development over the years?
That is one of the challenges that we have over the years as  HR managers  .As important an  organisation as we are,  we are not in public relations, we are not in marketing, we are not visible but we are making progress to the extent that organisations that have embraced proper practice of HR are making progress.  Anywhere you turn and you see organisations making progress, HR has made progress.  So we have affected our organisations by providing quality personnel to perform at their outmost.

What should a  competent HR Manager do even when there are pressures probably from the owners of the organisation he or she works for to engage or employ people  who do not have the requisite qualifications?

That is why we are insisting that people should be professionally qualified because when the HR manager does his work very well, it is for the benefit of the organisation.  So,  for the owner of the business who is enlightened,   many owners are ignorant about these things.

You will not be telling your HR manager to employ people who are not qualified because you are going to undermine you own business. The HR manager,  don’t forget,  is also a business-focused person. He is a business person who has a HR expertise.

Let us say it was me and my boss is the owner of the company and he asked me to take his cousin whether he is qualified or not.  I will let my boss be aware of the challenge that this may bring to us.  I believe  what many employers require  actually is education about the wisdom of listening to professional advisers in HR. Many of them act out of  ignorance.

They want to help a cousin,  but you don’t give a person a job because he needs the job.  You give the person the job because the job needs the person. So, you give the person who the job needs,  not the person who needs the job.

That is how you can support your organisation and if the person is the owner of business,  he will want his business to grow.  So the HR manager who is a professional will let his boss know,  humbly but clearly and firmly that this is not going to help our organisation.

If the owner of the business insists on having that person, our code as a professional body suggest that if you are being asked to do things which you consider as unprofessional,  you should resign you appointment.  You could get to that if your boss will not allow you to practice the profession as you feel convinced to do. If he  is forcing you to compromise your principles,  one of our code suggests that you must resign your appointment because you have your integrity to protect as well.

What would you say has been your major challenge as an institute?
Our major challenge has been in the public sector,  may be in both sectors actually. In the public sector, our major challenge has been that we have cases of our members who have to work under Heads of Administration  who are not professionally qualified.  That is a challenge because if you have somebody who doesn’t know  the HR, who is the head of the organisation with professionals under him, it may     undermine the quality of the HR services.

The challenge is,  as we said before are  quacks and  unqualified people who are actually heading the HR profession and departments both in the public and private sectors.

That is a very major challenge. Another major challenge we have is that our graduates. Those who are qualified but  our certification is yet to be accredited appropriately in the government circuit.

That is key challenge for us because we believe that our certified members  deserved to be recognized appropriately.  That accreditation challenge is still on with government.  We have actually progressed a lot in this generation,  but we are not happy that we have not gotten the appropriate accreditation for our members.  So,  those are two of our major challenges..

If you are look into the future, what would the practice of Human Resource management be in Nigeria in the next ten years?
In the next ten years, I have great hopes  for this country because where we are today is better than where we were even five years ago and I am imagining that,  certainly in next ten years, there will be universal acceptance  by organisations for  professionals in HR functions.

In the next ten years,  I will expect that the public sector will have a much more systematic approach to people recruitment and development. In the next ten years, I  hope that the federal government itself  would have really focused a lot more on the provision of the appropriate infrastructure for education, because that is  the beginning of development. Education at the primary level especially,  primary and secondary.

I  really hope that this country  would have focused a lot more on how  we prepare our young people for the world of work later in their lives.  In the next ten years of course,  this institute will be by far the foremost institute out of Africa and will be respected across the world.

What will your members and prospective members gain from the re-branding project?
What they will gain clearly is an upscaling of their professional standing.  So by being a member of the institute,  you are immediately exposed to the learning that is available through our courses, through the seminar that we organise, through interaction with much more experienced professional members.  Also,  you stand to gain immediate expansion of your networks  immediately you meet professionals who can give you support,  who can coach and mentor you and a lot more. Therefore, they are going to be able to go back to their organisations and be able to make much more impact. Actually, being a member helps you to accelerate your development even in your career.  I  don’t see an HR practitioner in this country as we go forward being able to make much progress if you are not a member of the institute because you will just not be as equipped as those who are members.  You know organisations are looking for people who are capable.  If you don’t upscale your capability, you can not expect to make progress.  So our members stand to gain accelerated career development if they come and join our institute.