At its ongoing 55th anniversary, President of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPM), Olusegun Mojeed, in this interview with GLORIA NWAFOR, speaks on how the challenge of quackery is bedeviling the sector and what the institute is doing to boost employees’ productivity amid unfriendly economic challenges.

Several economic headwinds in the country have brought down the morale of workers. What do you think is the best way to salvage the situation?
The global economy is in serious turmoil! A thorough Human Resource (HR) professional should be an employee advocate. There is a need to know what makes the employees happy? As much as you are thinking of a business and running it as the owner, if the business does not make money, it is going nowhere. Can you see the way the HR man has to balance? He needs to liaise between management and employees, and if you are a thorough HR professional, you will know when your business is making money and when they are not. Also, the HR professional must be a credible activist, so that when you go to the employees, they know you are coming to tell the truth.

What are the major challenges confronting the HR profession in the country?
Our major challenge is the activities of quackery. Unqualified and uncertified people practising people management work. Organisations that do not value the people element and think they can just put anybody to run human resources. It is an aberration and by the law of this land, even the practice of HR is already on a dark pedestal. We have not come with the full force of our enabling law. But what has happened over the years, we have created various routes to certification. For now, we have not picketed any organisation, which are employing quacks as HR leaders, practitioners and professionals. But we are telling ourselves that we have done enough moral suasion for 55 years. Now, we want to begin to enforce the law and we are not going to work alone. We are going to collaborate with organisations like the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA). We are not just in the private sector but also deep into the public sector. The public sector is embracing the professionalisation of HR like never before.

In terms of regulations, how can we ensure global best practices in the sector?
The regulators should check quackery. Can you imagine that these quacks are bold enough to be putting themselves in newspapers, through advertisements and collecting money from people? You see them calling people to come for interviews, messaging them and even using them for rituals. If it is known that the CIPM that has the law already is the only one we will blow it all over the place, like if anybody calls you for an interview, let them put their CIPM number there, because we have corporate membership details and we are regulated. On the sanctions, once caught, the first thing is that the person would be taken to court and be fined. That is why we are calling for an urgent review of the labour laws. The funny thing is that if these quacks repent and come through the proper channel, they too will be licensed to practice. We are not looking for a monopoly, we are just saying that let things be done the way they are.

How can the government create an enabling environment for the HR profession?
Who is the government? We are people managers. That is why as people management professionals, we are putting in all the energy to ensure that the people running government affairs are properly certified. Already, the Federal Government through a circular this year is now making the professionalisation of HR in the federal civil service a compulsory thing. That is the only way out. Whether you are an accountant, a policy maker, or an engineer in the government, the first thing is to get the people managing the affairs of those people properly certified. When the people managing people are well certified, they will know how to manage your people to do their businesses properly.

What makes this year’s conference different from the previous ones?
It is the aspect of growth that we are expecting to have in the next 10 years. I think we are moving to the level where we are coming to the specialisation of our certifications. We are moving into a professional course. Just as what we have in the medical field, where when you come out as a medical doctor, you can go into specialisation. So we are moving into specialisation, where people can become subject matter experts. When it comes to HR, we have up to 11 areas, among which are learning and development; performance management and industrial relations. Somebody can decide that I am going to be a specialist in this particular area and focus on that area. That is part of the growth that we are hoping to have in the institute. So it is important for us as an institute to work in collaboration with other organisations across the public and private sectors of the economy. We recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) in the United Kingdom and that covers a whole and brings about a lot of benefits for our members.

Technology is going to drive human resources going into the future. We know our younger members and everything they do now. The issue is how we support their growth and development and put them on the right track to take over the leadership of this nation. Also, managing talent is another area. There are challenges in the area of talent management. What do we need to do to continue to grow that profession? How do we support all our members in the HR field out there to ensure that with the migration going on, businesses need to be sustained and continue to thrive? So there are quite a lot of areas that we are looking at for the HR profession.