SHRM tasks government, businesses on human capital investment

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has challenged governments and organisations in the private and public sectors to see strategic investment in human capital as the right thing to do in a recession.

SHRM, which has over 250,000 members in over 140 countries and wholly devoted to human resource management, made the call during the 7th Future-Ready Human Resource Conference in Lagos recently.

President of SHRM for Middle East and Africa (MEA), Brad Boyson in his paper titled: “Business and Human Capital Challenges Now and in the Future,” said, “Around the world, whenever there is economic recession, the first activity organisations cut is actually training or investing in people.”

He however, said that history has shown that organisations that go against the trend to take the opportunity when other organisations shy away from investing in people were always the ones ahead of the industry.

“So, the significance of an event such as this holding in Nigeria at this time is that, as HR people, we need to be the advocates of growing the organisations in the area of talent in difficult times,” he stated.

Explaining the future-readiness of human resource professionals, Boyson said: “At SHRM, we believe that the foundation of an HR professional is to hold the professional qualifications because with that, you are proving to your global peers that you understand the necessary knowledge of HR and that you understand its best practices. Not everyone that works in HR department of an organisation is an HR person.

“To be an HR of today and in future one needs to have some unique qualifications, which includes understanding technology and cultural changes in talent and dynamics of people generally.