Human resource bosses told to change with times

June 22, 2017 in Business, Communications, Companies by Editor

June 22—Human resource professionals have been told to change with the times or be left behind and lose effectiveness as managers who can create  conducive working environments for employees.

“There is a big generation gap dominating many companies. Millennials today, are coming into the workforce in big numbers with different perspectives on how to execute tasks,” Lincoln Mali, the Standard Bank Group Head of Card and Emerging Payments told guests at a dinner hosted by the Human Resource managers Association of Uganda (HRMAU) recently.

He said, “They are confident, curious, value diversity, have high expectations and are thirsty for knowledge; human capital leaders have to create an enabling environment and embrace them as a reality.”

A South African with 18 years in banking, Mali challenged Human Capital Management leaders to embrace changes in organizational culture to remain relevant with the times.  Millennials are usually defined as broad segment of people born between 1980 and 2000. The theme of Mali’s keynote remarks was ‘Harnessing organizational culture and demographics for strategic business achievements’.

He gave the example of the United States where the US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts by 2020, Millennials will make up 50% of the workforce and 75% of the global work force by 2030.

HRMAU was launched on July 15, 1999 and is a registered professional membership association for human resource practitioners as well as public and private institutions with a human resource function. The HRMAU was created with the aim of instituting standards, enhancing development and promoting HR.

The dinner was the first major event for Mail during his visit to Uganda. An internationally renowned and respected motivational speaker, he holds a BA LLB (Rhodes University); MBA (Henley Management College – UK) and an AMP (Harvard Business School).

The HRMAU President, Patrick Ngolobe,  thanked Mali for his insight and advised colleagues to take note. He said, “Human Resource leaders and captains of the industry must rise up to the challenge of organizational culture.”

He said, “We must model and reinforce the culture that we desire through our behaviour, character, systems and models and have less talk and slides; leaders who do not catch up to this reality will be out of business and jobs sooner rather than later.”

Stanbic Bank Uganda (SBU), who arranged Mali’s visit, is a member of the Standard Bank Group, Africa’s largest bank by assets at $143 billion as December 31st 2016. SBU is Uganda’s biggest bank with assets of just over UGX4.5 trillion ($1.3 billion) as of June 30th 2016.

The Group has direct, on-the-ground representation in 20 African countries. Standard Bank Group has 1,221 branches and 8,815 ATMs in Africa, making it one of the largest banking networks on the continent. It provides global connections backed by deep insights into the countries where it operates.

Ngolobe said, “As an association we believe constant exposure to global best practices is important for the personal and professional development of our members which directly links to the quality of our labour market both at the side of the employees, but also within the work environments. We continue to enhance, a reason as to why we continually bring high profile presenters such as Lincoln to share their experiences and encourage members of our profession to improve their skills.”

The association has a membership of over 500 stemming from all the various economic sectors of the country and with several areas of expertise in the fields of organisation development, people and culture management.