Why we should prioritise human resource planning

Emmanuel Mugarura’s article titled, ‘Mr President, reform, but do not disband government corporations’ in the Daily Monitor of November 13, places the function of human resource planning at the core of corporate governance. Very aptly, Mugarura describes corporate governance as the management of power in an organisation for the sake of creating value for that organisation’s stakeholders.
In that sense, the aspect of human resource planning can help us provide some explanations for the disastrous performance of our public corporations. Such performance fed into the misleading generalisation by, among others, World Bank consultants that our government could not excel in the world of business; hence our shift to a private sector-led economic model.

Of course, our government could – and still can – run business entities as profitably as private sector players can. Many factors set the two players apart, though. A major one is the way the four categories of resources – physical, material, financial and human – are utilised.
Very often, we see how government carelessly gets wrong what the private sector strives to get right. Public sector planners can diligently plan for a fruit processing factory in Soroti, a banana value-addition project in Mbarara, a fertiliser factory in Tororo or an airport in Hoima. These are all resources crucial for Uganda’s goal of attaining middle-income status. Good thinking can go to the procurement of vital machinery. Land is found. And funding is sourced from international financial institutions or foreign governments.

When systems are all set to go, the people charged with making the right decisions often make the wrong decisions on the most important and the most conspicuous element in the management process – the human resource.
There is a tendency for these decision-makers to scan the horizon closest to their eyes. They see a relative, a son or daughter of a (childhood) buddy, an OB (it is always the old boy network), a good cadre or someone from their tribe.

That is how they miss the basic human resource placement tenet that square pegs must be placed in square holes and round ones in round holes. Public corporations have tended to be chambers for people appointed to key positions of power where they may have little or no competence and no passion for routine operations. Now, throw in rampant embezzlement and wastage of public funds and you have disaster written all over the place.Yet it is the human resource element that is supposed to be the driver, the controller and the brain behind productivity targets to turn the other resources into earnings.
How we bring people in to work for the State largely determines the success or failure of public enterprises. That is why the government needs to know that human resource planning is a vital strategy that should be put in place to acquire, to use, to develop and to retain the right qualitative and quantitative human resource the public sector demands.

A comprehensive human resource strategy should meet current and future staff needs to ensure that the right kind of people, in the right numbers, at the right time and in the right places have been acquired. That is how you can attract and retain a competent and motivated public service.
Is this happening in our society? Do not ask the demoralised doctors, prosecutors, lecturers and many others out there laying or wanting to lay down their tools. Theirs is one of those illustrative stories about the type of poor human resource planning that treats highly skilled workers like some kind of beggars, while pandering to the whims of others with comparatively less attributes.
It was truly regrettable for the government to rush to declare some of the recent industrial actions as illegal and to use language – health minister Dr Jane Aceng said the striking doctors were “misled” – that was menacing, uppity and condescending. Government should put in place mechanisms for addressing the twin issues of job motivation and job satisfaction for public servants.

Job motivation is an inner force that pushes people to work harder. It may not solely be monetary-based. And satisfaction on the job is a feeling of happiness or pleasure one gets about one’s job because one has achieved what one needs, prays for and dreams about in life.
So, we should prioritise human resource planning for three reasons: To achieve demand and supply equilibrium, to avoid situations of surpluses and deficits and to cope with the ever changing demands for public services.

Dr Okodan is the Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences and Management Studies at Kumi University.
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