Recognising the creme of human resources

We must agree that the people that were faced with the biggest challenge in the workplace when the Covid-19 pandemic hit were the Human Resource personnel. In unusual times, they were faced with navigating a pandemic while still protecting staff amid a job loss scare.

No surprise that the award for the best human resource practitioners celebrated those who stood out and applied the best practices during the difficult two years of the Covid-19 lockdown.

Eight human resource managers were awarded at the Human Resource Managers’ Association of Uganda (HRMAU) that were held this month at Kampala Serena Hotel.

The awards, according to Moses Mbubi Witta, the President of HRMAU, are aimed at recognising the best human resource practitioners and inspiring the next generation of world-class human resource professionals for their exceptional work.

“It is that time that organisations turned to the HR professionals to guide them on how to remain productive while protecting employees and their families,” Mbubi said.

In support of braving the pandemic setback, Muruli Mukasa who represented Gender minister Betty Amongi, said the profession played a crucial role in making sure businesses supported their employees and remained productive.

“As we are all aware, many companies shrunk or collapsed. Others carried out massive restructuring to cope with the prevailing circumstances. All this led to many jobs and distress for workers and their dependents. Worst of all, we lost many people, some of whom were our employees,” Mukasa said.

He added that the development of human resource professionals in the country is one of the government’s six priority areas of focus in transforming Uganda from a predominantly peasant and low-income country to a competitive upper middle-income country.

“This is enshrined clearly in our Uganda Vision 2040. I want to commend the HRMAU fraternity and all the human resource practitioners on their great job nurturing and transforming the entire human resource base in Uganda,” Mukasa said.

According to the global head of human resource for the African Export-Import Bank Stephen Tio Kauma, who was the keynote speaker at the event, human resources as a profession is an integral part of the management of any organisation because it is people-related

Challenges

“Many times, the business does not see us as integral leaders of the business and rather sees us as people who sit aside and only handle admin-related issues,” says Kauma.

This, he says, is driven by how HR professionals present themselves; how one presents ideas or talks can be the basis on which they are judged. If human resource personnel focus only on matters relating to payroll and discipline, the business will treat them as such.

However, if they go into the room and speak up about balance sheets, marketing strategies and other things, the business will listen to them.

“As professionals, we need to ask ourselves what we need to do to have our voices heard, sit on the table along with other board executives and contribute to the management of businesses that we do,” Kauma says.

The awards

There were originally 13 categories where human resource professionals were to either nominate themselves or be nominated by people who knew them through an online session.

Choosing from 843 responses, the evidence-based session saw 257 actual nominees with 58 self-nominations and 199 nominated after evaluation.

Out of 10 categories that were later revised, they had the best eight. After validation, eight categories were able to make it with 30 out of 257 nominees presenting evidence of what they did.

WINNERS
John Bosco Tukahumura - NMS.
Rosemary Nakuya - UBL                                                                   
Ethel Jackie Nagaddya - NSSF        
Sauda Kayima - CRS                                                
Sarah Kajumba - Save the Children 
Milton Owor - NSSF       
Deborah K. Kakande - Housing Finance   
Juliet Muheirwe -Equity Bank