SHRM demands blueprint for bridging skills gap

The president, Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Nigeria, Oliver Nnona, has advocated for the development of a potent blueprint to bridge the gap between emerging skills demand and capable professionals.
He said the Nigerian government could stem the rising tide of youth unemployment by deepening collaborations with the private sector, staying abreast of new demands and tailoring strategies towards updating and investing in knowledge base.
Speaking at the human resource managers summit on “Future Ready HR” in Victoria Island, Lagos, recently, the president said it was imperative for the National Universities Commission (NUC) to integrate updated knowledge and research in its teaching curriculum, as companies were embracing cutting-edge HR practises, to manage the cost of operation.
He said, “For government, the main area is to create legislation and an environment where Nigerians can find great people to hire and great work. There should be social policies for tight collaboration with businesses. With the idea of skills in demand, there should be a projection to scale the number of persons needed for a given skill.
“In China, every year, the number of people who will graduate with different degrees are known and the government tries to find work for them.
“The NUC should work closely with people who understand the skills businesses want to employ. There should be a national people plan, to meet skills gap the way we have a national economic plan.”
Addressing the changing trend of human resource practise, Nnona pointed out that emphasis was on productivity and efficiency in lieu of phyicsal occupance or presence in an office space.
“The best HR are the ones that are able to do what people think will happen in the next 20 years. For instance, the typical thing is to go to work in the morning and go home; how about not going to work at all but you are working? Many years ago, it didn’t seem like it was possible but today most companies are embracing this new trend. The typical work pattern is changing and focuses more on productivity, how and getting a thing done in the most efficient way,” he said.
The conference’s lead speaker, executive director, SHRM International, Brad Boyson, noted that HR managers could only remain atop by adopting analytic mechanisms and evidence-based approaches to drive organiational goals.
According to him, practitioners must not only solidify their practice with professional qualifications, but also prove the understanding of necessary knowledge with experimental and effective results.
“Historically, HR people make an opinion and the CEO or MD simply thank you but they don’t want a point of view, they want facts, a more objective opinion or numbers. The way you know you are right or wrong is to measure the activities and the best organisations in the world like Google create internal experiments for anything they do that involves change management. What is interesting about analytics is that it’s got nothing to do with technology. Professionals need to anticipate. So many HR people are reactive to problems but better organisations adopt evidence-based HR,” said Boyson.