Experts advocate adequate funding for HR technology

Managements of business entities in the country, have been advised to make adequate budgetary provision for the funding of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), if the human and material resources of such organisations are to be fully tapped, reports Kayode Ajiboye.

Making this call at a one-day Human Resources (HR) Technology conference in Lagos, at the weekend, experts said that effective adoption of ICT would make great difference in human resources management.

Speaking at the event, a human resources management expert at the Lagos Business School, Mrs Yinka David-West, noted that any human resources management based on ICT would definitely increase the competitiveness of the organisation and the business environment across the world.

Delivering paper on “Adoption of Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS) in Nigeria,” David-West said that adoption of ICT in an organization required adequate and continuous funding scheme.

According to her, adopters of modern HR management technology must appreciate its real costs in the budgetary provision for personnel training, maintenance and upgrading IT equipment are essential for business continuity.

She also canvassed that vendors and adopters of HRMS applications should consider a shared services model towards accomplishing their organizational business goals.

Delivering her own paper earlier at the conference, another resource person, Mrs Funke Amobi of MTN Nigeria, enjoined human resources managers of organizations to follow-up their staff recruitment with continued training for skill development, and promotion, retaining them to tap their talents in order to optimise the
organizational ability towards realizing positive outcomes in the face of keen competition.

Dwelling on the paper entitled “Talent Management Future: The relationship between Human Resources (HR) and Training,” Mrs. Amobi encouraged organisations to take strategic steps to empower personnel through further training, especially a few who are identified with special talents.

Organisations, according to Amobi, should endeavour to retain staff to avoid being mere training centres for competitors who were ready to pay the price to attract human resources from them with better incentives.

She noted that staff were most likely to stay in companies with prospects of job security and self-actualisation.

In his own submission however, Mr Weyinmi Jemide of Ashford & McGuire Consulting declared that organizations, which refused to invest in personnel training were those that had agreed to die.

He observed that too many organizations tended to treat their expensive software equipment as more valuable than those people employed to use such equipment, noting that any organization that failed to invest in staff training should not expect good returns no matter the cost of software application.

“An organization can exist without software, but cannot exist without people,” Jemide declared.


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