Mercer organises HR summit in Ghana to examine future of work

Human Resources (HR) consultancy Mercer has organised the 2019 Ghana HR Summit in Accra last week, to facilitate discussions on the future of Ghana’s workforce. The event was attended by more than a hundred HR professionals, a number of whom operate at an executive level.

The theme of the event was ‘Building an Agile Workforce,’ which strongly aligns with current trends across the globe. Experts at the event, who ranged from CEOs to Senior management professionals and other stakeholders, examined the current state of HR in Ghana to identify crucial drawbacks.

One such area of potential improvement is the fact that HR in the country continues to be perceived as an administrative function rather than a strategic one. Globally, businesses have rapidly begun to identify the value of HR strategies in driving business growth and reliability.

The global business environment is gradually gravitating towards the principle that people lie at the heart of an organisation. Tying into this principle is the fact that HR strategies should align with contemporary employee needs and expectations, which currently centre on flexibility. 

Professionals across the globe are looking for scenarios where they can prioritise their time and work in a flexible manner, and the advent of advance technology is enabling this flexibility. An increasing number of organisations are looking to make room within their structure for more flexible arrangements.

“Organisations need to focus on increasing access to the gig economy – having more people that are flexible, that deliver pieces of work without necessary working for the company. One of the things that I feel Africa is shying away from is flexibility – where they work from, what the kind of work they do, and as to whether they share jobs or not. I feel there is no sufficient trust in organisations to allow people to be measured on output rather than the time they work,” explains Deon De Swardt, Business Development Leader for the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region at Mercer.

Mercer has already been particularly active in transforming the HR environment across Ghana. The firm is working in collaboration with the Institute of Human Resource Management Practitioners in Ghana to research and develop HR policies in the country. Early this year, Mercer signed a partnership with the Learning Organisation with the specific objective of offering data-backed HR management solutions.