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Matthias Ruziwa and Alyson Martens
The human resource of organisations has gradually emerged as the critical distinguishing source of competitive advantage. In other words, organisations have to compete based on their human resource abilities. The Zimbabwean economy has faced increasing pressure from rapid changes occurring in the business environment which includes high labour costs, serious cash flow constraints, brain drain, shortage of consumables, obsolete technology, liquidity crunch, low capacity utilisation in industry etc.

These challenges have witnessed the collapse of some organisations, although some are still in the intensive care unit, whilst others have managed to survive. Organisations which have survived have been able to exploit all their resources as a means of achieving competitive advantage and the major mystery is that they allow their human resource function to be in the driving seat to achieve this. The human resource management is part of the broader issues which contribute towards the downfall or success of organisations in Zimbabwe.

It is the writers’ view that it is more likely that many human resource practitioners in Zimbabwe these days (due to economic limitations, cash flow constraints etc) struggle to get beyond the roles of administration and employee champion, whilst on the other hand, human resource management has evolved from being the traditional function that got involved only in activities like clerical and administrative work to be a more and more responsive client-centred service which is proactive in developing the business.

The organisation’s human resource strategy and business strategy should be integrated in the organisation`s planning process in order for the long range plan of the organisation to be realised.

In the view of statistics obtainable from the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries and Employers Confederation of Zimbabwe concerning retrenchment and company closures, one would wonder whether our human resource practitioners are still practising the traditional personnel management approach or they are in the strategic human resource era to fully create value for our organisations.

We are aware that the value attached to these human recourse practitioners differs from Company A to Company B as clearly indicated in Tyson and Fell’s (1986) model of people management which typified management of people in various organisations to what happens at a project site, namely:

Clerk of works
Contracts negotiator
Architect

Under the clerk of works category, the organisation treats the human resource department in a manner that it cannot go beyond routine administrative services such as hiring, firing, hearings, payroll etc. In the second category, ie contracts negotiator, the human resource department is heavily involved with issues like conflict management, negotiations with trade unions and implementation of Collective Bargaining Agreements. Lastly, the architect role is where the human resource department is engaged to underpin the needs of business in long term strategy planning. Human resource is viewed as an organizations’ business partner.

In as much as Zimbabwean organisations may treat the human resource practitioners differently, it is high time the practitioners migrate from the clerk of works and contracts negotiator roles and demonstrate effectiveness by pulling together all aspects of people management to what we believe our businesses may view as “management of resourceful humans”.

In this context, we are encouraging human resource practitioners to gain a seat in the E-suite and bury the silo-mentality of being a department that does not add value towards shareholders` wealth/return on investment (ROI). Let us as human resource practitioners get involved in the formulation of business strategy at the top level of our organisations to avoid further collapse of business in our nation.

Matthias Ruziwa is an experienced and growing Human Resource Practitioner. Alyson Martens is an Industrial Psychologist and both are practising in the Midlands Province, City of Kwekwe. You can send your feedback to either Matthias or Alyson at the following addresses: [email protected] [email protected]