Bangladesh is known as a developing country throughout the world. Our population is increasing at an outrageous rate, and the unemployment situation is nothing short of a crisis.
About 160 million people live in this country but most of them live under the poverty line.
“Population is our valuable asset” is a canned line that no one from top level management of any organisation would disagree with -- we cannot even think of running a company without ensuring human resource management.
If we look at it from a Bangladeshi perspective, most multi-national companies, banks, and government-run institutions have recently gone all-out to ensure effective staffing practices to improve worker productivity.
However, in the private sector, most organisations -- including joint ventures, off-shoring, and buying houses -- are still not involved in effective staffing practices due to a lack of knowledge, lack of professionals, lack of planning, the list goes on.
Effective staffing is the practice of putting the right person in the right place. It is an important part of every manager’s responsibilities. In Bangladesh, most multi-national organisations find it necessary to establish a specialist division. The degree of change that organisations are now facing has never been greater.
In order to implement a successful business strategy, organisations, large and small, must ensure that they have the right people in the right places.
Inefficient staffing is holding our industries and businesses back. One of the common issues people face in the job market in Bangladesh is the lack of clarity in job roles and duties when companies put out vacancies.
Do you know your KSA?Another common issue is how recruiters take interviews for a specific position.
Even after confirming candidates for a position, they hire others internally without informing the ones already hired. It is a total waste of time and money not only for the organisation but definitely for the candidates.
Such practices are common because of the recruiter’s lack of knowledge about their own organisation’s objectives, what responsibilities one has to perform for a position, and what kind of knowledge, skill, and attitude (KSA) are required for that position.
In order to implement a successful business strategy, organisations, large and small, must ensure that they have the right people in the right places
In Bangladesh, most people are, unfortunately, not in the right place within their respective organisations. Questions need to be raised about such blatant misuse of human resources.
A simple solution would be to improve recruiters’ ability to match job seekers’ KSA with a job position.
Make smart movesThese issues can be resolved with strategic staffing plans. But, before we go for the solutions, there should be some sort of training for HR employees to communicate essential information about their organisation’s objectives and strategies.
If we fail to attract and bring the right people on-board due to a lack of effective staffing practices and plans, employers will eventually move to outsourcing to fill up the skill gap. In fact, outsourcing has already become a matter of some concern, but HR professionals in our country have somehow failed to realise this matter.
HR’s responsibilities are not only to act as a service department but also to add value in making strategic decisions which can lead the organisation to success.
We need to address these issues collectively and objectively, something our foreign competitors have been doing for ages.
Tahsin Kabir is a freelance contributor.