The Chairman, the Federal Civil Service Commission ( FCSC), Prof. Tunji Olaopa, has listed ways HR practice can be viable in the Fourth and Fifth Industrial Revolutions.

The former permanent secretary spoke on Wednesday as the chairman of the investiture of Mal. Ahmed Ladan Gobir, FCIPM, as the President and Chairman of Governing Council of CIPM, in Lagos.

The seasoned bureaucrat who spoke on the topic "IPM and the Unfinished Business of Reform in the Public Service" disclosed that his significant relationship with CIPM spanned many years.

According to him, CIPM is one organization he counts as a partner in the struggle for transforming the public service system in Nigeria.

"This is why I am more than delighted to be witnessing, and chairing, this investiture of the new President and Chairman of the CIPM Governing Council. CIPM is strategic as the key umbrella body—the community of practice—for administering HR practice in Nigeria. Since its founding in 1968, it has consistently continued to push the frontiers and boundaries of the HR profession as well as being in the vanguard of HR management praxis in ways that have consolidated the status of its members, and its own status as a global organizational brand", he said.

He was hopeful that as a distinguished Nigerian, a formidable HR thought leader, astute corporate lawyer and a management professional par excellence, Gobir's work was already clear to him " within the challenges that CIPM might be currently facing, and how the organization could be positioned as a significant stakeholder in the overall task of institutional reform in Nigeria."

Lauding preceding presidents, and especially the administrative and visionary efforts of Mr. Olusegun Mojeed, the immediate past president of CIPM, for a most remarkable tenure filled with spirited strides, innovations and commendable achievements and legacies, Olaopa said that no avid watcher of Nigeria’s public administration, and CIPM’s role, could be in any doubt as to the depth of clarity amongst CIPM’s thought-leaders regarding what was the next level for CIPM, especially at this momentous time in the profession’s annals, " a time when the world of work is witnessing profound rethinking and reformulation to institutionalise the post-Covid new normal, and, at that, as we navigate the unfolding Fourth and Fifth Industrial Revolutions."

According to Olaopa, one issue that is integral to HR rethinking and the vision of the future across all sectors of the Nigerian economy is the fact that at no time has the people factor in organisations and human capital been so core critical to development prospecting and national productivity.

Drawing lessons from comparable experiences around the globe on how nations have transformed from abject poverty to increased national income growth, and technological cum institutional advancement, Olaopa observed that all high-performing economies without exception, gave greater prominence to knowledge, human capital and governance.

"In raising the quality of governance, we came to the conclusion that the rate of progress that Nigeria will achieve will depend in part upon the degree to which political power is matched with policy and managerial intelligence.

"This is consistent with HE President BA Tinubu’s aspiration to emplace a government of national competence. In all of this, it was clear to us that public administration, leadership sophistication, competent national change management strategy and reprofiled national value system, will be critical success factors at play to unlock the binding constraints that have constrained successful translation of the many transitions of the past and the present to sustainable national structural transformation and development", he said.

Olaopa highlighted "some issues of concern that require our joint spirited intellectual and practical interrogation first by the public administration community of practice with CIPM filling in for the core professions elements".

He listed these as the recognition that while HR function should be professionalised, HRM is no longer the exclusive responsibility of HR departments, as line managers also need significant people management skills for overall systems’ effectiveness.

He said: "HR function must necessarily transition from a preoccupation with passive role of administering on the bases of rules, regulations, and procedures, to developing and pursuing policies in manner that extract performance results and productivity bargain from people and processes. HR innovations are required to restore government as preferred employer of labour, which will demand significant systems changes so the public sector can attract and retain top talents in an increasingly competitive labour market.

"The public service must raise its game as it anticipates and manages the fresh new orientation of that the Millennial and Gen Z generations of managers for example to the workplace, especially their preference for workplace flexibility and flexi-working so they can pursue other rewarding interests.

" The public sector also needs to raise its game so it can optimise PPPs contracts at its higher maturity curve and levels, which demands that it builds advanced acumen in public officials in commercial skills, knowledge of international business practices and labour laws, multicultural sensitivities and multiple language, to name just a few.

"It should also recognise that the transition from being primarily administrative expert to being change agents and strategic partners has automatically relocated the HR function from the back office that it still occupies to the front office.

"While the extent to which artificial intelligence, robotics, etc. are transforming the way we do things is growingly becoming clear to thought leaders, what is uncertain is how well we can cope with the speed of change and how to convert the uncertainties it creates into real opportunities."

He continued: "The public sector in building on past reform gains and current commendable initiatives, must recognise that the Weberian ‘I am directed’ managerial model and tradition that was developed for the use of paper-based, top-down pyramidal structured control and procedure-oriented organisations with segmented way of delivering services requires a whole paradigm rethinking so the much bandied performance-based systems can take shape.

"The new performance-managed HR model will however necessarily be customer-centric with HR partnering with line managers to refocus HRM from just efficiency concerns and due process compliance to effectiveness within framework of a new productivity culture.

"Besides, HR managers as change leaders in the public sector requires deepening of HR skills with respect to their role in risk management. In so doing, they will not just support MDAs reforms, they will become the sponsors of change while at once driving the change.

"This suggests the need to deepen action research as a component of management cum operation research and organisation development (OD), to enable HR institute a learning culture through challenging of the status quo as champions of cultural transformations directed at translating desirable culture and public service values into public managers behaviour.

"The known public service employment policy emphasis on job security and guaranteed lifetime career then calls for rethinking, to create a distinction between career-based and position-based employment system. Central personnel governance will also need reprofiling to align the three defining trends namely, deepening of current practice of delegating HR powers to line managers, simplifying of rules, procedures and guidelines that underpin the shared powers and responsibilities.

"Ditto with centralised industrial relations governance and collective bargaining in the context of fiscal federalism, which tends to create unsustainable and intractable downstream problems that increasingly disempower the discretion that employers reserve to negotiate at operational levels, a dimension that requires deep-seated reform.The current practice of staff performance appraisal in the public service which creates the as yet resolved confusion about what is being assessed and rewarded, between results, competences, behaviour, knowledge or staff potential with associated problem of subjectivity, in a measure that focuses appraisal as means rather than the ends of performance assessment, is also core critical."