By Dada Ahmed in Lokoja
A call has gone to Heads of Human Resource and Administrative Services in Public Sector Organizations in Nigeria to embrace training and retraining of their staff to combat skills gap that permeated most organizations as a result of Covid/Pandemic.
The call was made by Alhaji Mohammed Aliyu, the Managing Consultant of O & M Management Associate Limited at a 3-day Training Workshop on Strategic Human Resource Management at Hilltop Hotel, Lokoja.
Alhaji Aliyu, who noted that report from international organizations indicated that with COVID-19 Pandemic; causing projected loss of 195 million jobs all over the world and dismay interuption to education, there was urgent need for MDAs to restrategize to rise to the skills gap challenge created by the pandemic.
Alhaji Aliyu, who delivered a paper on Recruitment, Selection and Placement, clarified that skills gap is the difference between the skills required to execute project.
According to Mohammed,who owns O&M Associate Limited, no noted that management of skills in the public sector organization is problematic and two dimensional.
“One is the gap created by the Pandemic and the second one is one created because of the factor of compromising merit in public sector employing,”he said.
The Managing consultant stated that the principle of merit had been jettisoned as public sector employements were being unduly influenced by the politicians and thus resulting in the engagement of unqualified or inappropriate personnel which in some cases accounted for skills gap or skills mismatch.
This development he noted, had serious consequences and negative impact on productivity.
He enjoined Human Resource Officers to always adhere to the merit principle, irrespective of pressure from higher authorities. While noting that 80% of productive activities might have been lost during the Covid-19 Pandemic lockdown, he admonished that the large skills gap could be closed through training and retraining of staff on digital technology.
This,he added, became imperative to enable all staff acquire the Knowledge and capacity to manipulate data and digital platform and in turn enable them work from home and for resilient productive system.
In his paper on “Innovation and Organizational Talent Development and Management”, Professor Tajudeen Ajibade of the University of Ilorin, represented by Dr Davies Ajewole, stated noted that talent management assist in the building of the corporate image which in effect leads to organizational success.
According to Prof Ajibade, Innovation and Organizational Talent Development is a network of relationship, deliberately created for orientation and coordinating fundamental activities of the organization and individuals therein to attain corporate goals.
He traced the philosophy of innovation, organizational talent development and management noting that the underlining objectives were, among others, to improve the organization’s problem, solving capabilities and building innovative capacities.
Acvording to Professor Ajibade, innovation and talent management bring needed expertise and ideas that are fundamental in attaining competitive advantage and resultant-service delivery.
Where this is lacking,to him,” it creates room for strategic barriers and bottlenecks that prevent organizations from developing good ideas that could assist in valuable innovations and therefore this could negatively affect service delivery.”
O & M Management Associate Limited
