The Ghana Employers’ Association (GEA) has held its annual flagship Women in HR Conference with a call on female Human Resource (HR) practitioners to build corporate resilience in the post-COVID recovery period.
The two-day event, which was held on October 12-13, 2022 on the theme, ‘Building Corporate Resilience in the Post-COVID Recovery Period – The Role of HR’, targeted female HR professionals at all levels and women looking to build or transition into a career in Human Resources.
This year’s edition, which is the 8th, brought together women in HR to address the most urgent challenges facing HR leaders and leveraging ways to capitalize on opportunities arising in the post-COVID-19 recovery period.
Top-notch speakers and expert panels from SSNIT, Accra Breweries, VRA, Fidelity Bank among several others, provided insight on HR and related topics, addressed critical and most pressing HR issues and challenges and discussed ways of maximizing potentials to improve productivity at the workplace.
Key topics explored, include, agile HR leadership in a fast-growing digital era, corporate culture transformation for sustainable business development among other topics.
Addressing participants at the conference, First Vice President of GEA, Dr Emmanuel Adu-Sarkodee, said HR leaders must be mindful of core areas that deserve attention and have potentials of promoting business turnaround in the post-COVID era.
“HR leaders need to prepare their organizations and make sure that they have the right skills set, capabilities, processes and data to support their organizations for rapid recovery and growth post-pandemic. Digital skills are very important in this regard” he implored.
Indeed, a survey of employers, conducted by GEA in 2021 on ‘How the COVID-19 pandemic and technology are shaping the next normal’, showed 72 percent of employers indicating that proficiency in digital skills will play a substantial role in driving the future success of their businesses.
This was followed by communication skills, which scored 59 percent and creativity and innovation skills – scoring 45 percent.
The data, according to Dr Adu-Sarkodee, means that business problems in the post-COVID-19 era cannot be resolved solely by skills, methods and tools rooted in the past.
He explained that HR departments will have to reposition to help their organizations do away with legacy constraints and move fast to leverage new technological and digital opportunities.
“We must begin to look at how our enterprises can migrate to become effective learning organizations, manage change as well as work-life balance. Managing these challenges will see the HR function move from its traditional administrative and personnel roles to become a strategic partner and advisor to the organization” Dr Adu-Sarkodee advised.
Managing Consultant for 2MB Consulting Services, Mrs Florence Hutchful, who was the keynote speaker, asked participants of to be conversant with every aspect of their organizations including measures that identifies and mitigate staff non-performance.
Background of the conference
As the country continue to see greater number of women rising to the summit of HR leadership both in the corporate world and in the public sector, the Women in HR Conference which was initiated in 2015, was meant to acknowledge the contribution of women in the HR field and beyond.
