Human Capital is essential for development… Legon VC tells students
The Vice Chancellor of the University Ghana, Prof. Clifford Nii Boi Tagoe, says human capital is an essential tool, which if harnessed properly, could propel the nation to its optimum economic vision.
Prof. Tagoe said this in as address delivered at the 30th Annual Management Day of the School of Business of the University of Ghana in Accra under the theme, “Human Capital Development Agenda for Reaching Middle Income Status: Challenges and its Implications.”
“Human capital is the stock of skills and knowledge which directly impacts on ability to perform, or a systematic effort aimed at adding value to the workforce of an organisation, so as to produce economic value,” he said.
He said in this era of knowledge-seeking, coupled with the increasing demand on the workforce to perform, human capital development has moved to the fore of the development agenda.
He said human capital development was a major concern for both developing and developed economies, and stated that in recent times much awareness was created about the need for Ghana to grow its capital base, and improve human development indices, through prudent management of its human resources.
Prof. Tagoe said government had laid down extensive programmes to promote higher training, and development for its citizens in the private and public sectors to boost capital, adding that pursuing organisational efficiency, was also another way of investing in developing human capital for greater results.
“Quite aside from the recent global financial crisis, Ghana has had difficulties achieving significant levels of employment, creating a gap in the full realisation of trained manpower,” Prof. Tagoe said.
He said another problem facing the country, as far as human capital development was concerned, was the lack of resources, such as lecturers and other high level trainers, which according to him, made it very difficult for a large number of people to enroll in the educational and training institutions.
He called on the government to make resources available to train professionals to create employment avenues to absorb the developed capital, in order to bring the agenda of developing human capital for reaching middle income status, into fruition.
The Acting Dean of the Business School, Mr. S. Asiedu, said for Ghana to reach its goal of a middle income status, management of organisations must be prepared to make work interesting for their employees, provide enough help and equipment, and offer good salaries and wages to employees.
Mr. E. A. Akuffo, Chief Director at the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare, said some of the challenges facing human resource management in the public sector were highly contradictory and complicated legal administration systems and procedures that inhibit manager's ability to manage their workforce to enhance their productivity
The rest of the problems, he said, were lack of clear policy direction, non-effective planning, weak monitoring process, cumbersome regulatory framework, overstaffing, poor performance appraisal systems, inability to sanction poor performance, and lack of adequate performance related to remuneration.