Human Resource Management
Give It Due Priority

By Atma Shrestha

A LONG held belief and experience of many in Nepal is that Human Resource Management (HRM) has not been given due importance and recognition by Nepalese organisations. It is indeed sad fact that most of the organisations in Nepal do not have separate HR department and even if they have, persons leading the department either abysmally lack requisite knowledge of underlying concepts of modern HRM and Organisational Behaviour or consciously undermine the human power in the organisation. Also, this is due to the deeply embedded organisational culture where the treatment of the employees is based on the likes and dislikes or based on their immediate positions rather than their performance.

Root cause

This is the root cause of the corporate failure or mediocre performance in our context. However, contrary to this belief and understanding, what has been found from the recent study in few successful organisations like ICIMOD, Bottlers Nepal and Surya Tobacco Ltd. is that some of the Nepalese organisations have now recognised the importance of the human capital and have tried to practice human-centered HRM. This is really a welcome trend that needs to be fully appreciated as the organisational success mostly hinges on the best HRM practices.

The study referred above had indeed an academic purpose. A few TV students were taken to those organisations as part of their Internal Assessment System (IAS) that the TU has introduced recently in its MBS programme. This examination could have been conducted in a very ritual fashion as used to be earlier. Based on external exposure combined with the classroom learning of the students on the given subject, a group presentation was arranged for the internal evaluation. It was felt, this can be an effective way of handling Internal Assessment in the university as this is mainly aimed at enhancing the learning process of the student.

No doubt, it is essential to have a regular interface and interaction between university and business organisations so as to give the students opportunity to learn the relevance of the class room learning in the real life situation. Classroom learning only is not sufficient to have better insight on the subject. Hence, TU needs to introduce this element in its programme to give the students certain amount of hands-on experience. More important, this relationship/linkage can serve the long-term interest of both the business organisations and the university, as the latter can better understand the needs of the former that would in real sense help redesign its course contents to suit their changing needs. T

his is very relevant and crucial issue at the moment in our country where most of the MBAs are either jobless or underutilised mainly due to the fact that our present educational system is out of sync.

The reason why the organisations like Bottlers Nepal, ICIMOD, Surya Tobacco were selected for our field visit was that we wanted to know the HRM practices and approaches in those organisations who are successful leaders in their respective fields. We first visited Bottlers Nepal where we received a ready response and cooperation from its Group Human Capital Manager, Mr. Iswor Karki. As this was our first effort of this kind, we were not sure of such cooperation though we had lot of expectation from this programme . Mr. Karki, a highly knowledgeable HR manager at Bottlers explained our students the various facets of his organisational HRM practices. This was really an enlightening moment for us.

Having listened the lecture of Mr Karki for about 3 hours, we were surprised to know that we have the organisation like this, which is following modern concepts of HRM and has genuinely recognised the importance of its HR. More than the control of employees which is very common here in Nepalese organisational context, we found Bottlers Nepal more concerned and focussed on the employee development and growth by offering truly motivating working environment there. Even this scribe was not aware of the very concept of Performance Development Bottlers Nepal has recently introduced. This is the latest version of Employee Performance Evaluation.

As opposed to the traditional performance evaluation practice in Nepal where the immediate supervisor evaluates the performance of his/her subordinates primarily for control purpose, the Performance Development concept is a complete departure from this in that the latter mainly focuses on the employees’ development and growth. If successfully implemented, this approach can create lot of difference in improving the employees’ performance and work efficiency. The effectiveness of the employees’ performance evaluation greatly depends on the very intention and objective of performance evaluation. This is the question of choice between control and development. ICIMOD, another organisation we visited during the field visit programme is also one of the successful organisations in its field. This is actively involved in the development of economically and environmentally sound mountain ecosystem, thereby improving the living standard of mountain population in the Hindu Kush Himalayas. Like in Bottlers Nepal, we are well received here by the highly responsible executives of the organization. From their well-planned and organised presentations, we were made to understand that ICIMOD has really recognised the value of its human capital and has implemented the modern concepts of HRM to maximise the return from its human resource.

Also included in our programme was Surya Tobacco Company (STC) another successful business organisation in Nepal. The kind of response and cooperation we received from its HR Officer, was really encouraging. Mr T.V. Ramaswami, the managing director of the company was kind enough to spare his valuable time for the programme despite his extremely business work schedule. From our about an hour interaction with him, we came to know that STC has also, to the greater extent recognised the importance of HRM. It is in the process of improving and fine-tuning its HR policies and practices so as to create truly a motivating working environment to its employees.

It is empirically proved from the above that any organisation aspiring for becoming successful leader in its field needs to devise and follow a truly human-centered HRM programmes. In the present knowledge-based economy where brainpower can provide a distinctive advantage for success, we need to recognise our human resource as an extremely valuable capital. It is however not an easy task to manage this asset for the greater benefit of the organisation. Managing human being is really a complex task given its unpredictable nature and behaviour. Hence, it requires on part of HR manager an indepth knowledge of various subtle human dimensions like human psychology, human behaviour, and personality etc. and of course a genuine human approach.

However, this is still a sad fact in our context that most of the organisations here in Nepal firstly have not recognised the importance of their human resource and HRM. And secondly, they do not

have HR manager having requisite knowledge and skills of HRM. This all means that HRM awareness in our country is very low which is taking costly toll in our organisations. This fact is strikingly clear from the findings of the recent survey conducted by a well-known and experienced management consultant Gabriele Reichenbach in different service-oriented industries in Nepal that all the organisations selected for her study lacked effective HR programmes and policies.

Ready

Thus, the experience and lesson we learned from the visits/ study in few organisations as mentioned above is really an encouraging one. That is, Nepalese organisations too are ready to cooperate with the university in sharing and exchanging their practical views and experiences with the students which is itself a significant contribution for the academic cause of the country. Moreover, this can, to the greater extent, help produce highly knowledgeable and qualified manpower from our universities and colleges. However, this requires a regular interface between organisations and universities.

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