Why HR functions are vital in staff recruitment

By Murigi Macharia

At the end of last year, five Nairobi-based companies conducted internal human resource audits to establish whether they had the right people to competently complete all jobs.

These audits were informed by the economic hardships in the country .

The companies had during the year established that despite the huge monthly wage bills, they did not get value for money in terms of profitability.

Although the term audit is usually associated with accounting, HR auditing means undertaking a thorough examination of the organisation’s human capital base to establish their real numbers, competencies, functions, training, deficiencies, attitudes and values.

The four companies that completed their HR audits came out with the following conclusions;

The management in companies A,B and C were initially staggered by these conclusions and immediately launched investigations over what may have gone wrong in their employment and disengagement methods in previous years.

These investigations exposed HR functions that had seriously been interfered with by top managers, who had influenced the whole employment exercise in the past five years.

These managers could, without following proper HR employment procedures of advertising jobs, recruitment, selection and staffing, bring in new employees, after which they would inform the HR departments to prepare engagement documents

It was established that nepotism, corruption, friendships and family relationships were to blame for the staffing mess.

To correct the situation, the HR departments were given authority to ensure all new employees were brought on board through formally recognised procedures of recruitment, selection and competent staffing.

It was also decided that the compulsory retirement age, as underlined the human resource policy and procedure manuals must be followed to the letter.

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