Dubbed, “HR Outlook and Benchmarking Survey in Ghana”, the survey would collate and analyse data from HR practitioners across the country to help them in convincing managements in their decisions.

Specifically, the survey would consider issues in the employee lifecycle from talent acquisition, recruitment, business outcomes, performance management, and well-being wellness among other pertinent issues.

This will be done through the collaborative efforts of the Chartered Institute of Human Resource Management (CIHRM) Ghana, Accounting firm, KPMG, a digital solutions agency, MData, and HR Network, a global network of Human Resources professionals.

National data for the survey would be collected within three months which would be followed by a validation, and dissemination workshop in November, 2023. 

Expertise

At a ceremony for the partners to sign a Memorandum of Understanding on July 3, the Chief Executive Officer of CIHRM, Dr Ebenezer Agbettor, explained that pooling resources of expertise and competencies to conduct a research of such nature would heighten credibility and acceptance of the findings of the work by the HR Community, Corporate Ghana, government and the public.

Highlighting some benefits of the research, Dr Agbettor noted that the survey would create awareness of the relevance of the HR research findings that would provide insights for better people management and decision making in organisations.

“Credible HR research findings serve as factual data that can be used by HR professionals to support and convince management in making a particular course of action in relation to its people management and such local findings are better placed of relevance, reference point and acceptance to support proposals to government and corporate Ghana,” he said.

Effectiveness

The CEO of MData Consult, Dr Eric Afful-Dadzie, said to ensure effective HR management that could attract, retain, and develop the best talent, create a positive work culture and drive organisational performance, there was the need to establish a reliable data and metrics to guide the decisions and measure the progress of human resources management in every organisation.

The survey, he said would enrich the understanding and optimisation of how HR practitioners measured and analysed HR metrics in organisations.

Aside from helping to identify trends and emerging practices in the HR field, Dr Afful-Dadzie, said the survey would afford practitioners the opportunity to compare organisations’ HR metrics among themselves adding: “This comparison will help you understand how you stack up against similar organisations in terms of key HR indicators such as employee engagement, retention rates, training and development investments, diversity and inclusion efforts and many more”.

He noted that key areas of HR optimisation targeted for the survey included HR-to-employee ratio, HR budget variance and HR-expense-to- full-time equivalent ratio.

For recruitment and business outcome metrics, Dr Afful-Dadzie said the survey would analyse source of hire, cost per hire, and human capital on return among others.