Up to 145 human resource (HR) practitioners will gather today at The Westin on Denarau Island in Nadi for the Fiji Human Resources Institute 8th Annual National Convention.

In addition, up to 165 people would attend the Gala Dinner awards function tomorrow night where the institute has nine awards up for grabs in three categories.

Institute president, Balbeer Singh, said the theme of the convention is “Diversity in Human Resources” and all speakers will be deliberating around that theme.

He said: “Really the focus is we want to ensure every organisation is focussing towards improvement in productivity and efficiency.

“But unless people are really geared up and prepared to do that, then it is not possible.”

Therefore, Mr Singh said they want to bring about diversity in people so that at the end of the day, they are more empowered and their knowledge base is broadened.”

Challenges for Fiji

Meanwhile, Mr Singh highlighted that one of the big challenge for HR practitioners was the lack of prominence given to them in an organisation.

“Not every HR practitioner is sitting with the top executives when it comes to strategic planning or when it comes to putting strategy into place. So when it comes to future plans of the organisation, we find out HR is not involved in this,” he said.

“So it becomes quite difficult to function effectively in the organisation when they do not become a part of the strategic plan.

“We are now talking about strategic HR but when they do not fit into the organisation with the strategic plan, then it becomes difficult for them to work strategically.

“In many organisations we see the HR is left to do recruitment, induction, selection, orientation, look after payroll, hiring and firing.”

Mr Singh said in order to address this, they also have regular once-a-year seminar for executives now. “This is where we try to broaden the horizon and get the executives to realise how important HR is in an organisation,” he said.

The gap

Mr Singh said another challenge for them was the gap which existed between the very senior HR practitioner sand the very junior ones.

“So what is happening is we have some very senior HR practitioners who have spent years in HR but at the same time we have young graduates who have just joined the team,” he said.

“This is why we are promoting a lot of activities for the young HR practitioners.

“We even have awards in two different categories – one for the senior HR practitioner and one young HR practitioner.  The whole issue is we are trying to promote the young ones to learn the skills and step up to fill in the gaps.”

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