- Human relations skills. Know how to work with and through people within and out-
side the Coca Cola company - Breadth of general management – planning, organising, directing and monitoring
- Problem solving and decision making – creative thinking required by a jobholder to
analyse data and make decisions in relation to the job and organisation’s
environment. - Power, authority, responsibility and accountability for jobs and positions.
- Magnitude, order and scale of activities and impact on the organisation in monetary
terms, freedom and extent of control and the impact of the job and the end results.
Human resource development in Nigeria
Traditional approaches to HRD
Like many African countries, for some time Nigeria had practiced traditional human
resource development. Apart from formal training in different technical and managerial
areas, the process includes an induction course at the entry point of the service and at
other levels of career advancement, job enrichment and enlargement, on the job train-
ing, coaching, counselling and mentoring. Other traditional practices include, under-
studying, periodic deployment, the pool system in offering opportunities in different
contexts for officers to face fresh challenges in their jobs in order to enable them to
widen their breadth of knowledge and experience.
Improvements on the traditional approaches to human resource development
The emerging emphasis in HRD is on balancing the requirements for individual and
organisational development, requiring new methods of dealing with issues of capacity
development in the public service. The emphasis is on building knowledge and expert
based organisations through the creation of an enabling environment for the acquisition,
sharing and management of knowledge, involving networking and collaboration, with
colleagues, external partners and other relevant parties. It involves more flexibility in
organisational systems, through a shift from hierarchical to multiple accountability (pro-
fessional and 360 degrees), as well as a more adaptive system that encourages knowl-
edge generation, knowledge leadership, professionalism, innovation, initiative taking,
and greater communication across all levels of the service. Efforts are now focused to-
wards the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to support individ-
ual learning. The identification of functional and behavioural competencies and devel-
oping employees along these competencies has been of more interest in the recent years.
New initiatives
- Revitalisation of induction schemes as a vital component of staff development
in the federal civil service. Newly appointed permanent secretaries are the latest
beneficiaries of this revitalisation in order to adequately prepare them to effectively
execute the responsibilities of their new offices. - Going back to the basics. There is an increasing use of the well tested and
cost-effective traditional methods of staff development such as coaching,
counselling, mentoring, and recruitment based on merit. - Re-orientation of the officers on the need for taking responsibility for their own
career development outside of the opportunities provided by the federal civil
service.