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Human Resources

Meeting challenges of capacity building

Raju Adnan
CAPACITY refers to an organisation's ability to achieve its mission effectively and to sustain itself over the long term. Capacity also refers to the skills and capabilities of individuals. For individuals, capacity building may relate to leadership development, advocacy skills, training/speaking abilities, technical skills, organising skills, and other areas of personal and professional development
Capacity building programmes, however, operate on many levels -- they serve individuals. organisations, geographical or interest communities or the nonprofit sector as a whole. For the following reasons capacity build-
ing programmes arc undertaken worldwide as well as in Bangladesh.
• To acquire new knowledge and skills
• To have an attitudinal change etc.
• To turn humans into assets
• To mobilise resources
• To utilise the limited resources and make them more productive.
Bangladesh, indeed, politically as well as on the economic front, is at a critical juncture and facing a difficult and challenging time ahead. However, I am confident that with the emergence of a visionary and capable political leadership, backed by oversight from the ever conscious civil society and private sector, and the citizenry, Bangladesh will be
• able to translate the challenges into opportunities.
• Our country does not have any training policy. In places where a resemblance of training policy exists it isn't vigorous enough to ensure systemic human resource development. There arc two special features of industrial relations in Bangladesh. The labour movement is highly fragmented and politicized and government plays a central role in industrial relations.
• However, excessive politicisation and fragmentation of the labour movement has a negative impact on industrial relations and is likely to discourage investment. Inter-union rivalries often disrupt public sector enterprise.
• There is lack of common
understanding of the importance of capacity building, which is responsible for the non-systemic and ad-hoc training method.
• In most organisations, training is not job focused rather the two most common influences are welfare and political considerations.
• The economy for a variety of reasons cannot absorb the training cost of most of the workforce even if they have genuine desire fortraining.
• Mismanagement of funds and lack of belief in the bulk of training and education programmes is anotherhardle.
• There is no national minimum wage for Bangladesh. The National Pay Commission fixes the monthly allowances and
other remunerations of the non industrial public sector employees. The National Wage and Productivity Commission fixes the wage and fringe benefits of public sector industrial workers at an average interval of 5-7 years. Government appoints these commissions. The Minimum Wage Board determines wages of Individual private enterprise on demand. Due to this factor the scope of collective bargaining is very limited. Only elected collective bargaining agent (CBA) can raise an industrial dispute. If the employer-union negotiation fails, any one party may ask the Registrar of Trade Unions to conciliate.
• There is lack of clear understanding about systematic human
resource policy, comprehensive strategic plan for human resource development, which includes a policy and expectation statement from top management, enabling organisational structure, sufficient budget and physical infra structure, responsive programmes, and an integrated linkage to other human resource management systems. Therefore (1) reviewing human resource management practices; (2) adopting a structured approach for staff development; (3) improving the effectiveness of training; and (4) achieving better business results have become essential.
• The training plans to organisational, job and individual needs through a competency-based model has not yet been empha-
sized in Bangladesh.
• Here there is little knowledge about labour regulations. The majority of workers are unaffected by the regulations. Bangladesh has three types of labour markets, viz. rural informal, urban informal and formal. The formal labor market is characterised by a contractual employment relationship and is governed by labour laws and regulations that protect the worker, such as minimum wages and allowances and limitations on the employer's ability to fire employees. The rural and urban informal labour markets are not covered by protective labour regulations.
• There is no responsibility among the employees which is another challenge closely related to the need to develop a culture of
learning and innovating that is how to encourage employees’ self-responsibility for learning.
Bangladesh's development challenges are critical and manifold. To tackle these challenges, the country needs capable, knowledgeable and skilled persons. political leadership, propoor economic agenda, business friendly policies, efficient but smaller bureaucracy, decentralisation, strong local government and opportunity for the participation of the poorest. The country also needs to invest more for human resource and skill development so that it can rise to the challenges of a competitive and globalized world.
Raju Adnan Is a BRAC internee.