Personnel Functions, Practices and Productivity in Nigeria

Lee (1974) has defined the responsibility of personnel departments as change agents who must help ‘create new approaches … for doing things and hasten the achievement of organisational goals.’ Have personnel departments in Nigerian organisations the potentials to accelerate organisational goals attainment? This question demands an understanding of what our Personnel Departments currently do in practice. There is a dearth of this type of knowledge in Nigeria. Ubeku (1975) has written a text on personnel management in Nigeria, where he exhibits the techniques which personnel managers should know. But very little is known about personnel functions practice in Nigeria, that is, what personnel managers actually do. Achebe (1977) provides an example of what we mean by ‘personnel function practice’. He outlined activities in three functional areas in the personnel department of his organisation. These were recruitment, training, and manpower and career planning. There one can appreciate the environmental constraints, and the influence of the technology of the organisation on personnel functions. The author, for example, talks of ‘unprecedented recruitment activities’ at the end of the Nigerian Civil War. Also technology determines the type and location of training. But Achebe’s (1977) anecdotes are rare.