Pay Attention To Your Employees’ Conditions Of Service – Minister Charges

The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour Awuah, has charged employers and Human Resource (HR) practitioners to look beyond strict enforcement of the labour laws, but look also at the conditions of service of their employees.

He made this call at the graduating ceremony of the 2018 batch of the Diploma in Industrial Relations Programme of the International Professional Managers Association (IPMA).

He said, “Oftentimes, we are preoccupied after negotiations looking at how best to reward people in the form of salary, but hardly do we talk about the conditions under which people work: the physical condition, the emotional condition.

“Oftentimes when we talk about safety, we only look at the physical side. Yes, physical safety is important, but equally important are issues of social safety and emotional safety,” he continued.

“It is good to be strict; it is good to make sure that the law works, but it is also good to know that you work within a human setting. Therefore, be minded that whatever you do can have serious consequences on the people that are going to be affected.”

He commended the students for the sacrifices they had made to acquire knowledge towards the progress of their careers, and charged them to “let your knowledge show in your workplace”.

He urged all professionals to make it a point to take the course to improve the professional spheres in which they find themselves, stating that the Industrial Relations course was not only for HR practitioners.

Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Employers’ Association, Daniel Acheampong said that the essence of the Industrial Relations programme was not to impart theories, but that “the essence of the programme was the ensure that our students, our graduands, have a full grasp of what Industrial Relations is all about.”

One interesting highlight of the graduation ceremony was the clean sweep of awards by the female graduands. They swept all eight awards, with Nana Yaa Nyarkoah Dompreh, who was the Overall Best Student Award, taking home three.

The Post-Graduate Diploma in Industrial Relations course was organised by the Ghana Employers Association, in collaboration with the International Professional Managers’ Association (IPMA) – UK.