Integrate HR with business strategy for sustainable growth, firms told

Organisations seeking sustainable growth and resilience have been advised to reposition their human resources (HR) function from an administrative unit to a strategic driver of business performance.

This was the position of a fellow and senior researcher at the Centre for International Human Resource Management, University of Cambridge, Professor Jens Jenssen, while delivering a keynote presentation titled “From Administration to Architecture: Redesigning the HR Function for Business Resilience and Growth” at HR Space 2026 organised by Caleb Business School (CBS) in Lagos, on Tuesday.

The Cambridge don noted that successful organisations recognise that people management is fundamentally the responsibility of line managers and not the HR department alone.

“HR is a line management accountability from the Board to the Chief Executive Officer, members of the executive management team and every manager across the organisation. I have never seen an organisation successfully deliver HR without this principle,” he said.

The HR expert stressed that people strategy must be fully integrated into business strategy, insisting that the HR agenda should not operate independently of the organisation’s overall objectives.

He added that every organisation should have a clear corporate document outlining its values, operating model and people philosophy to guide leadership decisions and workplace culture.

Jenssen argued that effective HR governance begins with the Chairman of the Board rather than the Chief Executive Officer, noting that the board determines the expectations and performance standards for the CEO.

“If the Chairman expects the CEO to integrate the HR perspective into the business strategy, it will happen. That is why HR executives must engage actively with their boards,” he said.

The Cambridge scholar also called for organisations to establish common definitions for key HR concepts such as performance, potential, leadership and career development to ensure consistency across departments.

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He said organisations should give equal importance to what employees deliver and how they deliver it.

“In one company where I served as Chief HR Officer, 50 per cent of employees’ bonuses depended on business results, while the remaining 50 per cent was based on behaviour because poor behaviour can destroy an organisation,” he explained.

Also speaking, the President and Chairman Governing Council of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPMN), Ahmed Ladan, represented by the Registrar, Oluwatoyin Naiwo, called on organisations across the country to adopt alternative workforce models and strengthen leadership capacity to remain competitive in the rapidly evolving world of work.

Speaking on the theme, “Leadership Development in the Gig Economy: Alternative Workforce Models,” Ladan said the changing labour market demands that organisations rethink traditional employment structures and develop systems capable of managing a diverse workforce.

He explained that organisational resilience will increasingly depend on how quickly businesses can mobilise talent, lead people across different employment arrangements and convert distributed skills into measurable value.

“The future workforce will no longer exist solely within an organisational chart. It will comprise permanent employees, contractors, freelancers, outsourced teams, temporary workers, platform workers, consultants, fractional executives and specialists who may never physically work from the organisation’s premises,” he said.

In his welcome address, the Vice Chancellor of Caleb University, Imota, Professor Olalekan Asikhia, also called for a fundamental transformation of the Human Resource (HR) profession, insisting that HR must move beyond its traditional administrative functions to become a strategic driver of business resilience, innovation and sustainable growth.

He said the Nigerian business environment demands a complete rethinking of the HR function in response to economic volatility, talent shortages and rapid technological advancement.

While explaining that the era when human resource management was limited to payroll administration, leave management and disciplinary procedures has become obsolete.

“This conference is built around a bold question: Is HR still relevant in the way it has been practised over the last three decades? The answer is that HR must be reimagined entirely. It must transition from being a mere administrative support function to becoming the very architecture upon which business resilience and growth are built,” the VC said.

He explained that Nigeria’s economy is currently confronted by what he described as a “triple threat” comprising economic volatility, scarcity of skilled manpower, and technological disruption driven by artificial intelligence and automation.