About 150 human resource practitioners from public, private and civil society institutions human resource practitioners will today converge in Kigali for the annual national skills-development conference. 

Stephen Karangwa, the Chairperson of Rwanda Human Resource Management Organisation (RHRMO), has said.

Speaking to The New Times, yesterday, Karangwa said the fifth National Human Resource Management Conference seeks to find solutions to challenges facing the human resource function in the country and empower sector practitioners to help them effectively adapt to new challenges through sharing experiences.

"As globalisation and changing market demands keep posing challenges to human resource practitioners, we need to get them prepared to embrace the changing trends by empowering them with skills to enable them to work in different conditions, anywhere in the world,” he said.

RHRMO has a membership of 300 people, but only 150 will participate in this year’s conference.

Karangwa said participants will be tipped on recruitment and talent management, their role in the development of organisations, building high performance organisations. They will also share international good practices in the field, among others.

Judith Katabarwa, the strategic operations and quality assurance manager at the National Capacity Building Secretariat, said the human resource function plays a significant role in the development of any institution.

"While the previous annual four sessions involved only local HR practitioners, we have now invited regional and international facilitators to help Rwandan human resource practitioners embrace the global best practices, and apply them to effectively handle local HR issues and adjust to global market demands,” she said.

Katabarwa added that considering the role of the human resource function in the development of institutions and the country in general, the government has recently upgraded HR practitioners to senior specialists and directors, shifting from the junior position as a human resource officer.

Supported by the Belgian Development Agency (BTC), the two-day conference has been organised under the theme, "The role of human resource managers in organisational performance.”

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