UNIVERSITY OF PEOPLE

MBA
Human Resource Management
BUS 5511-01
Written Assignment 7 of 8
 Hunger Fighters Uganda (HFU)

Hunger Fighters Uganda (HFU) is a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization initiated in

2008 to a vision of “A Hunger and Malnutrition Free Uganda”, and currently engaged in
various activities to fighting hunger in Uganda such as distribution of food to lactating
mothers, pregnant and lactating mothers in behalf of UNHCR/WFP with a local, national and
global perspective. Although the head office of the organization is located in the Ugandan
capital Kampala, the organization has operational areas in Karamoja region, Rwamwanja,
Oruchinga and Nakivale refugee settlements with their human resources in terms of gender,
sex, religion among others, largely coming from one region (South Western Uganda) where
one of their senior executives comes from (HFU, n.d).

Currently, the company recruits some few lower cadre and low pay employees such as food
distributors, field monitors, verification assistants from host communities where program
activities take place. For purposes of this assignment, we shall take a case study of Karamoja
where I personally support.

Karamoja region is located in the Eastern part of the country bordering South Sudan in the
north and Kenya in the East with several tribes related by language and economic activity,
nomadism. A number of other tribes including the Dinka from South Sudan, the Turkana from
Kenya, other tribes from central Uganda who carry out several types of businesses such as
gold mining, stone quarrying and making and selling local brew are currently not easily
employed by Hunger Fighters Uganda sacrificing the huge benefits that come with cultural
diversity such as the building of effective teams, increased productivity (Maurer, 2020).

The above justifies the need to intentionally implement a diversification of the human
resources function to attract and leverage the benefits of having a widely diversified team of
employees at various levels of responsibility and capacity. To deliver the intended benefits
full scale such as introducing different viewpoints, perspectives and talents for innovation and
product development (Kundu, 2001) requires implementation of diversification in its totality
entailing all levels from recruitment where all prospective employees are given equal
opportunity for selection based on some objectively designed criteria through to
management, remuneration and execution of exit process in a fair and equitable manner.
Suggested proposals

Recruitment and selection; evidence from many studies suggests that many employees
and managers relate diversity management to equal employment opportunity where
prospective employees are not selected following their age, origin or sexual orientation but
rather skills and competencies necessary for the job (SHRM, 2015).

The proposed approaches at this stage include including the equal opportunity statement in
the job advert to ensure that all that receive the advert can apply without any form of fear
and expect to compete on a levelled ground.

I propose to the Director of human resources to ensure that all adverts are checked to
eliminate all such statements as may belittle, demean or appear directed against the minority
gender especially the elderly, women and girls.

Where and when staff have already been recruited, I would recommend a review of their
performance and track records as required to identify any gaps and carefully plan on replacing
such staff with the appropriate or better match to fill the various roles in the organization.

Training and professional development; employees at an organization contribute serve

in different roles, all of which contribute to overall achievement and success of an
organization in some particular way. In spite of this however, managers in organizations that
lack effective HR diversity polices tend to promote or rate highly subordinates with similar
cultural backgrounds and experience at the expense of the few, often silent majority (SHRM,
2015) This leads to employee demotivation and affects the effectiveness of teams thereby
causing reduced productivity.

I propose to have clearly designed inclusive training programs where employees at every level
are each supported to acquire and develop the relevant skills need to perform their tasks well
and equal opportunity is given to all legible employee for promotion or recognition. This is
because without the necessary skills, employees are not able to perform to their maximum
due to inefficiencies.
Performance appraisal; this is meant to be an objective evaluation of employee
performance to appreciate their achievements when compared to set goals and should be
done with the highest degree of fairness and integrity. In some systems where effective HR
principles were not implemented correctly or non-existent, some women are given higher
scores in exchange for other personal gains such as sexual favours which leads to
compromise, undermining the actual purpose of the process

I propose that no employee shall be given a low score due to their advancement in age, sexual
orientation, pregnancy status, origin provide that their set targets are achieved on evaluation
as scheduled or conducted following organizational policies.

Since few companies set and score their employees on achievement of diversity goals, with a
smaller number tagging a manager’s rewards or compensation to the achievement of
diversity goals (SHRM, 2015), I wold propose to have an aspect/question in the appraisal
section that looks at employees’ interest and efforts to full implementation of effective
diversity programs.

Pay and incentives (Renumeration); in most countries, fewer women have the
opportunity to lead organizations such as presidents, chief executive officers and managers
although the trend has been changing over the years due to wide scale women emancipation
and more women today are in top positions for example Winnie Byamima, the Executive
Director of UN AIDs and H.E Siluhu, the president of the republic of Tanzania. In some
organizations where a commendable number of women are employed, these have been
found to earn lesser wages than their male counterparts in the same position and status.
Whereas the latter is not clear since salaries are not disclosed to all staff, it can be seen that
most positions of leadership and management at HFU are filled by men.

I propose an intentional elevation of women who possess the required qualities for some
advertised positions for representativeness and balanced decision making at organizations at
HFU. Practically, by the location and culture of the people in Karamoja region, women do
more work and this would justify why their needs to be enhanced at least to equal that of
men who apparently earn more for less work done, further widening gaps and inequities.
I also propose to have standard salary scales for the various positions based on training and
experience at the organizations such that whether the successful candidate is a female or
male, they are remunerated at the same rate.

Policies and procedures; due to the frequent and continuous cases of mistreatment,
harassment, segregation and inequities that are targeted on some sections of employees at
many organizations worldwide, I would propose the following safeguards in further
promoting diversity and inclusion.

 Prevention of sexual harassment and abuse policy; this needs to be updated to

include the various forms of sexual harassment such as unwelcome touches,
unwelcome looks, indecent dressing for both men and women
 Adult and Child protection policy; extract this information from the existing general
organizations’ safeguarding policy to make it clear and more detailed as a separate
policy since most of the served population are children.
 Equal employment opportunity policy; in addition to indicating this statement at all
adverts, website and other documents, it’s important to develop a specific policy to
address in detail, all matters surrounding equal employment for all.

Conclusion;

Aligning all such policies and procedures to the national, international laws for diversity and
inclusion is important in making the organization systems at international scale, optimize their
systems, leverage their people resource to sustainably maximize their competitive advantage.
References

HFU. (n.d.). Hunger fighters uganda. HFU. Retrieved October 20, 2022, from
https://hfug.org/

Kundu, S. C. (2001). Managing cross-cultural diversity - delhibusinessreview.org. Retrieved

October 20, 2022, from http://www.delhibusinessreview.org/v_2n2/dbrv2n2e.pdf

Maurer, R. (2020, June 22). Navigate cultural differences to succeed across borders. SHRM.
Retrieved October 20, 2022, from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/global-
hr/pages/navigate-cultural-differences-succeed-across-borders.aspx

SHRM. (2015). Cultural Intelligence: The Essential Intelligence for the 21st Century. SHRM
Foundation.