Nigeria

Post covid transition through HR lens ft. Emmanuella (Adeniyi) Yomi-Alikwe, PHRi

Emanuella :

My name is Emmanuella Yomi, HR business partner here, advisor in Nigeria. I am a generalist, so I do everything in HR and I'm very passionate it about talent management. I have done a couple of engagements on recruitment., that's been across undergraduate, recent graduate entry level, even senior positions. And particularly I'm very interested in developing talent in Africa and starting in Nigeria. And so I would say I'm very energetic, yeah energy is always there. <Laugh> But then even in the challenges, I find a way to laugh to smile.

Question :

Awesome. Okay. So thank you for that question. For me, I would say I will speak on two areas. One on employee engagement. I will also speak on recruitment. So on the employee engagement, you know, because of the COVID situation, the physical restrictions and all of that, we are not able to have physical interaction. As people we need that touch, that hug, that interaction to also fulfill some of our basic basic needs. And so as resources we are crippled by having virtual event virtual meetings. And so for employee engagement, for example, now we have moved from having our usual, this Friday parties.

So now having virtual - Thank god it is Friday (T.G.I.F). And so this is not enough, you know, there are times we want, we want to go out there, want to go to the beach, we want to play soccer.We want to have the FIFA game challenge with our friends, but you know, so many of these interactions are not there. So that's a big challenge. And for us as human resources, we need to look beyond what is around us and see how best we can do this. And so for me and my organization, what we are doing now is we can have smaller groups move out for interactions in an open space.

And so that way we are sure of the, of the cross ventilation, we are also sure of the safety when it comes to the COVID and we are not entirely removing the physical interaction. We are also looking at having more virtual events. We need to now have constant virtual event like even engagement on the organization's WhatsApp group and also having professionals speak with us because, you know, it's easy to slip into depression, its easy to slip into mental health issues right now. And so we, as Human Resources, that challenge is there and for us to be proactive in it, to look at ways of solving them.

Another challenge I see is also recruitment. And so aside on the, the effects of the COVID right now the policies into some countries now are aligned for a lot of Nigerians, Africans, or even others to travel and relocate to their country incase in line now is United Kingdom. And so people are using their opportunity now to live. And so we, every dream, which is also affecting productivity as organization, or even as HR, because you'll speaking the candidates today, and then you want enough and they tell you, oh, no, I'm no longer living in Nigeria. And you like, oh, when did that happen? And another one is the economy.

The economy is it's. I would, I would not for lack of words I say is struggling right now. And so, because of that, you get to see people offer people less than what they could pay, or we get to see people who are not qualified for a role applying for that role.

See our award-winning HR Software in action

Schedule a Demo
00
Days
:
00
Hours
:
00
Minutes
:
00
Seconds