Nigeria
Thank you for the HRspeak team for having me here to speak to a critical issue about managing people in the workplace. My name is Oluyemisi Wole - Ojomo. I'm a HR consultant. I've, worked in the HR space for well over 20 years working through different organizations and banks within Nigeria and Africa as a whole, I've managed several projects through the end to end employee life cycle within organizations that I have worked with.
All right, like you're very aware people are the greatest asset of any organization and the strategic goal for any organization at all, is to win in the marketplace, therefore for any business at all, to achieve this goal, the winning formula is to effectively manage these critical assets, which are their people and managing this critical assets starts from attracting them into the organization, creating a great experience for them to be productive and, engaged within the organization, as well as putting in place practices, processes, and policies that will help them successfully build their career within the organization, manage it and thrive within the organization up to the point of exit from the organization.
If this is successfully managed, then it means that productivity will be very high. And when productivity is high, it means the organization is achieving the strategic goals. And when the organization is achieving the strategic goals, it is definitely winning in the marketplace. And I mean, this critical role is for the HR team to manage. And once this is successfully done, any organization at all will win.
Okay. I will quickly run through three ways in which organizations can ensure that the three ways they can, achieve success and win through their people. One is the first thing I would mention is having the right corporate culture. The corporate culture sets the tone for the climate within the organization. And when I say climate, I mean the experience and the perception of the culture that the employees have.
It basically is the mood within the organization. When the corporate culture is positive, employees tend to thrive and they tend to deliver great results and where it is negative indeed employees cannot thrive. And in that situation, you get high turnover rate cause everybody is either clamoring to leave or they are not giving in their best. So it is important to have the right corporate culture, which actually, um, is distilled into the right climate within the organization.
This work of setting the tone and having the right climate in the organization is the work of management of the organization, especially the HR leaders. They have that idea task of setting the right climate within the organization. A lot has transpired in the last one year. I mean, with the pandemic and all. So one of the things that HR leaders can do to have the right climate within the organization is to be aware and sensitive to employee mental wellness, a lot needs to be done. A lot of people have suffered over the last one year. So HR leaders need to be very, very sensitive, very sensitive to the wellbeing of their employees when you're sensitive and to the wellbeing of your employees, they know that you care. And when they know that you care, they have capacity to thrive within the organization. Another thing that
another critical factor is gender inclusiveness. We need to be very, very aware of it. A lot is been said in recent times, but as HR leaders, we need to work at the it because when people believe that they have the chance to grow and thrive in their career they give in their best. So having the right climate within the organization is very, very important. The second thing I would say is a positive employer brand.
This actually speaks to the kind, the quality of people that you can attract to the organization by employer brand We mean, the perception that people have about the organization. A lot of times, business owners or, ubusiness leaders, the give focus to the business brand, the way people perceive the brand, but a lot also needs to be done in terms of the way, candidates and employees perceive the brand of the organization. It helps with attraction. It helps with retention when people are attracted to a brand, it makes the work of HR easier to attract the right talent into the organization. And it's also makes the work of HR, easy to retain people within the organization, where there is a poor employer brand, people are not attracted. You don't, you don't get the best of people.
And you are not able to retain the right people within the organization to achieve the results that you want to achieve. So it's critical for HR and the business leaders to put a lot of effort into having the right kind of employer brand for their business. And the last thing I would say is the right, the right talent management practices, having those practices in place that will manage the career journey of employees from when they joined the organization to the very, very end when they leave the organization. And in terms of the right talent management practices, I would mention performance management system. People want to be assessed properly people want to know how well they're doing, how well they're contributing to the organization. So it's important that the business goals are aligned to employee goals
So having the right performance manage system is very, very critical. HR needs to ensure that is in place. Another critical practice that should be put in place is talent development, where there are skill gaps, identify those skill gaps. People would definitely have skill gaps, but putting the right process in place to bridge those gaps is very, very critical when people have the right technical skills and the right personal skills or soft skills, they definitely give in their best productivity will be high engagements will be high, and definitely the organization will win.
So talent development is another critical one. And the third one, I would say under talent management practices is motivation. People need to be motivated where they have done well, motivation should be motivation incentive should be put in place. Motivation drives people to produce more. And when they produce more, whether it's higher productivity, you know, what business goals are achieved and when business goals are achieved, the organization is definitely winning. So those are three areas, three areas that HR needs to focus on to ensure that they can win through people
