Diversity workplace to boost innovation, ITM tells FG

A Pan-African group, ITM Services Limited, has called on the Federal Government to diversify its workplace to boost innovative products and services of employees in Nigeria.

It also informed of the plan to partner with the Federal Government towards addressing the rising unemployment rate in Nigeria and the growing trend of mass movement of Nigerians to Europe and America.

The ITM Country Manager, Bukola Oyinlola-Anuwe, disclosed this in Abuja, during a breakfast meeting organized by the company with the theme: “Business Sustainability: Employment Diversity, Talent Management and Staff Retention.”

She said: “So we already have a lot of statutory laws that are in support. It is just the policies that are not in place, the culture, the work ethic, that are changing. So, every law right now in Nigeria helps and backs up an employer and an employee but we need to diversify the culture of the workplace in Nigeria.

“During our panel session, we spoke about innovation, what you need to do to have industry best practices and moving with the times. We know that nowadays, we are looking at more flexible hours, Nigeria is a bit rigid when it comes to working hours.

“So now we are looking at all these things that we are going to start doing and start doing them differently and hopefully, this will curb the japa syndrome. Also, we looked at compensation, making sure people are compensated rightly.”

Adding: “This will also include additional benefits apart from the normal compensation and one of the panellists did speak about having a package structure that is not just the employee that gets the benefit.

“Some goes to his family members, their children’s school fees are being taken care of, wife gets a percentage. So, the retention is not just money for the employee, it also extends to the family, which is another motivational force for the person to stay.

“We hope that all that was discussed today, a lot of the organizations that are present will take it and begin to apply it in their workplace and hopefully, we will get to see some changes coming up.”

She noted that the organization was looking to partner with the Ministries of Education and Labour respectively to push a better narrative, adding that they would also conduct job fairs and more conferences.

According to her: “We are now in Nigeria, just three years but we have started to make grounds and we are looking at partnering with the Ministry of Education and Labor. We are going to be looking at doing job fairs, and we are going to do more of this conference.”

“This is not a fee-paying event. So we are going to be having more of these conferences where we would like to have government officials, especially the ones that are relevant to the sector, get involved and hopefully, they get to learn a lot of things. The participants have learnt a lot and we are hoping that our next session will have more government organizations participating and learning as well.”

In her address, the Product and Business Development Director, ITM Africa Ltd, Rwanda, Lys Mwiza, said that the federal government, especially the Ministries of Education and Labour, would need to include employability skills in their programs.

She said: “I think especially the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Labor need to understand how to incorporate some skills in their programs such as employability skills.

“Partnering with organizations such as ours, we can show you how to come up with employability skills programs for fresh graduates from the university, because even the United Nations employment report showed that there is a huge gap between what was the curriculum from the universities. Our education system is quite different from what employers are looking for.

“So now, we as Human Resource organizations help to bridge the gap by showing what would be the employability skills for each sector and then, we start preparing them, but they also have to be a lot of invent incentives in even changing this mentality.

“But if you go abroad, there are greener pastures, things are going to get better. In some instances, we are not so sure but we think that even where they go is still more stressful and they are not getting everything they need.

“So, we need to also put in a lot of effort in making sure that even this talent that is fleeing, leaving the country can be able to eventually come back by putting in incentives for them to come back and change this culture.”