Olugbodi: Digital Reality Will Shrink Workforce, Spur Growth in SMEs Segment

Yinka Olugbodi is the Managing Consultant/CEO of Team Building International. In this interview, he speaks about what to expect from the future work place. Dike Onwuamaeze provides the excerpts:

You are pushing for a shift from human resource to team building and development. What is the team concept all about? 

Team building or team development is about taking all the resources and interventions that you use to take a group of people or organisation from a formation stage to a full functional and result yielding state, including everything you do to build capacity to the point where they perform.  

What is your view on the current state of human resource management in Nigeria? 

My view is that it has evolved tremendously over the years from personnel management concept to human resource concept then to strategic human resource concept and now people are talking about business partner and not just human resource manager. It is now even evolving to people development, which is almost what we talk about in terms of team development. It all boils down to making employees or a team more functional and more profitable in terms of performance.  

Why is executive training important for organisations? It is absolutely important. Your organisation will not have capacity if it does not build people. You cannot be a functional organisation if your people are all mediocre or lack the knowledge or attitude to perform the job.  

But this fact is being overlooked by many organisations in Nigeria? 

They used to overlook it but not anymore. Now most forward looking organisations are really pouring resources into that. The reason they overlooked it is because it is not easy to quantify its returns on value of investments. But one of the things a capacity building expert should always do is to be able to link that to the bottom line. And the best way to do this is to show what happens when organisations would not train their people.

What happens? 

One, there will be a lot of unprofessionalism on the job and the organisation will lose customers because its staff are not doing things professionally. And if you lose customers you will lose sales and therefore, will not make profit. 

How do you view the productivity of Nigerian workforce? 

You see more productivity from the private sector because the majority of its activities are about making profit; making the business to grow and the employees having a good life if the business is thriving. Can I say the same thing for the public sector? There are some government parastatals that are really doing very well but in the ministries a lot of bureaucracy is still going on.  

What is the core role of human resource manager? 

The core role of the human resource person is to enhance performance in any organisation. It is to make sure that the human resource aspect of the organisation is managed to make the organisation more productive.

What are the factors that drive productivity within an organisation? 

First of all is motivation, which is part of the responsibilities of the human resource managers. People have to be motivated and the morale to work and achieve set goals must always be there. Another factor is capacity building by giving people all the tools and resources they will need, including the knowledge on how to carry out their jobs. Then creating the right atmosphere or enabling environment to make people to deliver more. These are the areas we act on when it comes to team building.

How do you view Nigeria’s place on the issue of diversity in the work place? 

Diversity has different colouration and Nigeria is a multicultural environment. When it comes to diversity I think that we have done a lot better.  

But a report disclosed that companies headed by expatriates have more diversity than companies headed by Nigerians? 

You can only see that in small businesses but if you are going to build conglomerates you have to look beyond one ethnicity or have your hands burnt. Even in some small business people are now looking for those with the capacity and right attitude to do the job irrespective of where they come from.

How do you see women in the workplace?

Women have brought a lot of energy to the workplace.  We have women as top executives who are doing great things for the country and international organisations.

What are the challenges facing human resources as a profession? 

Among the challenges the profession is facing right now, which is part of the reason we are having this discussion is talent management in terms of getting the right talent from the stock of university education that we have right now. The other thing is unemployment. We need to redefine our school curriculums to begin to releasing graduates that have entrepreneurial mentality to solve problems and commercialise them to create jobs.  

What is the implication of high rate of casualisation of labour in Nigeria that is now affecting university graduates? 

The implication is very dire and the reason for that is the standard of our educational system. The truth is that there are countries whose secondary school certificates are stronger than our degrees. Most countries are spending much to develop infrastructure around their educational system. But we have not been doing this.  

Some organisations sack workers in their 40s. Can’t a staff be valuable to their organisation in their 50s and 60s?

Once the person is performing and bringing in profits I won’t fire him. So employees have to keep improving and developing themselves. It still boils down that we have to develop an entrepreneurial mentality because somebody who has worked for 20 years should be able to establish his own business under a week in this country. He has gotten enough experience to start his business.

What is the impact of leadership on organisational success?                       Leaders set the vision and direct the whole organisation to the point of success. They see the Eldorado and chart a path to direct people towards that. So, leadership is absolutely very important to organisation. No leadership, no direction.

How does organisational culture impact on human resource productivity? 

Absolutely! One of the key things now is corporate culture. Every entity has its own culture and if it is not intentionally crafted may work against the organisation’s strategy. The driving force to strategy is culture. Strategy is like the guiding force: about where we are going and what we want to achieve. But the engine to drive that is culture, which is the kind of attitude and mentality and philosophy of those who are going to drive that.  That is where we come in as team builders. Yes, people can do the job. Before, we emphasised strategy without culture. But we need both to drive organisational success.

What do you offer organisations in the area of team building?                                

We offer them what I call team building interventions in the sense that we help organisation to build the right culture. Most of what we do in team building is not just capacity building, we also provide attitude changing training that will change peoples’ attitude and mentality to build the right culture within an organisation. If organisations want to outlast their founders and leave for generations they will not depend only on strategies, they will also depend on culture to drive their vision.

What is the relationship between strategic development and sustainable success for an organisation?                                                 

Strategic development has to do with what you are building into the future in a consistent manner. But sustaining them will require asking what the future will be like.

What is the future of workforce?                                                                             

My speculation is that we are going to depend more on virtual reality that minimises face to face contact. It is going to shrink the workforce and force people to start building small businesses that will build more jobs in the SMEs space.  

Articulate the concept of team development and executive training? 

The major problem people are facing in the workplace is human attitude problem. The real problem in organisations is not technical ability or competency to do the job but the attitude people brings in doing their jobs. Values are missing in most organisations and that is where we come in. You cannot use lectures to teach people effective communication but through our action learning. If you want to solve real workplace negative attitude problems then you have to contact team builders to make your team more innovative and creative. Our first question to organisations is what is your desired outcome? This has given us a lot of millage because at the end of the day we get it done.