Esezobor: NBC is Deliberate About Developing its People, Creating Opportunities

People & Culture Director, Nigerian Bottling Company (NBC) Limited, Juliana Esezobor, in this interview with Eromosele Abiodun speaks about the guiding principles that drive the culture at NBC, its diversity and inclusion policy and NBC’s role as a major provider of employment in the private sector

Tell us about yourself and the career journey, which has led you to NBC?

I started my career as an engineer and had a first foray into the workplace when I interned at NBC in my fourth year in university, this was about twenty-four years ago. My experience in NBC then as a teenager helped me decide the path I wanted to follow. I decided to pursue another path even though I had a background in engineering.

My career has been quite colourful. Colourful in that, yes, I have worked in HR, but I have also held several non-HR roles. I have had the privilege of having a high-level view to business, working as a consultant, a strategist, a program director and building and running a  business. I have been involved in several strategic projects, providing executive support across various industries in Nigeria across both the private and public sector.

What sold NBC to you and what was your first impression on joining the organisation?

As I said, my first real work experience was at NBC, as part of the internship program that engineering students needed to go through. This experience widened my worldview as I got to see how the iconic Coca-Cola brand which is loved by many (myself included), is made. I got to see how the business operates, which made a strong first impression on me several years ago. Upon the completion of my university course, even though I worked elsewhere, I am proud to state that my first impression of the company which stayed with me through my career for many years, is what led me back to the company in 2022.

Another fact is that when you look at Nigeria and businesses that have thrived since I was a little child and perhaps before my parents, NBC would come on the radar. It is very commendable for a business to have stood the test of time, continued to thrive, and add value not just to consumers alone but to the country at large. Also, I considered the core ethos of the business – and part of what made me fall in love was the emphasis on diversity, the emphasis on women and the fact that as a business, NBC is going out of its way to create opportunities and platforms for women to thrive. You would agree with me that there are very few organisations in Nigeria that are this deliberate when it comes to diversity and inclusion. NBC is deliberate about its people, it is deliberate about its women, as well as all its stakeholders. NBC has been at the forefront of empowerment campaigns geared towards women because we understand the exigency of not leaving them out of the value chain, as they remain key contributors to success. This is why over the course of our operations in 70 years, the organization has continued to roll out impactful initiatives to enrich the lives of women in Nigeria. When you look at the business, this is totally in its orientation; we don’t only say it, we actually do the things that we say and for me, that is critical.

You talked about diversity and inclusion; many forward-thinking organizations are pushing more for this. Can you talk more about what this means for your organization and for you as the People and Culture Director?

I completed my MSC a few years ago and one of the projects that I undertook involved in-depth research on the value of diversity in boards and management; research has proven that any organisation that has a diverse board or management has the advantage of being more productive, more innovative and of creating products and services that are more in tune with the needs of their stakeholders.

Diversity is extremely valuable, and it is something that NBC has realised – as a company whose customer base is made up of a significant number of women. For example, in my family I’m the one who shops for all our household items. Thus, it makes absolute sense to create platforms and opportunities for women to have visibility. For us, building an enterprise that is frontline when it comes to female visibility is critical. In fact, as a Group, we have a target to increase the number of female managers in CCHBC by 2025, till we have 50%-50% representation. We see very good opportunities to close this gap in Nigeria and are implementing initiatives do so.

However, what we do in the area of diversity is beyond just having female inclusivity. It means that as an organisation we are open, we create equal employment opportunities irrespective of your religion or background. We are a very family focused organisation; we cater to men and women. What we are interested in is having the best people, the people who are passionate, are committed to their future and to their work.

Looking at overall diversity, why is it important? Well, at the end of the day we need to have a full view of the stakeholders that we are ultimately serving, who are those that are the decision makers and influencers concerning what we sell and the type of impact we want to make. We know that with the right passion and commitment, diversity brings unmatched value to the business and that’s what we’re all about.

You talked about attracting committed people. NBC is recognized as a major provider of employment in the private sector. Can you give an insight into the size, spread and importance of NBC as a top employer?

I would like to take these from a completely different perspective so that we have a sense of what impact this business makes in the society. As you know we are in the business of being the 24/7 beverage partner for the nation. Whatever the occasion, we want to be a partner for good. So, who are these stakeholders that enable the realization of this vision? We have our customers, distributors, large and small-scale service providers, teams of business developers and our suppliers. We see this as the ecosystem that we support and that is how far we go in terms of contributing to employment in Nigeria. For example, in 2019, about 58,000 jobs were created across our value chain.

As a business our full-time employees number almost three thousand. And beyond this, we have thousands of partner employees that work with us. There are the mom-and-pop shops, the small, medium and large-scale enterprises that we support that also speak for themselves in terms of numbers. You may know also that our factories are spread across eight locations in Nigeria, and we have 14 depots in even more locations.

On joining the business, I was really pleasantly surprised at the scale. Having worked for several   years as a consultant for different businesses I can tell you that very few businesses have this footprint in terms of the number of people we hire or the number of people we empower on a monthly basis in terms of business opportunities.

What are the guiding principles that drive the culture at NBC?

You can classify those principles into three. Number one is why do we exist? We exist as a business ultimately to support our customers and that is why our vision speaks about being the leading 24/7 beverage partner. It is about partnership with our customers and with all the stakeholders that I have mentioned including the government. When you look at our sustainability blueprint, it reveals a consciousness that we have a responsibility to our community and are willing to work with the government to create an environment conducive for collective growth.

The second thing is how do we work? We see ourselves as an organization that is focused on integrity and doing the right thing. We pride ourselves on being learning-focused. Hence, we provide opportunities and platforms for our people to learn, to add value for themselves. We provide platforms for employees to learn and acquire knowledge on an ongoing basis, and we support them in using different platforms and models.

Collaboration is also critical for us, we see ourselves as one big family, as a very strong force working together to deliver; and we drive this collaboration across the various spheres of the organization. Needless to say, that whatever we do we believe in doing it extremely well, so excellence is a core part of our culture.

Lastly and by no means the least is our emphasis on nurturing our people. At the end of the day, our people are the most critical assets that we have. They are extremely important. If I don’t have an engaged Business Developer or sales force, I cannot sell. If I don’t have an engaged technician I can’t produce. So, for us it is about creating that environment where people feel safe, heard and empowered and where they know that they have a future. It will interest you to know that in this organization, we have people that have been here for thirty years. They grew through the ranks and some of them are in leadership positions. Very few organizations can boast of this, but we have them and they intend to remain and retire from here.

There are ongoing issues and conversations surrounding the need to retain talent because often times people who have been heavily invested in by a company jump ship. According to a recent report by Korn Ferry, a global organizational consulting firm, by 2030, 85 million jobs could go unfilled globally due to the lack of skill to fill those positions. How is NBC preparing for this possible future, and still managing to build winning teams while retaining strong talents across its operations?

This is a reality, it’s true. We know that many skills are going out of fashion quickly and as they do, new skills are required on an ongoing basis. As a business we try to focus on data and leverage analytics. We are clear in our minds on what the next set of skills are, and we have plans to ensure that those anticipated skill sets are addressed in our learning and development system to ensure that we are positioned to bridge the gap. For example, we now have a fully functional, world class Sales Academy as well as a Supply Chain Academy to equip our people for the future. So, what is important is to  anticipate what is coming and having very clear plans to ensure that our people are ready for the transformation long before it happens.

According to Gallup, just 33 percent of American workers are engaged by their jobs. Fifty-two percent say they’re “just showing up,” and 17 percent describe themselves as “actively disengaged”. What advice do you have for variously sized organizations to mitigate against a disengaged workforce?

So let me start by saying that our engagement scores are over 90%; and this means that we are doing a number of things right.

Engagement is a deliberate effort; it does not happen overnight. You need to be aware of the elements that drive engagement, what are those things that are peculiar to my sector? How do I ensure that on an ongoing basis, I am feeling the pulse of the people and as people give me feedback on what they want and what needs to change, am I consciously addressing those things? Am I keeping my word? Am I bringing the improvement they seek? Am I creating a trustworthy environment where people can talk to me? Before I come, can I encourage people to proactively share relevant information that the business requires? And those are some of the things that we’ve done as an organization.

Statistics suggest that engagement is a function of creating a psychologically safe environment. Can your people speak up? Are there avenues where they can share information without feeling that somebody is going to take advantage of them or that there are going to be consequences. For us as an organization we have speak up channels and governance programs where we encourage our people to share their views and listen to them. It would interest you that in this organization, we have fortnightly webinars where the entire management team connects with the thousands of employees, and they have opportunities to ask questions or share their observations and we take their feedback seriously. We take the webinars beyond the business to even functional levels and function heads engage their people; feedback is directed to the relevant team and they are acted upon. Another factor that drives engagement is around growth opportunities. People would stay not just because of the money but because they feel that they have a future. Do your people feel they have a future? Is there progress they can look up to? Are there opportunities for them to learn new skills? I am happy to say that we provide these types of opportunities for our people. In this organisation you can have somebody moving from HR and going into sales. You can have someone moving from sales to procurement. We have created opportunities where, depending on what your interests are, what your talent is and how you have developed yourself, you can actually create your own path and you are encouraged to do that.

The next thing is around the value proposition beyond the obvious compensation and promotion. It is providing an intrinsic reward system. By intrinsic, I mean those things that money cannot buy, those things that differentiate us from any other businesses. You asked me about those things that made me look at NBC. First of all, if my experience as a teenager was not right, I wouldn’t even think about coming back to this organization. So, I had the very best experience as a teenager. So, for example we believe in volunteering, we believe in enabling our employees to add value, to do good. Our drive around sustainability is mostly from our employee base, coming up with ideas and innovations for us to help the environment move forward. You have things like a strong culture and value system that resonates across board. In coming back, I see my personal value system is very closely aligned with the organisation’s. So, when you give all these to people and they are able to wake up with joy every day, the engagement level will be high.

Following the pandemic and rapid changes shaping our world today, how do you see the role of HR changing in the future, and how can organisations begin to embrace that shift?

Some will agree that part of HR’s role is  to be a bit more predictive in terms of how the future is going to evolve. Long before COVID, there was a lot of propositions about the future of work and what COVID-19 did was accelerate that. With that acceleration came the realization that brick-and-mortar is not always the answer. Business models are shifting and changing. Today, businesses are looking at the digital space and how to use it to sell, do you need to have vehicles and move all over the place when you can have a different channel or system? Thus, what this is bringing about is first, a different way of thinking, which is then enabled by a different way of working. As a business for example we are quite flexible. We realise that some people are doing their very best job despite not being in the office. Productivity level is going up. You are able to manage by objectives and you are getting what you need plus the advantage of less stress, less time spent commuting.

However, it’s important to also realize the need to balance this new model of work. One factor to consider in balancing this is the question of how to drive team cohesion. As a business we realize flexibility is important and we enable it, but we also ensure that our teams have routines that enable them to be cohesive. One of our values is performing as one and we are very deliberate about that.

The reality is HR needs to be a bit more predictive, we need to understand the trends and we need to be in a position where we can support our businesses contextually. What do I mean by contextually? A consulting business can afford to have all of his employees to operate remotely, a manufacturing business cannot do that. The reality is that you need to still have human beings in the plant working. However, we can seek ways to build in  some flexibility around how that work is done.

What aspects of working with NBC and the organization as a whole are you most proud of?

One is the fact that the business is deliberate about developing its people and creating opportunities. Part of what we’re doing is to ensure that we promote as many people internally as possible. Some other organizations will prefer to go outside but for us our first recourse is – let’s create opportunities for people internally. That’s why you have people who have been here for thirty years. They started on the factory floor and today they are leading teams because this business gave them that opportunity. In this business they went to school and sharpened their skills. Some of them are plant managers because they’ve grown within the system and the system enabled it. That for me is loyalty towards your people and being there for them and it’s really important.

What advice do you have for young women who aspire to reach the top of their fields like you have done?

Based on my own experience there is no glass ceiling. I mean sometimes we think there is, but there are no glass ceilings. The thing that can limit us as women is the belief that we cannot achieve big goals. You need to firstly believe that you can.

One of the reasons I went into engineering was that I wanted to make a point that as a young girl I would do it and I’ll do it extremely well and I was among the top 1% in my class. I’m here today not because I feared that I couldn’t, I believed that I had what it takes. But believing you have what it takes also means you have to be deliberate about it. It is about taking actions that will enable you to acquire the skills, the exposure, the capabilities that you require to take your space and own your position when the time comes.

Sometimes the time might not come, and you need to force it. What I mean by forcing is to create opportunities for yourself. If they are asking, who wants to go and get this done? Don’t be the first person to say no, be the first person to say challenge me, I am willing to do it. You don’t learn when you sit in your comfort zone, you learn when you’re stretched, you learn when you come out of your comfort zone and people will know you to be better off for it. So, believe in yourself, create opportunities, be hungry, look for the opportunities and be steadfast and the sky cannot stop you.