‘Organisations need system that supports personal development perspective beyond work’

GBENGA OMOLOKUN, as the Chief Operating Officer of VFD Group has among other responsibilities, the role of driving new business ideas for the Group. In this interview with KELECHI EWUZIE, he shares some of the new business ideas and how the Group hopes to revolutionise operations in all the sectors they play in. Excerpts:

Your organisation is on the verge of launching a digital bank. What is it all about and how prepared do you think the Nigerian market is for this bank?

What we are trying to do is create a digital platform. We’ve been in the lending business via our Microfinance Bank for a number of years and our experience with the lending sector is that a lot of eligible people don’t have access to credit for various reasons.

We realised that to expand and cater to the market requirements, we needed to have a technology platform that allows us to go out to scale and provide better disbursement and collection services while also allowing for a great customer experience in the process.

Since we are building the digital bank platform from ground up, we can design it specifically to take care of certain issues which the big banks have not been able to address yet. We have identified our niche market as – Individuals, SMEs and the Tech Community.

Through this platform, we would be giving people control over their money in terms of knowing how they spend, when they spend and what they should actually do with their money.

The platform also fosters innovation for the SMEs and Tech Communities because it allows them build anything they want on the backbone of a bank.

To what extent do you think the Nigerian market is ready for this digital bank considering the peculiar challenges in the country?

I think the Nigeria market is very ready for this sort of digital banking. There is a sizeable chunk of digital natives and that number continues to increase every single day as more people get exposed to online activities.

The more people get familiar with social media platforms, the easier it will be for them to join our platform.

What would you consider the most significant benefits of a digital bank?

The major benefit of the digital bank lies in its convenience and problem solving nature. A lot has been done on that already and there are benchmarks and expectations people have of their banks in terms of convenience. We are taking the banking experience beyond just convenience for individuals to convenience for SMEs by being able to offer certain kinds of services specific to SMEs.

In the short to medium term, the benefit of the digital bank will be to bring out these niche services for our target clients.

From your years of experience, where do you place the business process and technology management industry in Nigeria in terms of skills development?

In my assessment, a lot still needs to be done, but I am also very encouraged with the rate at which technology is being adopted. The use of technology among the SMEs is increasing rapidly. A lot of people are moving away from Microsoft Excel and are now realising the need to use better tools. In using these tools, they then need to figure out how information is structured – this ultimately builds the right foundation for the intelligent use of data.

With rapid uptake in technology, we are forced to confront process issues. Generally, I would say outside South Africa and Kenya, to a large extent, Nigeria is doing well in comparison to the rest of Africa.

The skill sets are readily available. Are they the right skill sets? I think a lot more needs to be done especially when we start to localise them to meet the requirements of different industries.

What is your assessment of the knowledge deficit in the sectors you play in currently?

The truth is that it is bad. The skills gap issue is real. Finding the right set of people with the right set of skills is also an issue. There are a lot of generalists out there, but increasingly, I think the workforce / job market is becoming specific. The solution is that employers should be willing to take a hit and try to train people to have the right skills.

What are the major strategies you think should be put in place to grow a globally competitive human capacity in Nigeria?

Regarding strategy, one size doesn’t fit all. It must be localised to the culture of the organisation and context of the industry. Some sectors would by default, attract talent regardless of the specific organisation due to certain incentives already in place across the sector. For example, we have a lot of people attracted to the public sector because there is some semblance of work-life balance where the work hours are considered.

Across sectors and even within sectors, there are different attracting factors. One key strategy I think can be put in place to attract talent is setting up structures that allow flexibility, rapid career growth and what I like to call ‘work fulfilment’ – this is essentially when people feel that they contribute meaningfully at work even if what they do seems routine. This is one reason we are encouraging staff of the Group to increase their external involvement with causes and other out-of-office activities they have a passion for.

How, in your opinion, will entrepreneurship training provide the needed spark for developing human potential in Nigeria?

I think being an entrepreneur is fantastic. However, I am not sure it can be learned in the classroom, it is more experiential than classroom learning.

Classroom learning has its space, but when you look at entrepreneurship in general, it is based largely on the work an individual is willing to put in, in terms of time, energy and resources.

What you learnt in the classroom will help in some ways, but what would drive and keep you going is the desire to succeed, solve problems and the desire to make things happen.

How is VFD Group positioned to contribute to economic development of Nigeria through CSR initiatives?

As a group, we have backed a number of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives including working with the Igbo-Elerin community to provide potable water for its indigenes. Since we have interests across Financial Services, Real Estate and Automobile, the group has decided to establish a strategy which focuses our efforts on a specific issue to ensure the most impact in our community.

What strategies have your company put in place to address issues around workforce development and entrepreneurship for the next generation of Nigerians?

We have a couple of initiatives that we are working on as an entity. Since we are in a high growth phase, there are lots of opportunities. On a routine basis, we try to expose people within the organisation to some level of pressure of decision making that would allow them learn to drive a business unit or function on their own.

Beyond that, we are also coming up with HR initiatives where most people in the organisation are exposed to, and encouraged to go out and engage in activities like public speaking, participating in fellowship programmes, etc. We want them to learn beyond what they do at work.

We are aware that such external exposure also helps establish individuals and creates confidence required for people to drive businesses on their own.

Whenever there is an opportunity or opening within the Group, we encourage internal movement first as an opportunity for staff growth. In addition, we try to get our people to do things that increase their feelings of accomplishment based on their personal goals.

In the next five years, in terms of HR workforce development, where do you see the Group?

In the next five years, we would have perfected a number of the initiatives we have being trying out as regards talent management and retention where exposure of our people to opportunities of personal development and visibility beyond the work environment becomes a norm for growth and learning. We kicked off our Graduate Management Trainee programme last year. In terms of retention afterwards, we are within 20 to 25 percent. We plan to do another one this year consolidating on the learnings from the first programme this significantly helps enhance our talent sourcing systems as well.