Talent engagement in African fintech space not mature

Although the financial technology (fintech) space in Africa is attracting a lot of attention from within and outside the continent in terms of new businesses, funding and new jobs, talent engagement and management is still at a very immature stage, according to a 2018 report by Digital Frontiers Institute (DFI).

The report which was released in February, noted that the attraction of Fintech means that players are always competing for the scarce human resource in the space. As a result, 69 percent of leaders in the space acknowledged that competition is very fierce.

Just as hiring talents poses a big challenge for players, a bigger problem is the lack of recruitment skills and knowledge by those doing the hiring. A lot of the businesses in fintech were established by young innovators whose only claims to business experience were the successful ideas they pitched to investors. However, knowing that the future of their business depended on recruiting the right talent, many of them take on the role of HR, only a few has the financial power to outsource HR duties.

Despite this lack of recruitment skill, majority of business owners in Fintech (66 percent) believe they have very good to excellent abilities to manage their businesses through turmoil.

For many of them, the nature of the business environment in countries such as Nigeria goes a long way to determine the number and quality of talent that these companies engage.

The report showed that 72 percent of leaders in the space said that their country’s economy has a high impact and the ability to attract risk for the organisation. 43 percent indicated that political stability was a high impact and risk. 57 percent said the cost of doing of business in their country was an impediment to manage, lead and execute.

While there are risk to recruitment and managing talent, most of the employees in fintech see the industry as emergent and chaotic. In fact, 54 percent believe the space is still fairly immature. The pace of decision making in the space also had 43 percent of respondents shaking their heads. They believe that decisions are made in sporadic manner and none indicate the use of data in decision making.

But many of the entrepreneurs (57 percent) said they never take a decision without the input of their people. 29 percent of the leaders indicated that they rely heavily on their intuitions and experience of their senior leadership when making their decision. A mere 14 percent said that established processes and protocols drive decision making.

“In smaller startup environments, roles and responsibilities are blended and so is decision making and execution, regardless of level or type of role,” DFI noted. “As the organisation matures, more structure is put into place and decision making and leadership responsibilities evolve. Leaders want to seek more input in decision making but still retain the responsibility of making the decision.”

In terms of digital strategy, the senior and executive leaders are exclusively responsible for it development according to 43 percent respondents. Only 19 percent of respondents indicated they have a dedicated strategy team. However, since many of the start-ups run small teams it is easier to communicate the strategies clearly and precisely to everyone. Hence, most of the respondents said they well understood their companies’ strategies.

The different factors that compel talents to stay in a fintech company include organisation’s vision; the value proposition; seeking challenging environment; leadership and colleagues.

What the talents regard as successes in an organisation also vary from years of experience that they readily share with others, deep domain knowledge, a keen understanding of the industry to their ability to craft and communicate a vision and the ability to turn ideas into practical strategies.