Women in our organisation have played a critical role in advancing the company’s vision and performance in the African insurance marketplace, Tunde Hassan-Odukale, managing director/CEO, Leadway Assurance Company Limited has said.
Hassan-Odukale, speaking as part of activities to market the International Women’s day 2022 said: “Women in our organisation form the most vital nucleus of our core values, strategy formulation, innovation, governance structure, business continuity model and superior customer service delivery”.
These values have been the DNA, or dare say, the secret of our exemplary corporate existence and globally celebrated performance. The indisputable reality is that our Women are the centrepiece of our strategic importance, he said.
He said that it is against this background that the entire leadership of Leadway Assurance strongly align with this year’s theme of the International Women’s Day of “Breaking the Bias”.
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“It is essential that organisations like ours eliminate management and operational structures, toxic corporate culture and HR practices that remotely allow bias against women in the workplace. Even with the appropriate structures in place, it is equally important to continuously re-evaluate policies and consistently build internal awareness to check against unconscious bias against women from the Board level cascading towards the entry hierarchy.
“We must realise, as leaders, that the workplace is complexly dynamic and continually evolving, especially in the 21st century where we have three sets of generational talents; with parallel orientation, beliefs, value system and expression, coexisting, interacting and working together. These complexities with limited intersections may create room for relationship friction, therefore today’s leaders must be mindful of creating a work environment with zero tolerance towards every form of discrimination, especially against women.”
Hassan Odukale said that this philosophy is the entrenched approach at Leadway Assurance to ensure that women get an equal shot at career development, growth and reward. He revealed that the Board mandated consistent reviews of Leadway’s HR policies towards talent attraction, recruitment process, retention, appraisal, development, training, advancement, rewards and remunerations, and employees’ overall engagement and treatment to ensure alignment with the international sustainable workplace best practices.
To evaluate the actualisation of this strategic mandate, Leadway Assurance subjects its policies and processes to Great Place to Work Institute’s periodic independent and objective review, with impressive results and awards to show for it.
