Companies must properly remunerate employees, train to retain talents – Laoye

Loretta Laoye, a human resource (HR) consultant with a decade of experience, speaks on her passion for human capital development and what the country can do to tackle the current ‘Japa’ wave, in this interview with BusinessDay’s Godsgift Onyedinefu. Excerpt…

What drives your passion for human capital development, and why did you switch from pharmaceuticals to HR?

I think it was a wind of faith. After my undergraduate studies, I returned to Nigeria, where I got a job with the Central Bank of Nigeria. That was my first ever job, and I found myself in the HR department when I joined, surprisingly.

I thought I would be posted to work in the medical services departments of the CBN, but I wasn’t. At the time, I did not want to be ‘fish out of water’, so I decided to upskill in the HR field, and that was how my master’s in HR and training came about.

Over time, I found that I had a flair for practising HR. It is also not a profession that’s difficult to delve into because you have a lot of people who come from different walks of life with various disciplines that eventually end up being HR practitioners. So, it was a wind of faith for me at first, and then love for the profession, which then developed into a passion.

Looking generally at human capital development in Nigeria, there have been lots of gaps. Based on your experience, what would you say are the problems that have been responsible for these gaps over the years?

I like to take a multichannel approach when there is a problem that has been identified. First of all, I would say a good number of our institutions are churning out half-baked graduates.

I have, in my experience practising HR, especially when we look at the recruitment and selection aspect of HR, come across computer science graduates who have never used a computer. I have come across a good number of graduates who cannot defend not just their degree but their class of degree. So you’d find a graduate from a Nigerian institution that has a second-class upper, which is regarded as a good class of degree, but that graduate is not able to defend that.

We have a lot of work to do when it comes to our institutions. I’ve heard educationists speak severally about reviewing our curriculum, especially in primary and secondary, which the academia should look at.

On the other hand, I feel that as a country, we’re just waking up to the impact and importance of training. We have more clients that reach out to us here at UHR for our training services than before.

Most of the clients that reached out to us for such services were in the government sector because there is always a budget for that, but now you have more private institutions being open to training. Business owners, employers of labour, and entrepreneurs are now beginning to see the importance of training and how it’s tied to performance.

So we’re waking up to seeing the importance of intangible services as opposed to tangible services, thankfully.

Another thing that has affected our human capital is brain drain. It’s no news that a good number of our skilled labourers have left the country in search of greener pastures, hence the “Japa” syndrome.

In addition, our human capital development is significantly still tied to institutions. I feel that institutions often focus on programs and not on other areas of development that affect every graduate.

In the United Kingdom, for instance, most institutions have a program that almost every student takes, regardless of their field of study, where graduates are taught how to be employable. I don’t see that happening in Nigerian institutions. You’re studying law, and it has everything to do with law—the same thing with accounting and every other course.

There is a need for some form of general knowledge-based program. At UHR, we try to do that in the form of our corporate social responsibility. We’ve been to Nile University to give free career talks in a bid to enable their graduates to become more employable.

Read also: Governments urged to increase investment in human capital development

You mentioned that the poor quality of graduates churned out yearly, yet the available skilled Nigerians are leaving in droves. What can Nigeria do to retain a skilled workforce and address brain drain?

A wise man once told me that money is not a motivation, but lack of it demotivates. We see the tussle between the government and labour regarding remuneration, minimum wage, and all. I’m not saying that other countries are having it easy; it’s not a walk in the park. But I can tell you for a fact that a gainfully employed person in the Western world doesn’t need much to have the basics—light, water, food, clothing, and shelter. They can have that with their minimum wage, but it’s not the case here in Nigeria.

We have people who work so hard but receive a minimum wage that can do absolutely nothing. Often when I speak to my friends who are doctors or who work in that industry that have plans of relocating or have already relocated, their reasons for wanting to leave are the fact that they don’t feel that their pay is commensurate with the efforts that they’re putting out. It does not even commiserate to the sacrifices made to get the degree, because we know medicine is not a walk in the park.

So remuneration is a major problem, and how it ties to the standard of living is an even bigger problem. If the government can review the minimum wage to an extent such that it’s not just an upward review but a review that can cater to the basics of the average Nigerian, I think that can go a long way to retaining our talents.

In the private sector, entrepreneurs can do better when it comes to paying for value. People like to be cheap and cheerful, but if you’re getting value from an employee, the right thing to do is to pay for the value that they bring to the table.

Insecurity is also another factor. There’s insecurity in various parts of the world, and it’s one of the reasons that people give when they relocate. If the government can curb insecurity, that will help to retain our talents.

People also leave for exposure, especially those in the tech space, because, as a developing country, we’re still trying to catch up with our contemporaries in the Western world.

You would also find that certain skills that people have may not be used here. I have a friend who’s an aerospace engineer, and he’s looking to relocate for that reason. If we can create opportunities and jobs that would need these skilled labourers, that would go a long way in helping to retain talent.

Nigeria is being challenged with an increasing rate of brain drain across industries; what best practices can companies adopt to combat talent flight and aid retention?

In HR, certain factors are regarded as parameters that address job dissatisfaction. A high turnover usually stems from job dissatisfaction. The absence of certain factors such as working conditions, status, benefits, and good remuneration, among others, can lead to demotivation on the job and contribute to a high turnover.

It is important for organisations to be mindful of the exit of employees and put measures in place to curb them. Measures such as employee motivation through rewards and benefits, career development through training and development, employee engagement in the form of feedback and team bonding, and work-life balance to factor in various work structures (remote work, hybrid, and part-time, among others) can aid retention.

Every organisation is unique in its practices, and the analysis of exit interviews for employees who choose to leave will help to better provide the organisation with tailored strategies to aid retention.

As an expert, what advice would you offer smaller enterprises on efficient investments concerning talent growth and pipeline development?

Investing in talent growth and pipeline development can provide an organisation with a competitive advantage. To promote talent growth, smaller enterprises should consider strategies that are affordable and cost-effective, such as online free training programs for the development of their human capital at little to no cost.

When we invest in affordable software and collaboration tools to foster employee engagement, design clear career progression paths, leverage technology to promote brand awareness and become more attractive to potential candidates, growth and competitiveness will be sustained.

Read also: How Nigeria can leverage human capital development to halt poverty trend

Some scholars believe that brain drain is also a gain for Nigeria. Do you agree with this line of thought?

There are gains. I believe that with everything in life, there are pros and cons. As a business, we receive more requests for recruitment services because people have left. So it’s good for business.

On the other hand, as an individual, it would be easier to get a job because there’s little or no competition. If an organisation is looking for an experienced hire in a specialised role but can only find a candidate who’s specialised but lacks the experience, they’d be willing to take and train that candidate.

So, it has its advantages for businesses in our industry in terms of recruitment, training, and development. As skilled labourers leave, we are left with a majority of unskilled workers who will need training.

On one hand, we are complaining that Nigerian institutions churn out people who are not employable; on the other hand, we have a brain drain. How do we juxtapose this?

I haven’t come across countries in the Western world that open up their borders for Nigerians; they open their borders to people with skills. When people relocate, they upskill first. They take all sorts of exams so that they can “Japa” successfully. So it’s not as though we are attractive per se, but Nigerians who relocate do the needful before they leave.

So when countries in the Western world are opening up their borders to medical doctors, we have a lot of them. So I don’t think it’s a case of Nigerians being attractive when you want to compare that to what our institutions are churning out. We have also been conditioned from time immemorial to take on professional courses, and now those courses are in high demand.

How is AI impacting the job market?

It’s helping. Every sector is trying to leverage technology now because it helps to save time and be more efficient. Even before the brain drain wave, COVID-19 opened our eyes to the importance of leveraging technology to drive businesses. So, artificial intelligence, for us as an HR consulting firm, reduces our downtime.

However, there’s always a place for human influence. We do not take that away, especially here at UHR. We still believe that we are experts in our field, and no matter how good technology is, it cannot replace humans.