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Human capital development rating is lacking in the country. Why is it so? I must confess to you that there is nothing like that in our country today. But we are coming up with one very soon. The reason is that we are in what we call the knowledge economy: an economy that sees the world moving away from the economy of industrialised nations, where the level of your machine and wares determines what you are and can do. This is different from the one we have today which is being driven by knowledge. And knowledge is in terms of what you know and how much you know it, and how fast you can know about it better, to give you a competitive advantage over your peers in the market.
Based on the foregoing, we make sure that since we are in the knowledge-driven economy, the most essential thing for any organisation to do is to have a knowledge of its work force. To ask itself: how much does its people know about their business environment? Or the nature of their competitors and beyond. To sum this up, it is what makes a company become a knowledgable company.
The issue of rating therefore becomes imperative in revealing how well this knowledge-based development strategy is carried out. This I must tell you we are working assiduously to achieve, and it would soon be made public.
How about some companies that may prefer not to make their training investments public?
One of the things I have discovered in Nigeria about training is that there are three categories of human capital development. In the global arena, we do not train just for the sake of training, and that is one of the values that MCS has brought to fore as far as training is concerned in this country. We train you because you know why you want to train; what you want to train as, and how you want to be trained. Now, in knowing why you want to train, it basically borders on the strategy of the firm, and that differs from one firm to the other. In making my people understand and align with the strategy of my company, training becomes one of the ways they should learn about my strategy, new visions and therefore, they should be trained in accordance with that principle. And after the training, you come back to do competency analysis which measures your people's capability in doing the job after the the training sessions. Basically, there should be follow-ups after training to monitor performance, which is lacking in the industry.
Furthermore, how you want to train is a different ball game altogether. The method of training that I will adopt will depending on what I want to achieve, whether it is going to be on the job training or the formal classroom training or self-based training or computer animation and all that.
What I am saying therefore is that if one realises that his people are important assets that he has, which would stimulate his company's growth as most CEOs would quickly say, then, training forms the basic foundation that enhances such an unprecedented growth that we mostly observe in some companies. And if I value my staff as an asset and pillar for the company's growth, it does not really matter how much money I spend in training and developing them. It should actually be something I should be proud of to say that I am spending so much in training my people, and that could explain why we are doing well. I believe that rating such a company will be highly beneficial to them because they will know how they are ranking among their peers. Also, many would be contended with the level of training that they give to their staff, but when they know about what their competitors are doing would buckle up once more and invest more in training because that is the engine room for organisational growth.
But given the Nigerian context, most of the reqiured information would be concealed. Are you prepared for such hitches?
Well, there are ways to go about it. Every public quoted company ought to publish the amount of money it spends on every of its staff annualy. On the other hand, they make their annual performance reports public. So I do not need to bother about that. One of the indicators that we look out for is to compare your training expenditures with your general performance and then make our rating.
From experience, most companies that do well have higher net income by employee when compared with general staff cost per employee. So if I put in so much in them, I will expect much from them too. Just as it is said that whom much isgiven, much is expected. If I put in X in John, I am expected to get XX from him. That basically would reflect positively on the bottom line.
Primarily, it is assumed that employers understand the importance of training but shun it because it could be expensive?
That is a good logic. If you are sick, a sickness that you ought to have prevented but you said that it is the medicare is expensive and when you now become sick, price would no longer be an issue to get you cured. A lot of people would argue that why should they spend money in training their staff and they will leave them for other companies. Therefore, they would not train them in order to retain the employees. But I tell them that they should not train so that none of their staff would leave till erternity.
What I am saying therefore is that, if you do not train because you do not want to loose them, then be prepared because they will certainly become rusty and the company will bear the brunt of stagnation. They will become unproductive and they will not give you the kind of result that you want. There are two fundamental issues here. If you do not train because you do not have the fund is a totally different thing. It is more pardonable if you desire to train but lack the cpapcity to do that than you have money but do not want to loose your staff after training him/her. That simply is an injury to oneself.
On the issue of staff poaching, it is something that every employer is facing. It does not matter whether you train or not, it is quite so common with the service industry. Staff poaching goes beyond training. It has to do with a lot of variables which could be employer's attitude to workers, remuneration, proximity and many other factors.
There is something many do not know about training. For me to nominate you for a training course means that I believe in you and what you can offer back to the company. I want to help you shape your career, and that I trust you. An instance of this was a national survey conducted in the USA sometime ago. The result of the survey showed that salary was the third thing that gives satisfaction or motivation to an average employee. An average employee would prefer to stay with you even if you do not increase his salary regularly, in as much as you trust him, train him and give him a sense of belonging in the company. If they realise that you care for their future and their career, they will hardly leave you. That is part of what we are saying that, training for the sake of it is a misguided target. If someone is determined to leave, whether you trained him or not, he will eventually leave. Also, remember that workforce is like a pool. Every employer benefits from that same pool. Otherwise, employers would not be asking for cognate experience in certain job requirements.
The worst scenario is a situation where you do not train at all to avoid loosing your staff to other companies. What of if the reason a staff has to leave you is because you have refused to develop him? Moreover, they will not have good working strategy if they are not trained. They will not be intune with the challenges of the environment where they operate if they are not exposed to regular training.
I will tell you something. Every company that is on the drawing board all the time, sensitising their staff on the vision of the company is has a problem. It happens only because they do not train their staff. They believe in staff poaching and not developing. And each time they employ new people, they will keep on trying to inculcate their vision into them. But how far can they go?
They will certainly be sweating trying to weep their staff into their company strategies and principles. No matter the amount offered to a staff to poach him, he will certainly become obsolete if he is not trained as at when due. There will always be pressure on the company to hire more good hands without addressing the fundamental issue which is training and probably fire if they fail shot of expectations. No matter the level of your poaching capabilities, you will never surpass a company that invests in training, in terms of bottom line results.
When we talk about training and its costs, which is one of the reason why so many organisations do not train their people, in the merging global knowledge economy, training is not a cost but rather as an investment. It is a capital investment that you will surely reap dividend from. So an understanding of this will add up to what we are saying about training rating.
What are the reasons for high cost of training in the country?
There are many reasons that contribute to the high cost of training in Nigeria. One, it has to do with the style of our training. The type of our training module is still very much of what I can describe as formal classroom training and as long as you adopt it, it is going to be more expensive than other available training modules.
In the Western world, there are many other forms of training they apply. Although, the initial money for acquiring it is high but over time, the number of employees that will benefit from it would over shut the cost. There are lots of video training modules, computer enhanced modules, and self-based training. They are just many to mention. But the people down here have not embraced other forms of training other than the classroom module they are quite familiar with. They do not believe in taking their destiny into their own hands. They do not believe in taking an extra hour to train themselves from their ruetine schedules. An average bank for instance should have a training laboratory.
One of the ways MCS shall add value to our clients by a continuos sensitisation exercise and also to post our training modules in the internet for people to subscribe to. This will come on board soon so that companies can buy access codes for their employees. With this, they can go to cyber cafes or at homes for those that have internet facilities in the houses or in the office after work to train for a short period. The training could be on listening skills, presentation skills or on any things preferable.
But the problem is that some of our people are becoming so lazy. They simply cannot find out time to train themselves when they are the one paying. Many of them do not make extra effort in adding value to themselves. What they essentially want is that at the end of the month, let their salaries be posted into their accounts. That is all.
I will tell you a story of a colleague who is a facilitator. He is the type that always wants to impress his trainees by adding extra material to the course materials to enable people read further. It has brought him a negative impression turned bad business for the young man. When they were filling their evaluation forms, those he facilitated their training wrote that he is always adding extra materials to them because he hardly covers his modules. Meanwhile, he did cover it but in his usual way, he would like to impress people by giving them more materials to read. At the end of the day, he lost the training account.
As soon as you stick to the formal classroom training module, it will keep on being expensive. We always talk of future leaders globally. Either as political leaders, social or economic leaders, they are groomed and not imposed. Likewise in offices, what we find is that there is hardly on the job training by managers on their subordinates. So many people in various offices refuse to train the young ones either to selfishly secure their jobs or out of ignorance. But that is one of the changes we are currently championing in the service industry in the country today.
Managers should be able to hand down knowledge to their subordinates. One must find out time, say 30 minutes per week to explain or put their staff through in certain areas. This is very important for organisational growth and stability. These are the things that will reduce the cost of training extensively. Until people start seeing their training as an investment and not as a conduit pipe, that will be the beginning of their wisdom.
You said that your headquarters is in US. Would this amount to capital flight?
As a matter of fact, it is the other way round. All the investments that MCS has done in this country for the past few years were sent from the parent company in the United States. We operate an independent account here. Whether we like it or not, the western world is ahead of us and what we do is to emulate them.
One of our foundation blocks in MCS is what we call "knowledge transfer". MCS is positioning itself to have a universal approach where we import expatriates of our own soil. Basically one of the advantages of being in US is that it is difficult to do so much international business as long as you are in Nigerian soil. I will not count to you the number of business interests that have been shot down since the begin of this year only because those calls were made from Nigeria. And these were the things that affect business over here. But if you are in US for instance, you can call any body, no matter how highly placed to get information that you need. I must say that an average western man is ready to do business with you ad long as you are in the soil of US because he believes that since you are there, you are bound by the ethics and laws of the land. He will be comfortable with you.
But in our own case, instead of the kind of expatriates that take our money away, we rather bring back resources and knowledge to this country. Absolutely, there is not capital flight in what we are doing. As we are in US, we get information and training on the latest in the industry quicker than our compatriots in the country.
Submitted by Afolabi
Imoukhuede, Managing Consultant, MCS
Consulting Limited Ikoyi, Lagos
aimoukhuede@mcsworldgrp.com
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Mr. Afolabi Imoukhuede is a consultant whose track record covers many successful outfits in the strategic sector. With a wealth of experience and a profound depth of exposure and learning, Afolabi is committed to ushering new ideas into the human capital development industry. He studied Accountancy at the University of New Jersey, USA. He had a stint at KPMG as a financial accountant, and PriceWaterHouseCoopers as an associate accountant, all in the United States. He has consulted for World Bank bodies and regional organisations. Afolabi, managing consultant for MCS Consulting Limited, an affiliate of MCS Consulting USA Inc, spoke with Malachy Agbo