Non-cash rewards drive innovations –Fajimi The Managing Director/CEO, Kairos Business Services Limited, Mr. Babatunde Fajimi, in this interview with IFE ADEDAPO, speaks about organisational culture among other issues How important is organisational culture? A company’s culture is the bedrock of its competitive advantage. Usually, consultants tell companies they work with, that their people are the source of their competitive advantage. However, when these companies strive to generate value from their employees, they fail because culture has not been properly put in perspective. People should not exist in a vacuum in the organisation. They perform when the right culture has been weaved into the corporate strategy of companies. With companies offering same value across the industry because of easily available information and ready pool of talents from a global labour market, what would distinguish and give an organisation an edge above its competitors in the marketplace is culture. Culture is the core of any organisation. It defines its brand. A company’s organisational culture would explain how the market, particularly its customers, interact with the business. The culture gives life and essence to the business. If the business is perceived as customer-friendly by the users of the services; then it is the culture that is responsible. It is a waste of scarce resources for companies to improve employees’ conditions of service without entrenching a definite organisational culture. It is counterproductive for any company to invest in infrastructure, technology and recruitment of highflyers without first of all giving consideration to the evolution of a winning culture that will propel its workforce as its source of competitive advantage. What do you think encourages innovation in the workplaces? I will say innovation brings disruptive change in the workplace. It challenges tradition to create new models of thinking, behaviour and performance. Organisations that succeed hinge their market leadership on the ability to get their employees to challenge traditions, re-appraisal cultures and keep on evolving for change, growth and profitability. It is not as black and white as I have described it because enterprises are mostly configured to function in a predictable and safe way. Innovation is about change. Innovation is about creating a new value curve in an environment that is predictable and normal. It could be for process, products or about people, but is quite disruptive. Tradition is elaborate, predictable, comfortable and safe. Innovation is the ‘burning bush without start-up fire’. When management and employees turn around to embrace innovation, the organisation rejuvenates. The HR Manager should propose that the management creates an environment where employees have the orientation and free rein to think. In fact, HR Managers should purposefully go all out to hire knowledge workers who are not afraid to think differently. The organisation should promote a culture that rewards creative thinking and recognise leading programmes and products that challenge the status quo within and outside the organisation. All of these will succeed when there is a strong top-down commitment to change. Getting the employees engagement to lead change in organisation is a done deal if management is at the driver’s seat, and the HR Department is clear about its goals and objectives. What kind of reward works best for employees? It works in two ways. In an environment, where prompt payment of salaries is certain, companies should pay attention to recognition of creative contributions and value as a way of rewarding employees, and challenging their workforce on innovation and leadership. On the face value, employment is a relationship where you trade your skill for an agreed remuneration, subject to the terms and conditions of such contractual relationship. The two parties, the employer and employee, must pay attention to and adhere to their respective roles. When employees generate more value than expected, they should be given proper recognition. It could be tenure- and event-based awards, family-oriented activities and supports, paid holidays, and other non-cash incentives that touch the heart. It could be the celebrations of employees. In fact, it gives the company mileage as a family-friendly organisation when they cherish and celebrate their employees. The employees feel fulfilled that the employer cares when their contributions are acknowledged and recognised. The employers that continue to throw money the way of employees as reward for exceptional performance will kill the spirit of innovation in their organisation. Money does not respond to innovation: non-cash awards and recognition do. What creative employees cherish is the perception that their employers care for them, their immediate family and offer them a reasonable sense of secure future. On the other hand, those employers who operate in hostile environment (whether systemic or self-made) and struggle to fulfill their own obligations of remunerating employees as and when due should make it their priority to respect their own side of their contractual obligations in order to pay their workers. In this respect, financial reward for job done is at the heart of performance, and when this is lacking, the employees and their contributions to the company are endangered. Ultimately, such companies die. Amongst other factors of production, labour is the most disadvantaged and it is so because entrepreneurs who compromise on labour do not understand its importance as the source of competitive advantage. What are the challenges of Human Resource professionals? Gradually, a paradigm is evolving in the way management perceives HR professionals and their work, and that is why you see more people building their career in human resources today. Before now, management presumed that all there was to personnel management was simply transactional in supportive roles to the functions of planning, directing, leading and controlling in the organisation. The challenges that HR professionals face relate to the understanding of their roles, acceptance of the importance of such roles, and how they contribute to the overall development and management of people in the organisation. HR professionals don’t just take instructions ‘to hire and fire’, any more. Between the ‘hire and fire’ timeline, a lot of process enrichment relating to human resources development and management is involved. HR professionals now have to demonstrate to their CEOs that they understand why their businesses exist in the first place. They have to show that they can create a fit environment to attract the best talents in the global market. They have to prove that they have the best suited and contextualised engagement models to find, hire and retain the right talents across the different levels of vocational callings and professional expertise within the organisation. They have to work smart to keep their talents from professional poachers. In another development, some HR professionals are overwhelmed by the volume of operational transactions they generate and will have to show the management that they are adding value by locating the right service providers to manage their non-core transactions for them. HR professionals grapple with the stress of sourcing for talents in a market where the depth of labour for knowledge workers is shallow. In the public sector, HR professionals have to work around problems of nepotism to entrench merit in the selection and recruitment of manpower, and also performance management. Let’s not fail to add the recurring issues of work-life balance which, though not peculiar to HR professional, are germane across the sectors. Copyright PUNCH.All rights reserved. This material, and other digital content on this website, may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in whole or in part without prior express written permission from PUNCH. Contact: editor@punchng ift.tt/1xaXGbz ift.tt/1qs0Grp [[Boost your social presence with NAIRALIKES nairalikes ]] #nigeria x #nairalikes #vanguardng
Posted on: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 01:30:01 +0000