A good percentage of conversations among employees today center around the work environment, hostile superiors, and general satisfaction in the workspace.
Employees around the world are said to care only about their well-being, which includes timely payment of salaries and allowances, a friendly working environment, personal development and general well-being at work, while employers, on the other hand, are primarily concerned about one thing. : the bottom line.
According to the experts at Human Recourse, employees play a major role in determining the direction a company takes. Employee engagement in an organization can largely determine whether such an organization can weather the storm when tokens go down or sink.
Over the years, statistics have shown that 76% of employees leave a company because of horrible bosses, 14% because of burnout, and 6% because of a career change. This shows that an organization where employees are treated fairly and more than numbers or overhead, where staff members are happy to go to work, is a successful organization.
Admittedly, doing business in Nigeria is not so rosy. Although the Nigerian economy performed below average in 2020, largely due to the Corona virus outbreak, 2021 seemed to offer some light at the end of the tunnel. The economy grew in 2021 at the fastest annual rate in eight years, relying more on the non-oil sector. Gross domestic product (GDP) rose 3.40% last year, the most since 2014 when it rose 6.22%, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Additionally, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revised up its growth forecast for the Nigerian economy in 2022 to 3.4% from its previous projection of 2.7% announced in January. The new projection was announced in its World Economic Outlook update released in April. It also predicted that the country’s economy would grow by 3.1% by 2023 compared to the previously projected 2.7%.
Looking at the numbers above and the volatility of the Nigerian economy, it is no wonder that C-suite executives and business owners spend all of their time primarily on being profitable while knowingly or otherwise neglecting the well-being and the general well-being of employees which is indeed a major driving force. the success of any business.
IN CASE YOU MISSED THESE FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
With all the uncertainties that come with running a business, one organization that has remained consistent in ensuring employee satisfaction in the workplace is Green Energy International Limited (GEIL), an indigenous oil and gas company and marginal field operator of Otakikpo in OML-11. .
In April 2020, following the Covid-19 outbreak in Nigeria, the company introduced a mandatory work from home (WFH) policy for all its employees in Abuja, Lagos and Port-Harcourt, to limit interactions between staff and to curb the potential spread of the virus – an action later found to have resulted in an 85% increase in staff productivity. This development has led the company to review its HR policy to allow staff members to work 3 days from home permanently, ensuring that no one is forced to return to a 5 day job on site.
Indeed, the work-from-home policy has become corporate policy for many forward-thinking companies, including tech giant Google and Amazon who have declared telework for all staff until 2023, the platform of social media Twitter and recently AirBnB, a business valued at over $100. BN which operates an online marketplace for accommodation, primarily homestays for holiday rentals, which has announced an indefinite work-from-home policy for all staff.
Additionally, in response to the recent increase in health, safety and environmental (HSE) incidents in the oil and gas industry, the company announced that it has developed and implemented a series of key HSE improvements in its field of activity, which have given rise to exceptional safety. milestone – 4 million lost time incident (LTI) free labor hours since the start of operations at the Otakikpo Marginal Field in Rivers State.
In another development, the company announced in March that it would commission the modular 12 million standard cubic feet per day (MMSCFD) liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) extraction plant and 6 megawatts of the Otakikpo marginal field in the second quarter of 2022.
This modular LPG plant scale will be the first to be installed in the nation, putting it ahead of its peers in actualizing the federal government’s mandate to upstream industry players, to completely eliminate gas flaring, while protecting the immediate host community and the environment as a whole from the hazards of gas flaring.
GEIL was only recently announced as the winner of the Best Place to Work campaign for 2021, beating over 75 other organizations in a survey of 64,300 FMCG, Banking and Oil & Gas employees, organized by the Staff Welfare Committee in Nigeria, an independent body that tracks employee satisfaction.
This came shortly after the company sponsored its chief executives for MBA programs at Warwick Business School (WBS), Imperial College and Cass Business School, all in the UK. He further implied that several staff members are also trained and developed in their areas of professional interest free of charge and without any documented mandatory ties to the company as is generally practiced in Nigeria where staff are required to sign commitments that they would stay with the company. up to 5 years after these trainings.
One wonders how an indigenous company headed by a renowned professor of energy and management; Anthony Adegbulugbe is capable of achieving such a feat in a sector already saturated by “expatriates” and competition. According to him, the company simply puts its employees first. “I believe in youth leadership. I believe in and help young people harness their zeal and agility to put them forward in achieving the company’s vision. »
It is quite evident that Green Energy International Limited understands the ideology of employee satisfaction, which can also be responsible for the low employee turnover rate of 2.7% in the organization.
Billionaire businessman and chairman of the Virgin Group, Richard Branson once said, “Customers don’t come first, employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the customers.
Needless to say, if more business owners in Nigeria prioritized employee well-being and mental health, productivity levels would increase exponentially, leading to improved organizational results and, in turn, economic growth for Nigeria.
Professor Anthony Adegbulugbe is the President, Green Energy International Ltd (GEIL)