I thank the good Abia People and Mr. Governor-elect, Dr. Alex Otti, for considering the village boy from Ovim to be part of the Governorship Transition Council and Advisors. Please note that not all names are in the press release. The plan is clear: ‘Prof, we need people who will help to advance Abia and they do not  need to be from Abia State”.  So, Abia is home for ALL people with ideas and great visions.

Let me thank and congratulate Dr. Dozie Amuzie, the Director of Johnson & Johnson Innovation and Head of Johnson & Johnson Innovation (JLABS), Canada, for accepting to serve Abia. Dr. Dozie earned a dual-major Ph.D. in Comparative Medicine and Integrative Toxicological Sciences at Michigan State University. He also received a D.V.M from University of Nigeria and is a Diplomate with American Board of Toxicology, as well as a Diplomate of American College of Veterinary Pathologists. Abia needs innovations in healthcare delivery and Dr Amuzie is one of the leaders in this space in our world.

I also congratulate Ranveer S. Chauhan, former Managing Director of Olam International. Olam International is a major food and agri-business company, operating in 60 countries and supplying food and industrial raw materials to customers worldwide. Mr. Chauhan worked in Nigeria, Tanzania, Benin Republic, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, etc before he moved back to Singapore. Mr. Governor-elect will tap from his insights as we work to re-energize agriculture in Abia State.

ABIA GOVERNOR-ELECT, OTTI, NAMES ONYENKPA, OMOGUI, OTEH, OTHERS AS TRANSITION COUNCIL MEMBERS

The Abia State Governor-Elect Dr. Alex Otti has announced a list of distinguished professionals and technocrats in business, economics, entrepreneurship and politics as members of the Transition Council, preparatory to his formal assumption of office on May 29, 2023.

Otti, in a statement issued on Tuesday by the Council’s Secretariat, said the Transition Council will help to articulate a policy document that would forge a direction and developmental agenda for Abia, in line with his vision for the state.

The Council will be chaired by Victor Onyenkpa, Partner and COO, KPMG, and cochaired by Ifueko Omogui Okauru, former Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS).

Arunma Oteh, former Director General of Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); former Treasurer and Vice President of the World Bank and currently a Director at FSD Africa, an international development agency focused primarily on financial markets in sub-Saharan Africa, is also on the Council.

Other notable members are Professor Ndubuisi Ekekwe, a Nigerian-born inventor who helped Apple design a semiconductor for the iPhone; Mr Uche Orji, the immediate past CEO of Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA); Victor Okoronkwo, GMD of Aiteo Oil and Gas; Mr. Frank Nneji, Founder of ABC Transport Company; and Ide John Udeagbala, an Aba-based business mogul.

The Council will be inaugurated on Friday, April 14, 2023 by the Governor-Elect in Aba.

The choice of Aba, the commercial nerve centre of Abia State, for the inauguration of the Council is strategic as well as significant with the Enyimba City being the centrepiece of the incoming Alex Otti government’s economic and infrastructural development plan.

Otti had promised during the campaigns to create a ministry for Aba, to take charge of the urban and physical renewal of the once foremost commercial and industrial hub of South East Nigeria.

• Kazie Uko
  11/04/2023

Alex C. Otti

Employee engagement and commitment provide insights into the efficacy and potency of the management structure and culture of an organisation. In other words, employee engagement is a strong parameter for analysing and understanding the goodness of fit and the potential for growth of an organisation.

When deciding the best strategies to deliver and capture value for a business, the manager is often required to bear in mind that the condition of the organisation’s human resource is just as relevant as the cash-flow or the strength of the balance sheet. This cannot be overemphasised, especially considering the fact that wealth is a corollary to the exertion and exchange of labour.

Therefore, if the employees are not adequately and fairly engaged, they may not resonate with the organisation’s values and philosophy or be inspired to exert their maximum strength for the actualization of the organisation’s goals and objectives.

High turnover, absenteeism, rebellion, sedition, lateness, receiving kickbacks etc are some of the symptoms of low employee engagement. When these are prevalent, they spell a doom on the organisation.

It is common knowledge that some managers are bent on achieving results at all costs instead of acknowledging and promoting the factors that motivate the employees to deliver results. Consequently, most of the organisations managed by these sets of managers lose a great deal of talents in the course of laying off and replacing their workers.

Study shows that companies with highly engaged and committed employees grow profits three times faster than their competitors; highly engaged employees are 87 percent less likely to leave the organisation and more likely to save the company some overhead cost. Conversely, disengaged employees cost organisations approximately $3500 for every $10000 in annual salary.

Incorporating structured frameworks for improving team dynamics can significantly elevate an organization’s productivity and employee satisfaction. One such effective approach is investing in the five behaviors facilitator certification, which empowers leaders to foster trust, encourage constructive dialogue, and build cohesive teams. By mastering and applying these principles, managers can create an environment where employees feel valued and motivated, leading to lasting engagement and commitment.

For businesses operating in the field of workforce coordination and service delivery, adopting tools that streamline operations can make a measurable difference. One powerful option is implementing OutOnSite job management software, which centralizes scheduling, task tracking, and reporting for mobile teams. With such a system in place, managers gain clearer visibility over projects and employee performance, while reducing administrative overhead. This ultimately fosters stronger engagement by ensuring employees have the structure and support they need to succeed.

The following are selected cases of how improved employee engagement translates to better Organizational performance:

Case1: System Review, Leadership and Management Training Improved Employee Engagement and Performance at Intuit

Intuit, a US contact service company, recorded a significant drop in its employee engagement between 2003 and 2004; it is reported that 40 percent of the company’s employees providing customer support and related services were affected. Having conducted six-sigma process analysis, the company identified low motivational leadership as the root cause of the problem.

Solution included targeted front-line leadership training to provide supervisors with better coaching skills. The company also revived its KPIs and reward system which enabled the employees to have greater flexibility in determining how to provide the best customer service.

Within two years of implementing the strategy, engagement score increased favourably by 16 percent and there was a corresponding increase in the number of new business referrals by satisfied customers. This also had an appreciable impact on the revenue and stock of the company.

Case2: Instituting Feedback Loop minimized employee turnover at a logistic company

A UK logistic and warehousing company featured in a Greenthumb article reportedly encountered retention problems with the fresh graduates it was hiring. It is discovered that once these graduates were fully trained, many of them decided to leave and join a larger organisation.

It was observed that what the company needed was simply an opportunity for the staff to confidentially provide feedback on both their positive and negative experiences at work. This would enable the management to identify which practices to retain or improve upon.

After creating the feedback mechanism and integrating employees’ feedback in new strategies of the company, employee turnover fell from over 50 percent to below 20 percent and the level of employee engagement increased significantly.

Key points

Companies need to embrace the culture of engaging their employees to enable them stay committed and exert their utmost capacity in their job functions. They could do this by:

1. Implementing a regular assessment of employee engagement and commitment to work.
2. Encouraging information dissemination and feedback from employees
3. Regularly updating employees on the current demands of their works and other opportunities that could help them become better at their jobs.
4. Encouraging investment and data-driven policies on human resource management
5. Developing a robust job design or workflow and KPIs unique to each employee job role.

Alibaba has announced that it will be rolling out Tongyi Qianwen, its AI-powered chatbot that is expected to rival ChatGPT and serve the Chinese people.

Alibaba Cloud made the announcement on Tuesday, marking the Chinese tech giant’s grand entrance into the global AI race.

In a release, the company said Tongyi Qianwen will initially be deployed on DingTalk, Alibaba’s workplace communication software, and Tmall Genie, a provider of smart home appliances.

Alibaba Cloud, the computing unit of the ecommerce giant Alibaba, joined other Chinese companies like Baidu seeking to develop a chatbot similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3. The companies sped up the pace following the frenzy created by ChatGPT 3 late last year.

But unlike OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Alibaba Cloud intends to keep Tongyi Qianwen, which has the capability to speak English and Chinese, for streamlined use for now. The company said at the 2023 Alibaba Cloud Summit that it will be rolling out the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot into all Alibaba products from enterprise communication to e-commerce in the near future.

“We are at a technological watershed moment driven by generative AI and cloud computing, and businesses across all sectors have started to embrace intelligence transformation to stay ahead of the game,” said Daniel Zhang, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, in a statement.

“The new AI model will be integrated across Alibaba’s various businesses to improve user experience in the near future. The company’s customers and developers will have access to the model to create customized AI features in a cost-effective way,” the company said.

Under the chatbot rollout plan, Alibaba Cloud will offer its clients access to Tongyi Qianwen on the cloud and help them build customized large language models.

Also, the chatbot will be fine-tuned with proprietary information and data from clients to reduce resources and costs for these companies. Alibaba Cloud’s enterprise customers in China will be able to access Tongyi Qianwen for beta testing.

“We hope to facilitate businesses from all industries with their intelligence transformation and, ultimately, help boost their business productivity, expand their expertise and capabilities while unlocking more exciting opportunities through innovations,” said Jingren Zhou, CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, in the release.

The company explained that developers in China can also apply for beta testing of Tongyi Qianwen to create their AI applications at scale. It added that users can expect more compelling AI features such as image understanding and text-to-image to be added to the Tongyi Qianwen model soon.

Baidu announced its chatbot dubbed ‘Ernie’, which has similar capabilities such as literary writing, business copywriting, algebra, Chinese culture, and multi-modal content generation with ChatGPT, in March.

The unavailability of ChatGPT in China has created the need for homemade chatbots that will have government’s backing. The world’s second largest economy is expected to launch more chatbots as the generative AI race heats up.

The Chinese companies are hoping to grab as much share as they can by joining the AI race early enough. But they still face regulatory hurdles from Beijing. For now, American OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, is leading the global AI race.