Tips on How to Encourage Employees to Add Values to their Employers

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September 22, 2019

People complain much about Nigerian civil servants and I don’t blame them for that. The problem with the civil service in Nigeria is that civil servants do not add values to the Nigerian system. In truth, policies are supposed to be made by these workers, but how can they do that when they don’t even know what to do?

This problem doesn’t end with the civil service, private sectors also suffer it. In most private organisations I know employees are expected to stick to a stipulated routine without being allowed to add or remove any of them. We also see companies where workers are paid for the time they spent, and not for the values they add. For instance, when a worker has finished the stipulated routine and still has like three or four hours before closing time, he will be asked to sit down and wait till the official closing hour before leaving. What this sort of employees usually do is sleep or ‘gossip’ with others that are ‘free’ too.

When I talk of values here, I meant the new things or ideas employees bring to their employers that will help in increasing their productivity and profit. I always believe that every employee has something new and unique to offer to the office if he is given the opportunity.

Adding values to the company is not only beneficial to employers, employees and customers also benefit from it. When, an employee has the opportunity to be innovative, he is indirectly training himself for better things to come. The customers will also benefit because the organisation will have something better to offer them.

I will like to point out here that it is not always the fault of the company when employees fail to add value, though companies bear bigger share in the blame. Why I said this is that if an employee really wants to bring in new ideas or make some changes to the way things are run in the organisation, he will put in his best to do so. All he needs to do is meet the management and try to sell his ideas to them. But no, they will rather keep that to themselves and have the ‘what is my business’ attitude towards their jobs and employers.

Anyway, here are some tips on how companies can encourage their employees to add values to their systems.

Tip 1: Communication

We constantly hear how important communication is and how to achieve effective communication in offices, but we hardly put them to practice. Both public and private sectors need to open up communication links in their various offices. These days, establishments create online forums where every staff member is allowed to contribute ideas towards the growth of the companies. But even these forums yield little results because the superior officers still use them to exhibit their authorities. This only ends up bringing more friction into the system.

Establishments also need to create rooms for feedbacks from both customers and employees. Some companies do that but they give more credits to customers’ feedback than their employees’ own.

Tip 2: Room for Growth and Development

Companies should create rooms for growth and development for their staff. It is only when staff are allowed to grow that they can add to the growth of the company. I know an establishment that wouldn’t allow her staff to go for further studies. In this company, any staff that wishes to go for further studies, irrespective of how long he has worked there, will have to resign. Some members of staff that secretly registered for part time and holiday programmes were discovered and dismissed.

Tip 3: Appropriate Staff Designation

Most times, employers post staff to positions where their talents and abilities are not fully utilised. For example, when a graduate of law is posted to accounting section, what is this person going to achieve? What contribution will he make to the company? This is the case of a square peg in a round hole, which exists in many offices.

Tip 4: Use of Incentives

Establishments can bring in incentives to encourage their staff to become innovative. For example, some private owned schools give staff members that bring in students a certain amount of money. This makes these staff work hard to bring in customers and indirectly try to bring in ideas that will make the schools attractive to prospective customers.

Tip 5: Flexibility in Company’s Routine

Companies need to be flexible in their routines. They should understand that change is a constant thing and that sticking to rigid routines and rules could cost the company some values. For example, a private school I know recruited an office driver who had another source of income. So, for this driver to be able to manage these income outlets properly, he starts very early in the morning to pick up students and comes back immediately school dismisses to drop them off. When parents whose children attend other schools saw how diligent this driver is (you know, there is no waiting for a long time before school bus comes to pick up students), they started enrolling their children into the school. And what was more, the driver is paid on part time basis. So, the school saved money and at the same time attracted more customers.

Tip 6: Tasking Staff

I believe it is necessary for employers to task their staff to be innovative. When I was the head teacher of a school, I always tell my colleagues that they have to bring in something new to the school. As long as the new ideas they bring aren’t selfish and too expensive to implement, I adopt them immediately. The effect of this strategy is that staff members discover that they too can add something to the growth of the company. And when they realize this, they are always happy to ‘help’.

Tip 7: Dislodging Non-Innovative Staff

The fear of dismissal can make some staff members sit up in their duties. This time, the staff to be dislodged are those that have nothing new and unique to offer the company. I strongly believe that when an employee knows that he will be dismissed after some duration of ‘unproductivity’, he will either sit up or leave so that better people will come in.

So, as an employee, do you add value to your employer? Or are you selfishly clinging to your ideas? Remember, if you don’t bring out that idea now so that it will be nurtured and developed, somebody else may do that in the nearest future. By then, you will be a ‘copycat’.

And you, an employer, do you give your staff room to be innovative? Are you clinging so tight to your old system of operation? What are you afraid of? Is it the cost of implementing new ideas? Remember, new companies are springing up every day and they have latest ideas to make their businesses grow and satisfy customers’ demands. Don’t wait for them to take over your business. Start today to set up routines that will encourage your staff to be responsive to growth.

Improving Nigeria’s Oil and Gas Industry with Blockchain

By

Nnamdi Odumody

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September 22, 2019

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Nigeria’s oil and gas industry which is her major source of export revenues has an integrity problem. Previous scandals include petroleum products subsidy fraud in which product importers collected billions of naira as payment with a good number of them not bringing in any cargo. Other scandals include award of crude oil lifting contracts and oil blocks to cronies of government as compensation, crude oil swap agreements with some major refiners abroad, non remittance of accurate revenues from Joint Venture agreements, and Production Sharing Contracts from the NNPC to the Federation account.

The new czar in town, Mallam Mele Kolo Kyari, has stated that it won’t be business as usual. In his agenda, he has stated some commitments which will help to clean the NNPC’s corruption stables which include publishing the full list of those possessing Nigeria’s crude oil contracts and organizations who won crude oil deals for products swap deals, publish audited accounts of the corporations books, and automate of the sale of crude oil so that marketers can purchase products online.

Blockchain will help in creating transparency in how the NNPC, Department Of Petroleum Resources and indigenous oil and gas companies conduct their daily operations. As a secured transaction ledger database which is shared by all parties in a distributed network which records, and stores every transaction that occurs in the network, the NNPC should utilize blockchain to store information and record daily transactions of all those it awards crude oil swap agreements and lifting contract.

Also the renegotiation of its Production Sharing Contracts as well as automation of the sale of crude oil and gas will be transparent with the adoption of Smart Contracts which is an automated contract that will be issued by the corporation to buyers that will execute various terms and based on reaching agreed upon conditions. This will eliminate fraud since no middleman will be involved in the transaction. In the event of a force majeure which is prevalent in the industry due to shut downs as a result of crude oil bunkering and other hazards, the system will autonomously inform the buyer that the terms of contract cannot be delivered at that time due to reasons beyond the seller’s control.

The Department Of Petroleum Resources should adopt blockchain to ensure transparency in the issuance of licenses to players in the upstream and downstream sectors of the oil and gas industry, monitor their daily operations which will avail them to know those who are sabotaging the industry with underhand dealings and sanction them in the process.

Seplat, Oando, Aiteo, Sahara Group, NNPC, and other indigenous upstream and downstream players can learn from Exxon Mobil and Chevron who recently established a blockchain consortium to digitize their crude oil and gas transactions to ensure enhanced security, transparency and optimized efficiency as well as improved data storage.

World Pharmacists Day- What Nigerian Pharmacists Can Bring To The Table

By

Adaku Efuribe

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September 22, 2019

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“Safe and effective medicines for all” is the theme of this year’s World Pharmacists Day. (25^th September 2019).The theme aims to promote pharmacists’ crucial role in safeguarding patient safety through improving medicines use and reducing medication errors.

“Pharmacists use their broad knowledge and unique expertise to ensure that people get the best from their medicines. We ensure access to medicines and their appropriate use, improve adherence, coordinate care transitions and so much more. Today, more than ever, pharmacists are charged with the responsibility to ensure that when a patient uses a medicine, it will not cause harm”, says FIP President Dominique Jordan.

I believe Nigerian pharmacists are better placed to safeguard patient safety through medicines optimisation and patient centered care. I have observed that this service tends to be lacking in our primary and secondary care facilities because there is a lack of multidisciplinary team approach in some settings. We need to start having these conversations and change the status quo.We need to embrace integrated healthcare. A lot of patients using clinical facilities, do not come in contact with a pharmacist, they do not get their medicines reconciled or reviewed, resulting to exposure to adverse drug-drug interactions and lack of concordance.

As long as we still have some clinicians in Nigeria diagnosing, prescribing, dispensing medication and ‘hiding’ the name of the medicine from the patient; duplication of therapy, adverse drug reactions and drug-drug interactions are inevitable.

Patients have the right to know the medicines they are taking to help achieve concordance and prevent medication errors and overdose.

Pharmacists led medicines review, reconciliation/ optimisation prevents medication errors & adverse drug reactions.

Medicines reconciliation is a process whereby patient’s medicines are reconciled as they move between different stages of healthcare, from primary – secondary care interface. Pharmacists are better placed and equipped to complete the medicines reconciliation process.

Pharmacist led medication review tends to be more in-depth ,capturing all the essence of patient centred care as it offers more time for the patient to ask medicines related questions which enhances concordance.

Medication reviews are needed to highlight issues of blood monitoring, therapeutic drug monitoring for medicines that require special monitoring; like methotrexate, diuretics, digoxin etc.

According to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society ‘Medicines optimisation represents that step change. It is a patient-focused approach to getting the best from investment in and use of medicines that requires a holistic approach, an enhanced level of patient centered professionalism, and partnership between clinical professionals and a patient’.

I believe medicines optimisation is about ensuring that patients receive the right kind of medication at the right time. It focuses on making patients get the best out of their medicines. Evidence has shown that a good number of medicines prescribed end up not being taken due to lack of concordance and compliance.

My experience with patient returned medication has shown that patients who do not understand the rationale for prescribed medication are more likely not to use the medication. Also medication used for preventative measures are at a higher risk of non-compliance as patients do not appreciate the benefits of taking such medication.

The gains of patient centered care cannot be overemphasised, all medical needs have to be tailored to the individual patient, considering their personal circumstances, other co-morbidities, and sometimes frailty comes into consideration for some elderly patients as well.

In some clinical settings, a lot of patients do not know what regular medicines they are taking or the reason why it has been prescribed, their indication or side effects to expect and they have never had their medication reviewed by a pharmacist since their long term condition was diagnosed.

Part of the role of the pharmacist in a clinical setting is to complete medicines reconciliation and medication reviews especially for patients taking regular medication for long term condition like Hypertension, Diabetes, Arthritis, Asthma etc.We need to create the enabling environment for this to be achieved.

For instance, a patent living in Kaduna with a history of hypertension, takes antihypertensive –Calcium channel blocker (CCB) – amlodipine tablets prescribed by his local doctor.

Patient travels to Lagos on official assignment and falls ill, patient gets admitted to a hospital ,diagnosed with very high blood pressure(HBP), patient receives treatment and gets discharged with three other medicines which includes another –CCB-Nifedipine , without being asked about his past medication history or told what medicines to stop /continue.

Patient continues to take two CCB –nifedipine and amlodipine at the same time and suffers hypotension (low blood pressure), which makes his condition worse. Patient is re-admitted to hospital in Kaduna, his medication is reviewed by a pharmacist, and he is told to stop Nifedipine and continue taking only Amlodipne.

Learning points- We need to utilise the expertise of pharmacists in all clinical settings.

A medication reconciliation process with a pharmacist during the hospital admission/discharge process in Lagos could have prevented the hypotension resulting from a duplication of therapy.

Evidence has shown that when patients understand the side effects of the medication they take, they are more likely to comply with the dosage regimen.

The gains of patient centered care cannot be overemphasized; all medical needs have to be tailored to the individual patient, considering their personal circumstance. Pharmacists are better placed to undertake this piece of work.

In the course of completing a medication review with one of my patients, It came to light why patient’s chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) was not well managed .This patient happened to be visually impaired and was unable to read the small typed instructions on the dispensing label and so assumed tiotropium capsules needed to be swallowed whole and not inserted into the inhalation device. After I offered education, guidance and support to this patient, the patient was able to use her inhaler as intended and her COPD symptoms were well controlled eventually. In this case a possible COPD exacerbation or even hospital admission/death was prevented.

Medication reviews are needed to highlight issues of blood monitoring, therapeutic drug monitoring for medicines that require special monitoring; like methotrexate, diuretics, digoxin etc.Annual blood tests are routinely checked because if dosage regimens are not adjusted or vital blood checks are not made, this may lead to increased harm to the patient or even death.

As we work towards achieving SDG3 and universal health coverage in Nigeria,

The following simple steps could help reduce the risk of medication errors and medicines related deaths in Nigeria:

We have to develop and implement a nationwide strategy which will bring about the desired change in the healthcare system.
We need to optimise integrated healthcare and patient centred care using a multidisciplinary team approach.
We need to begin to put the patient at the centre of care and utilise the pharmacists expertise and input if we must provide safe and effective medicines for all

The Ministry of health needs to develop and enforce policies around medicines reconciliation and medication reviews especially for patients with long term conditions who need regular medication to improve their quality of life and increase life expectancy and they must ensure that the ‘drug experts’ are given the opportunity to bring their expertise to the table.

Nigerian Clinicians need to work together to ensure adequate measures are put in place and everyone contributes their own quota towards effective healthcare delivery.

The role of the pharmacist in medicines optimisation and patient centred care cannot be overemphasized.

A Platform Model for Scaling the Igbo Apprentice System

By

Nnamdi Odumody

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September 21, 2019

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The Igbo Apprenticeship scheme is a laudable one which helped the Igbo race survive the harsh conditions of the civil war, which saw them lose all their investments, as they were forced to survive on 20 pounds irrespective of their net worth before the ugly episode.

The Apprenticeship scheme is a major factor in the South East having the least poverty rate in Nigeria despite a major absence of critical economic infrastructure to support wealth creation. Most Igbo billionaires and multimillionaires today were products of apprenticeship, and have today become economic champions controlling several aspects of trade and commerce, not just in Nigeria, but the rest of Africa and in the developed world.

In a rapidly changing world where e-commerce has disrupted traditional markets and other digital technologies, revolutionizing industries, the Igbo Apprenticeship model should be transformed to enable it scale at a higher pedestal, creating more value.

Nigerian State Governments and the private sector should establish a partnership where selected young people will be taught modern skills which are relevant to business transformation. After they have undergone tutelage in emotional intelligence, sales and marketing both with digital and offline techniques, agility, design thinking, business intelligence, etc, they will now be deployed to various organizations to serve them through application of their learnt skills.

After they have served those companies for seven years and acquired domain knowledge of the industries they operate in, the CEOs of the companies can now empower those employees who would like to become entrepreneurs of their own, in the line of their business with seed capital to start up, and a network-building on the existing enterprise ( i.e. the platform network model where they will establish businesses which will run on their former company’s infrastructure), creating a win win situation for everyone while reducing poverty.

If this model is adopted across the other geopolitical zones, it will unlock entrepreneurial sustainability and create national prosperity increasing the Gross Domestic Product of Nigeria.

“The most human security secure geo-political zone [in Nigeria] is the South-East” – United Nations

The Major Defect in Igbo Apprenticeship System!

By

Ndubuisi Ekekwe

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September 21, 2019

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As we examine a new application nexus of the Igbo Apprenticeship system, postulated by Dr. Olumide Odeyemi, I note one area which makes the system defective in modern capitalism. Largely, the present model of the system is ineffective and could be updated to be relevant in the new age of commerce and industry. Keep reading!

The soul of the Igbo Apprenticeship System could be likened to the U.S. Federal Reserve which largely works to keep the U.S. dollars stable (by reducing inflation) and maximize employment through interest rates. So, the Reserve has defined main focus areas even though it can use its systems to do other things. Consequently, the U.S. Congress uses those two main factors to ascertain the effectiveness of the Reserve policy. For the Igbo Apprenticeship System, the main focus is to prevent poverty by mass-scaling opportunities for everyone, and not building conglomerates!

So, you have a scenario where a man (trading in a city) goes to his village, picks 3 boys who might have lost their fathers, and decides to ensure they have meaningful lives despite the tragedies that befell them. Those boys serve him for some years, and one afternoon, he invites his kinsmen, friends, business partners and everyone as he “settles” them.

This settlement is simply dividing his market share among these boys. In other words, assume he holds 3% in that specific market, by the time he is done, he might be holding only 2%, releasing 1% to the boys. For him, the growth of his company is not what matters – it is that “his boys” do well. Then, he does not stop there, he begins to send the boys opportunities, making sure they are able to thrive independently. No Western textbook teaches that!

Yes, under Western education, we focus on the accumulation of market share. That is what business schools teach us – and what business, in the Western world, is all about. Come up with ideas and win more market shares. But the Igbo Apprenticeship System is not designed to maximize market share. Rather, it is structured to ensure everyone is just fine. This is the reason you enter into a community, everyone is doing well but no one is an iroko tree.

When a child is born, he belongs to the community. That is why Igbos name their kids “Nwaoha” [the child of the community]. The parents are agents to bring children into the world; the communities have duties to ensure the children thrive.

So, under Igbo Apprenticeship System, you see men who could have built massive assets and empires dividing their acquired market shares for over four decades, happily. That is why you will not see any big conglomerate in Aba, Onisha etc because the Igbo Apprenticeship System is not designed to have one iroko but many trees in the forest!

From the continental and global levels, Igbo Apprenticeship System is defective.But from the community level, it is perfect. There is no beggar in my village in Ovim (Abia State) because there is always help. But those helps come by relinquishing market shares by market leaders even as they fund their future competitors.

Largely, the more you look into the system with Adam Smith economics, the more it looks extremely troubling. But if you look at it with “Igbo Umunneoma” economics, you will marvel what men and women have invented to avoid extreme poverty and inequalities in communities. [Umunneoma means good brethren]

As Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and other U.S. Presidential aspirants speak out over inequalities as digital conglomerates rake all the values while others struggle, the Igbo Apprenticeship System is the most advanced system that is engineered to reduce mass-scaled inequality. But do not expect Amazon, Google, and Facebook to give out market share to competitors, and even fund them.

Yet, from America, they need to understand that some people are already practicing what they hope to happen. If they follow that redesign, the U.S. will become a nation of mass-micro-entities with limited conglomerates. That means, no company will have massive scale to deal with big challenges at the upstream level since accumulated capabilities will be largely downstream.

I will be speaking this October in Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, and I will be looking at a new leadership nexus by examining present market mechanics, human society and culture. A Harvard professor will score the Igbo Apprenticeship System poorly because its market system works against the typical drivers in fixing market frictions: launch, scale, and dominate.

But the 200 CEOs who recently signed to upgrade corporate missions – “purpose of a corporation”- is coming back to a purpose Africans have been practicing for centuries – with solid results of better wellbeing in communities. Yes, humane leadership that seeks for the rise of all over just a few is African, even though everyone is running for the western system because they have convinced us that our system is defective!

Sure, we can improve this system to have it both ways by making sub-members of an apprenticeship hub to be in a cooperative that operates as a conglomerate. This is typical in Europe in entities like Frieslandcampina (makers of Peak Milk) which is owned by a cooperative of dairy farmers, yet structured to grow as a conglomerate. The daily farmers have a clear feeder system for their produce while the corporation works to maximize market share and profit globally.

Nigerian Igbos Run the Largest Business Incubation System in the world – TED Video