‘A country is only as big as what her citizens know’

Kunle Olaifa, a human resources expert, is lead human resources manager for Samsung across West Africa. In this insightful interview, he x-rays issues surrounding human capital development in Nigeria, HR challenges, among others. He spoke with KELECHI EWUZIE.

Challenges facing HR community

The biggest challenge facing the human resource community in Nigeria, Africa and other parts of the world is the issue of HR becoming a strategic partner. Every HR manager out there is looking at how HR can sit at the table with management where key decisions are made and be able to strategically connect.

HR is a business driver actually. So one challenge every HR manager has is to be able to prove to business owners that they are strategic partners. This is a challenge that HR managers have inadvertently brought upon themselves by being very administrative in the past.

Another key challenge is the issue of talent management. HR managers are challenged on how they can maximise the potentials in managers and business owners.

Skill gap challenge

Well, I think the problem is systemic. It is a function of our country. It is not the graduates that don’t want to be good. The other question we need to ask ourselves as a people is: what other things that we produce as a nation actually come out good?

As government and employers, we sometimes ask our graduates to be excellent. We need to ask: how many of our companies are excellent? How many Nigerian-born companies have become multinational or have become regional players?

So the environment in itself also dictates what you get from the companies. If you look at the few companies we have that are local or the ones that are multinational that have thrived, it is because they realise the need to grow so they are beginning to invest in growing people. I will say that the better the business environment, the better the kind of businesspeople we produce, the better the industries, the better the feedbacks to the school which will in turn affect the graduates that such schools produce.

Looking back, the best time in education in Nigeria was in the early 1950s, ’60s, and maybe ’70s. This was so because it was the period the country was an emerging power in the world, so it was important for Nigeria to produce its own goods. It was the time when the nation was part of the British Empire. So there was a deliberate effort to get good graduates because employees then were like tools in the hand of the company.

Nigeria as a whole is probably not working very well and this is something we need to look deeper into to know what the issues are. I usually talk about the issue of generational skill gap. What our schools are still teaching today was what my parents needed when we were in the industrial age; we have gone way past industrial age, now we are in the knowledge age. So you can rightly say that a country is only as big as what her citizens know, not the resources that lie underground.

Getting good graduate talents involves getting an environment that is conducive. Nigeria as a whole is not encouraging enough for us to grow skills in certain fields of endeavour because the tools required to grow these people from the education system – from facilities in schools to the business that should even challenge people – are not available. It is only until these things are made available that we will begin to see the difference.

That is why if you look at the private schools, many of them are still good in the social sciences and not in the technical areas but with time, all those things will keep coming up. We are already seeing individuals setting up technical schools, and companies setting up technical practice to grow these skills. It is a function of necessity: if there is a need for these things, they start to come up, and production for it will increase. It is about supply and demand. The demands for these talents are much but the industries that really need them are not available. The truth of the matter is that the environment cannot produce what it does not need.

Motivation  

My motivation for being in HR is centred on how to manage human capital to get better. The truth is that what makes any country, company or family better is the quality of the people. So I have come to love the idea of looking at how HR can help improve the resources that are human, which is one of the most interesting things that a company can have.

My biggest drive has always been the challenges I have faced. Another motivation for me is that I see nothing as impossible. I feel lucky that I am in HR because I am dealing with the only product that companies have that responds but does not have a perfect way of response. At no point in time in any company will you have 100 percent of the employees agreeing on one thing. HR is so dynamic and these are the things that have really motivated me to be in it. I love it when I realise that my role as HR manager contributes almost immediately to the bottom line.