The cost of a bad hire or exit is on an average, three times the annual salary of that position once all bottom-line costs are included in calculations, industry experts say
This is an outrageous cost and one of such reasons why Human Resource leaders must ensure their companies hire the right talents and effectively plan for succession at all levels, the experts said at the 2019 edition of the Human Resources workshops organized by The African Talent Company in Lagos.
The event featured over 50 HR Experts and Top Business professionals across different sectors of the economy, who gathered at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Lagos Nigeria to discuss human resource management strategies that help organisations plan for the right hire, identify, develop and retain top-performing talent and position teams for seamless succession.
The event which was themed ‘Talking Talent’ was the maiden edition of a series of HR workshops planned to take place across different countries in Africa and is the brainchild of The African Talent Company (TATC), a Pan-African recruitment firm offering ‘Fit-For-Purpose’ HR solutions across Talent Acquisition, HR Technology, Data Analysis, and Consultancy.
Senior HR professionals from a wide range of top companies and industries, including those from Nigerian Breweries, Mondelez, Rand Merchant Bank, Rossetti Pivot, were in attendance as speakers, panellists, and workshop participants. There were presentations and panel discussions, however, the key activity that struck a chord with the participants was the break-away sessions to deep dive on three key HR pain points: ‘Hiring Right’, ‘Managing Talent’ and ‘Succession Planning’. These one-on-one sessions were respectively led by three talent Gurus: Heather O’Shea – Managing Partner, TATC; Martin Sutherland – Global Director, PeopleTree Group and Brett Mulder – COO, PeopleTree Group.
One insight that stood out, was the fact that succession planning was not commonly practiced at Nigerian companies and that implies that teams do not have the required bench strength and had to be reset whenever top performers leave.
It was quite a revelation as HR leaders at the workshop said they faced challenges which varied from the lack of support from team members who refused to mentor designated successors, to HR teams who did not know how to design and implement a succession plan.
Brett Mulder, who led the breakout group on Succession planning, said, “Succession planning must be ingrained into the DNA of the organisation, with top management ownership and engagement”.
He explained that organisations should among other things, identify key roles for succession; define the competencies and motivational profile required; assess people against these criteria; identify pools of talent that could potentially fill these roles and finally, develop employees to be ready for advancement into key roles
“When you find good people, in an organization, HR executives need to make the value proposition of the firm interesting to them at every stage of their journey with the firm, so they can be motivated to deliver more,” Hilda Kragha, CEO for Jobberman said while chairing a panel discussion.
While deliberating on how HR could identify top performers and retain them, Martin Sutherland who was a panellist said, “personalisation of employee’s engagement was important by ensuring they use tailor-made and strategic processes to deliver a career growth and support plan that was relevant to each individual”.
In engagements with TATC clients in 2019, they asked how best they could future-proof their businesses to ensure they have the right skills to continue to grow well past 2020. This was the key pain point.
To address this, TATC decided to have a workshop, where it could share insights and offer talent specialists bringing their expertise to share with clients.
Delegates were offered the opportunity to have a one-on-one session to speak about their challenges.
The results were intriguing, as key insights around the challenges HR leaders face in succession planning and workforce planning were discovered and discussed. This is a high-impact workshop series that will occur regularly across the different markets that TATC operate.
Heather O’Shea, who focused on hiring right, also said, “top companies all struggle with getting their workforce planning correct, not knowing when to ‘Buy, Borrow, Build or Bind’ the skill. This can be very costly, from a time, money and emotional perspective and we want to make it easy for HR leaders to understand how to choose the right strategy”. To facilitate this learning, participants were given a free workforce planning template and a demonstration on how to use this template at their respective companies.
The African Talent Company (TATC) is a subsidiary of The Ringier One Africa Media Group, housing the biggest and most successful recruitment websites in Africa, including Jobberman in Nigeria and Ghana, BrighterMonday in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. TATC is well-versed in understanding and solving the complex HR challenges in Africa today and takes pride in delivering the right people for the right job; thereby ensuring the clients’ growth and continued success in Africa. TATC is proudly building Africa’s businesses with Africa’s own talent and the team is spread across six countries and growing.
