Category: Business

To become iconic brands leading their categories, experts have advised businesses to develop their manpowers. They concluded that since workers were ambassadors of companies, their quality training speaks volumes of companies’ brands.

At interactive lectures, hosted recently by Tom Associates, a business consulting firm in Lagos, HR professionals spoke on cutting- edge methods for getting the best out of employees, materialising employees’ potential, and by doing so, revamping the images of businesses.

The Human Resource Director of Guinness Nig. Plc. Mr Wale Adediran said: “Human capital development is a competitive edge to be leveraged by businesses. It is a key differentiator. It helps brands to standout.” He explained to the audience, some of whom are his peers leading human resources departments of well-known companies, that though the methods employed may seem generic, however some tweaking could be done to make it better.

Mr. Adediran proposed a middle ground of partnering with businesses that are into human capital development, rather than training the employees in-house or leaving them entirely in the hands of training vendors who might not understand the specific know-hows to be imparted. He however emphasised that the collaboration must be floated within feasible budget range.

He expatiated, “In partnering with businesses to help them train their employees effectively, a confidentiality agreement could be reached by both parties whereby companies would freely divulge information that will enable (third party) trainers instill the right training in employees to boost revenue and brand. This is not so when their is no partnership: companies only provide anecdotal evidence and have no real data to support their ROI arguments. The data is there, but HR doesn’t know where to find it. This impedes human capital development.”

He rounded off, “Since training budget is usually the first to be sacrificed in the face of budget-cut, human capital development professionals should make their work count to foster relevance.”

Director of Human Resources Department, Central Bank of Nigeria, Ms. Chizoba Mojekwu, had a similar approach to improving business brands: “The engagement of HR with stakeholders to develop manpower”. She said, “In private sector, good communication with stakeholders is pertinent if the organisation involved must succeed at what it sets out to do. As manpower development professionals, our engagement with our internal and external stakeholders will determine our effectiveness and define how efficient we are. It justifies our being accepted as business partners with our various organisations.”

She said all parties must be ready to lay bare on all necessary aspects crucial to meeting the goals of manpower development.

Ms. Mojekwu and Mr. Adediran both also emphasised on the strategic execution of human capital development by making it an academically evolving exercise rather than the prevalent traditional and rigid practices that ought to have been confined to the past.

Since the unfortunate crash of one of its planes in Lagos on June 3, last year, Dana Airlines has been in the eye of the storm both within the public and private sectors of the economy. More so, its recent recertification and commencement of operations triggered even more controversy in some quarters. Given this scenario, the airline’s corporate communications manager , Tony Usidamen, in this interactive session with brand writers at its office penultimate week explained why the Dana Air brand does not need to rebrand.

Given the magnitude of the tragedy, which definitely would have impacted negatively on brand Dana Air, are you thinking of rebranding?

A- It’s a very unfortunate incident that affected lots of people. But as safe as the aviation is, as per global statistics, it is still not 100 per cent accident free. As a result, accidents have been recorded in different parts of the world, including Nigeria.

In Europe, in the recent history of aviation, between 2008 and 2009, Air France and BA that suffered similar incident too did not have to change the names of their airlines. And if we come locally as well there was an airline that suffered a crash and continued with its operations with the same name and months after, for commercial reason, the management decided to rest the operations of the airline. So, management can decide for different reasons to either retain the name of an airline or change the name or re-brand as it were.

The only airline that we know that has changed name, did that because that airline was indicted because the processes and systems were grossly inadequate.  So, the airline wanted to get away from the link with that name. But most of these incidents sometimes are not due to the fact that the airline was not doing something right. When you change a name sometimes there might be a bad connotation, people might think well maybe they are doing something wrong.

Before the incident Dana Airline had a good reputation and so far the preliminary report, released by the only official body that can produce a report, the AIB, has never said anything to the contrary. So at the moment one can still rest on that reputation that we had, since no report has so far shown any deficiency on the airline.

We believe that we have nothing to hide, even though re-branding can’t be a good strategy. In the case of Dana we’ve decided to continue our operations with the same name, and the onus is on us to prove to the travelling public and allay the fears that they have, regarding the unfortunate incident. From the management perspective, we are not looking at re-branding, based on the reputation we have built over the years, based on the fact that the preliminary investigation report released so far, has not indicted the airline, in any way in its processes. This is why we are continuing operations with our name for now

There are allegations that the Dana brand is not demonstrating enough sympathy to the families and relations of the air crash?

After the incident, we tried to visit every family, from the Managing Director, Deputy Managing Director down. Everybody was part of the visit. Some were not prepared to see us, while some said I don’t want your money, even though we still went to the funerals. While I agree that a lot of things could have been done better, but in terms of funeral there are certain things we couldn’t do, even though we wanted to.

There were two things at the back of our minds in the communication we have been rolling out since the accident. First, assist the families of the victims as much as possible. This we communicated and tried to demonstrate in all the things that we do in the aftermath of the accident. Besides the visits made by everybody including directors of the company to the families, we also put in place processes to ensure that, even though money cannot bring back the dead, what they are due, they get. Just to ensure that as much as it is possible for a human being to do, we can make the process easier on the family.

Nothing that we could have done that would have brought back their loved ones, but we wanted to be there for them as much as we could. So besides the visits, we opened channels of communication for them. We had  toll-free numbers that they could call. Even before a lot of people started talking about compensation, we had started calling on the victims’ next of kins to please come forward because we understand our duties to them and we were willing to fulfil them. And this was why immediately after the incident; we took the decision to suspend our operations even before the directive from the federal government came.

Why did it take Dana Airline six months to regain  its operational licence?

This is one question we ourselves seem to be asking. What happened to us is an aberration from the norm. In strict aviation guidelines and rules, you do not ground an airline after the incident. Interestingly to the question of cost, this is not a subject we can talk about now because it’s an insult to the memories of people who lost their lives. For us we are not concerned really with how much money we have lost so far. The greatest loss to us is not money but families that we lost because at Dana Air, we consider all our guests as part of the Dana family. So, losing part of our family and our colleagues is our greatest loss. So the greatest loss to us is not money.

What are the strategies that would re-ignite customers’ passion in the Dana brand?

There is no extra ordinary strategy that we adopted, but we hope to keep the information flow as much as possible. May be we have not done enough in that regard, but we need to do a lot in pushing information on everything that we are doing out there. A lot of perception right now is based on inadequate understanding of how the aviation industry works, and secondly, sundry issues like accident investigations, people don’t understand.

Nigeria’s leading computer-based testing and talent management firm, Dragnet Solutions, has appointed Mediacraft Associates its PR agency.

This appointment, according to Dragnet’s Managing Director, Mr. Robert Ikazoboh, is a significant step in establishing the company as the most advanced computer-based testing company as well as a leading provider in technology- based screening and integrity solutions.

He said: “Without a doubt, we are Nigeria’s fastest growing computer-based testing and talent management company. In five years, we have grown to establish ourselves as a force to be reckoned with in computer based tests and examinations; technology based people screening solutions; e-recruitment as well as scholarship and bursary management. Despite all our achievements, we remain driven to move to the next level. That is why we decided to engage the services of one of the most professional PR and IMC companies in the country.”

The Chief Executive Officer of Mediacraft Associates, Mr John Ehiguese, said his firm was excited to working with Dragnet Solutions which he described as a “young, vibrant and innovative brand with a vision of revolutionising processes and systems.”

He said: “We are truly excited at the prospect of working with Dragnet Solutions. Dragnet may only be five years old but they have done enough to cement their reputation among their target market as an innovative company. I am confident that Mediacraft Associates will justify the enormous confidence reposed in us by Dragnet Solutions and help grow the corporate brand and its products even more.”