Mrs Janet Jolaoso is the President/Chairman of Council, Nigerian Institute of Training & Development (NITAD). In this interview, she says no organisation can grow without continuous training of workers. She speaks with Assistant Editor Okwy Iroegbu-Chikezie
What does Nigerian Institute of Training & Development (NITAD) have to offer to industries in these days of recession?
The institute has a vision, which is to be a world-class body in learning, training, facilitation and development. Our main focus is to develop and maintain best practices in these four areas by providing mandatory, continuous professional education to our members, so that they can deliver effectively when they have clients. I believe knowledge is light.When they deliver effectively, there will be increase in productivity and we will also be able to influence our environment through this positively. It is about ensuring that people change for better, so that the economy can improve.
When you talk of ensuring best practices, is it in the private or the public sector?
It is for both the public and private sectors. Training and development cut across everything in life. After your education in the university, nobody actually gather people to teach them management. You begin as a professional medical doctor, engineer or whatsoever your field is. But as time goes on and you acquire more experience and prove yourself to be good, you begin to manage people. So, NITAD is to ensure that you have effective management of people, so that they can deliver.
You have talked about increasing productivity and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In practical terms, how can you achieve this?
In this age and time, people need to look inwards to see what they can do. We come in by helping to see how attitudes, skills and knowledge can increase.The more knowledgeable you are about a certain job, the better you become in doing it and when you sharpen your skills, it helps in cost reduction. Money and jobs are scarce in the country but improving skill and attitude can go a long way to being cost effective and affording people the opportunity to afford a particular product against its competitors. All these can curb recession. The idea is that if your price does not increase much and the value that people are getting from your products on the other hand is increasing, no matter how bad the recession period may look, you will still keep being in business. So, these are the areas we come in to improve the skills, knowledge and attitude of people through effective training packages.
How do you structure your training to fight poverty? Does it include those in the lower rung of the ladder?
We have postgraduate diploma in various courses that can help to upscale people, especially in lower management cadre and we have also developed what we call a finishing school. So, if one has a School Leaving Certificate, for instance, and is seeking admission and may be without money to do anything for yourself, we will be able to help you look inwards for what you can do. Many young people roaming the streets find it difficult to articulate their thoughts and see where their passion lies. When I was in secondary school in Mayflower, we had different societies – shoe making, wrist watch repairing, and catering. We were taught how to repair shoes, wrist watches, change bulbs, etc. Some who couldn’t get admission into tertiary institutions for one reason or the other went into these businesses and some of them are very successful cobblers today. Our desire is to help to pursue their passion; our belief is that it is not a university degree that can make one successful. We not only train people on lucrative skills but also help them raise funds and expose them to markets. And for the young graduates, a lot of them don’t really understand what etiquette is all about. For instance, you want to go for interview, how do you prepare yourself for people to see you as the preferred candidate above and among others? So, we prepare them in terms of dressing, approach, mannerisms. Some people fail interview because of their mannerisms, dressing; when you see green on red, you wonder where to start. All these are things we are packaging because it is a big market and it is a large gap from coming out of the university. That’s why we say education does not make a man. It is not only in character alone, it is also in your appearance and mannerisms.
Most organisations lack the basic rudiments of ethics.Does your institute address these?
We organise learners’ forum at least once in a year and we look for a topic that is germane to situations in the country. Corruption is endemic and is not allergic to any sector, people tend to see corruption as a public sector thing but l disagree. The only difference is that in the private sector, the likelihood of the owners of a business challenging a manager, for instance, is high unlike in the public service. Due to bureaucracy and nepotism, people are not held responsible for whatever job they are given. To tackle corruption in Nigeria, we need to attack the mind-set. Once we can address the inner man to start thinking differently, they will behave differently.
As the president of the institute, what are your achievements?
When we came on board, we set up an eight-point agenda. One of them is to complete our chartered status processing. Currently, our Bill has gone through the first and second readings in the House of Representatives and public hearing. We will be at the Senate in a few weeks. This is very significant because if we are not backed by law, we will not be able to regulate training, development, facilitation and learning in the country. When we are chartered, before anybody can engage in consultancy or training as a means of reward profession, he must register with us. For example, if a woman wants to cook, there are some steps you must take. If you don’t take those steps, the result will not be the same. If you want to be a trainer, there are steps you must take and there are certain principles you must know to effectively deliver the value that the client is expecting. Aside from the fact that we regulate that, and make sure that when you are buying into anybody’s services, you ask for evidence of being a member of NITAD because any member of NITAD must have gone through training the trainer. We also produce the membership directory and categorise our members as part of the agenda. The other thing is to also improve the soft skill areas of training. Whether you are working in a company or you are manager, you need management skills to manage your people effectively. What happens is that some people are promoted but this intervention is not there so when they become executive directors for instance, they will lack managerial skills. In that situation what you see is a executive managing the job instead of managing the people who will manage the job. In most cases, you will see some bosses go over their immediate subordinates because nobody taught them to manage the people, but only trained to manage the job.Another achievement is that we have raised our acceptance index. We now see people calling us, obtaining out forms at very high profile level. We have people from the National Assembly, director-generals and Heads of Service that are willing to join us.
What is your advice to the government in terms of job creation?
The government needs to come up with a policy, including creating a body that will look into skill acquisition and implementation. There must be a body, an independent agency, that should be dedicated to skill acquisition and full implementation. Furthermore, when people have acquired the needed skill, avenues must be created to empower them until they practise what they have learnt. Many youths are frustrated because they have gone ahead to acquire skills without funding for them. Our proposition to the government is to come up with an interest-free loan with less stringent conditions. This will help create entrepreneurs who will be employers.
What role is NITAD playing to regulate learning and development?
We are kick-starting our mandatory continuous professional examination this month for our members. And, invariably, when you are chartered, if you want to be a training consultant, you must be our member. Not only that, you will go through training the trainer course, but you also have to have this mandatory continuous examina-tion. You must know what is going on in other countries and you must know the best way to deliver the value that your clients are expecting from you. We keep upgrading our knowledge and we also want to pass this on to our members.
Who are these members?
We have various members, such as those training for reward in the administrative sector and those heading training departments. Our members cut across all professions but mainly those who are into training and development either for reward or for where they are working as leaders. We also have student members. They go through the PostGraduate Diploma (PGD). In addition we are also collaborating with the University of Ibadan (UI), where people can come for our course and use it to obtain a degree.
