Kunle Agboola is General Manager, HR Operations at Global Manpower Limited, the outsourcing subsidiary of MacTay, a leading management consulting firm in Nigeria, providing HR services to clients across Africa. In this interview with Sampson Unamka, the human resource expert shares interesting insights on the outsourcing landscape as it concerns the future of work in Nigeria and beyond. Excerpts:
What would you consider the future of work against the backdrop of post-Covid-19 pandemic, especially within the Nigerian context?
When we talk about the future of work in a post-pandemic world, we speak to flexibility, innovation, and enterprise. The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted labour markets globally in 2020. The short-term consequences were sudden and severe. Millions of people lost their jobs while others had to rapidly adjust to working from home as offices closed. Hybrid work is here to stay as it has become mainstream, there is no doubt that the future is hybrid. Organisations must consistently deliver on well-being as part of the strategies to attract and retain talent. In the future of work, the role of managers is changing and they need to be more intentional in establishing and developing relationships with their team members. The manager-employee relationship is critical in shaping the employee experience and connection to the organisation. There is need to constantly re-examine workforce planning, emerging skills, the impact of artificial intelligence, and the employee experience, among others. There is need for brands to undertake digital business transformations to evolve the product lifecycle, operations, and internal capabilities.
Is outsourcing a bane or blessing, what is your take?
The advantages of outsourcing far outweigh its disadvantages. From cost savings and efficiency gains to greater competitive advantage, the benefits of outsourcing are quite substantial. Outsourcing supports brands to leverage knowledge and skills along with a complete supply chain. Outsourcing also helps to make businesses more flexible and agile, with the ability to adapt to changing market conditions and challenges while providing cost savings and service level improvements. By outsourcing core and non-core business functions, organisations are able to focus on brand building, research, and development, including critical aspects of the business whilst providing higher value-added services. Outsourcing is here to stay and as the industry continues to evolve, challenges will be addressed and managed.
As a major player within the outsourcing landscape, what has been the contribution to the country’s GDP in the last 12 months?
At Global Manpower Limited, we pride ourselves as the leading outsourcing company in Nigeria. For over 35 years, we have strategically supported our partner clients, providing top outsourcing services to various sectors of the economy, including oil and gas, and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), energy, telecommunications, among others. Our business process outsourcing solutions have helped the Nigerian economy grow and be in tune with international business ethics while reducing the high unemployment rate in Nigeria. Through the work we do, we generate substantial income for citizens whether skilled or semi-skilled. We have been diversifying the economy through outsourcing. From employee outsourcing to business process outsourcing, IT outsourcing, payroll management, and call centre solutions, to commercial and field marketing solutions, outsourcing is a strategic tool for job creation. Outsourcing in all its variants is increasingly being leveraged by developing and emerging countries as an effective management tool to drive economic growth and employment generation.
The theme of this year’s expo is “Top post-pandemic outsourcing trends for businesses- opportunities and threats,” what informed this the theme, and what can you say about it?
Business as we knew it took a drastic turnaround as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. We had to adapt and evolve either as business owners, professionals, or managing partners. From insecurity, to potential losses, there became an urgent need to reimagine the future of outsourcing and adaptability measures to employ. This year’s expo is coming at the right time as there is need to constantly have conversations on best practices in relation to cost efficiency, flexibility, speed to market, access to tools, processes, and agility. The pandemic altered the business dynamics overnight and brands had to quickly realise that adaptation in an agile manner is key. We have started to witness an acceleration in process digitalisation even as more high-level digital-enabled processes are coming on board.
How is Global Manpower positioned to reshape the future of outsourcing?
For us at Global Manpower Limited, leadership, foresight, and innovation are crucial to the work that we do. Having been in the outsourcing industry for over 35 years, we are set to scale up to the next level in terms of tech-enabled solutions, and automation technology to offset labor deficit in the near future. We understand that more high-end critical business functions will be outsourced in the next decade, while outsourcing of low-end services will stabilise and we are constantly expanding our capacity to accommodate this. Finding and keeping talent will be even more challenging and part of our positioning is to continually work with our parent company, MacTay to offer customised and high-level training solutions on demand through our e-learning platforms. MacTay Consulting has been providing strategic HR consulting and learning, development solutions for over 40 years. This would prepare and motivate talents for the future of work and position our partners to lead the change and retain talents through a healthy work culture.
To outsource or not, that is the question. What is your position on this?
Despite whatever opposing views that may have been presented, outsourcing has continued to grow and is being embraced by organisations of all sizes and domains. From start-ups to large enterprises, outsourcing continues to be a tool of choice, to gain a competitive advantage in the business landscape. Outsourcing your business gives you access to a broader range of professionals and expertise so why won’t I outsource as a business leader. By outsourcing, the business can remove non-core activities from its daily management so that it can focus more of its energy and time on its core business. By outsourcing, a business would free up internal resources to have more time to focus on the core business vs. non-core activities. You may also want to consider the cost versus time spent. For instance, when deciding whether to outsource work, perform a cost-versus-time calculation. You may be able to do the tasks in-house, but that time will take away from your current full-time salaried staff’s accomplishing more strategy-specific goals. If you however outsource it, you will be saving your core employees the time that would have been taken away from their full-time tasks. If you have a task that you do not have a team for yet, it’s okay to outsource such.
What would you say is the future of outsourcing?
The future of outsourcing is digital. Outsourcing providers will increasingly use digital systems to offer faster, smarter, better, and more affordable services. Business automation will continually increase and evolve, outsourcing contracts will move from traditional to digital models. At Global Manpower Limited, we are already seeing the big picture and the road ahead and we are looking into digital outsourcing as the future. This includes creating digital execution strategies, maintaining and configuring digital systems, handling exceptions, integrating across digital platforms, monitoring outcomes, and interpreting data. The future of outsourcing will also see a great focus on security. According to US research, reports revealed that cyber-attacks increased by 600% since the start of the pandemic. Another research published on Statista said that some of the cyber-attacks that increased following the pandemic included data leaks, phishing emails, and account takeovers, among others. These attacks will become more prominent as technology evolves taking a multi-level security approach will become a standard for many BPO companies. This way, they can eliminate risks while protecting their data.