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There’s no doubt that one of the primary objectives of any business is to achieve optimal growth; and this cannot be achieved without adequate infrastructure.

Business Infrastructure are the basic facilities, structures, and services upon which the rest of a business is built. It is common to think of infrastructure as physical things but basic software services and technology tools are also considered infrastructure. The importance of technology in business cannot be understated. Companies worldwide are relying on emerging technologies to help improve their competitive advantage and drive strategy and growth. Today, we cannot even consider doing business without the internet, project management apps and more. In fact, the role of technology in business will only continue to expand.

High-quality infrastructure provides direct positive impacts, including higher efficiency, increased safety, decreased environmental impact, and more effective delivery of public goods and services. In most cases, it’s easy to appreciate the value delivered by quality infrastructure.

Thus, infrastructure is one of the most critical factors for business and economic development because it interacts with the business and economy through the production processes. Therefore, changes in the quality of infrastructure available for production will greatly impact the production and performance of an organization’s levels of output, income, profits and employment creation in the economy.

Smart Businesses understand their business infrastructure should be;

• Easily accessible to enhance visibility, give access to larger pull of customers, and enhance commuting among many other benefits;
• Well-equipped because having the right and adequate tools is imperative to successful completion of the task at hand. These tools include devices, equipment, mechanisms, resources, applications — anything that is utilized during the job to assist in completing a task;
• Safe, as a safe and healthy workplace not only protects workers and customers from injury and illness, but also lower injury/illness costs, reduce absenteeism and turnover, increase productivity and quality, and raise employee morale;
• Quality, as quality infrastructure reduce cost that would otherwise be spent on continued repairs, saves time, enhance productivity, and yields quality output that helps to satisfy and maintain client’s loyalty;
• Well managed, as better management of infrastructure can lead to reduction in operation and support cost.

However, research shows that inadequate infrastructure remains one of the problematic factors hindering the development of businesses in Nigeria (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2012).

These infrastructural challenges hindering business development can be attributed to the huge cost involved in;

Acquiring Suitable Location

The importance of location in business success cannot be understated. An adequate business location enhances its brand and image; the reputation of a location reflects on the reputation of the business. In addition, irrespective of how large a business might be, it won’t be successful if its customers don’t realize its existence. Thus, the positioning of an enterprise in an area where people look forward to setting their foot is one of the best things that drive business success. Despite the fact that establishing a business in an environment that sees a lot of people and traffic support business growth, many entrepreneurs settle for environment that is less likely to promote their business. In most cases, this is because, good locations are often occupied by other businesses, and the cost of infrastructure in such environment is often very exorbitants.

In addition to the cost of building, buying, or renting a structure in a conducive environment, businesses are enforced to pay varying expenses such as tax, insurance, etc.

Procuring workplace resources

Every business requires varieties of resources to enhance it works. The right resources allow businesses to complete their task efficiently, which affords employees opportunities to expand their range of capabilities.

These resources range from common physical workplace facilities like adequate work desk to more sophisticated business tools. Quality infrastructure should utilize the best available technology to be reliable, economically and environmentally efficient, and should supports health and safety of the workers and customers.

However, a common challenge faced by many professionals is that they lack the necessary tools and resources to do their jobs effectively. This struggle spans all job levels and departmental functions, and most definitely impacts business.  It results in workplace frustration, poor moral, reduced productivity and declining financial performance. 

Overcoming this challenge requires strategic plans; plans which smart entrepreneurs have devised to enhance their business.

Managing the resources

For people to do their best work and feel engaged in their environments, they need to leverage well managed infrastructure that are safe, welcoming, and efficient. Where they work, learn and rejuvenate should be comfortable, productive, and sustainable.

Maintaining a sustainable environment goes beyond initial sourcing of the best resources. Assets are bound to depreciate over time. Problem as small as burnt socket can halt productivity. Hence for continued sustainability, businesses entrepreneurs are faced with the challenge of providing tools and services that support the functionality, safety, and sustainability of buildings, facilities, and equipment among others. 

Experienced managers know that the costs of maintaining workplace infrastructure can far exceed a simple rental payment.

These infrastructural challenges among many others affects many businesses in many ways;

1. Low Productivity

The scarcity of workspace in suitable environment, and high cost associated with acquiring infrastructure in such location has caused many businesses to settle for poor and cheap environment. These poor environments end up hindering their visibility, accessibility, competitiveness, etc.

As such, infrastructure that fails to meet the standards of efficiency, safety, and economic sustainability may be less expensive in the short term but imposes huge costs on the productivity, future growth, and development of the business.

2. Problem of Expansion

Being able to reach and deliver services to customers in diverse location can greatly enhance business growth by helping businessesreach more people that were previously outside their physical range, and making it more convenient for customers to work with them.

However, while great businesses are leveraging on multiple locations and quality infrastructure to enhance their businesses, many businesses are losing huge business opportunities because they are localized in one region. This problem has been largely attributed to the high cost of acquiring infrastructure, as adding a new location will mean new bills.

3. The death of Business.

The high cost of business infrastructure has led to the death of many businesses. Many young entrepreneurs have great business and innovative ideas but cannot bring them to life due to the high cost attached to acquiring necessary infrastructure for proper implementation of works.

In addition, the inability of many businesses to cope with the high cost of procuring adequate workplace facilities and managing them has led to gradual decrease in productivity and subsequently, the closure of many organizations.

Here is how.

Rather than expending a huge cost on owning and managing quality business infrastructure in diverse suitable locations to enhance their works, Smart Businesses are cutting cost and expanding network by leveraging on shared workspace in different locations.

Shared space service providers allow workers of different organization utilize their office space, allowing cost savings and convenience through the use of common infrastructures, such as equipment, utilities, and receptionist and custodial services, and in some cases refreshments and parcel acceptance services.

The Benefits of Using a Shared Space

1. Cost Flexibility and Effectiveness

The main benefit of shared offices is arguably their cost-effectiveness and flexibility. They allow creative individuals, freelancers, start-up businesses, new entrepreneurs other businesses to maintain an office within a prime location at flexible times without needing to spend too much on a traditional office.

2. Top-of-the-line Infrastructure

Shared offices come with amenities that are pertinent to operating a business. In addition to internet connectivity, many shared spaces have dedicated reception personnel, who can accept visitors and deliveries.

3. Saves Users the Responsibility Managing Infrastructures

Shared Space further allows users to avoid the huge responsibility of maintaining an office space for the long term, thus allows these businesses to save a lot of money.

4. Fosters Business Expansion

With cost the flexibility and effectiveness of shared space, smart businesses leverage different shared space in different locations to reach many customers, execute works and enhance their growth.

5. Collaboration and Networking Opportunities

Shared offices also allow individuals and groups to work closely together, and even though they belong to different organizations; these people are given the chance of connecting with each other and finding others in the same field. These spaces foster collaboration and networking opportunities for knowledge sharing, partnerships, and establishing new leads and referrals, which will be good for new small businesses and budding entrepreneurs.

6. Finding a Shared Space

With the internet today, finding a shared space in suitable location has become easy. Terraskills Learning Systems Limited offer shared space services called Terrannovation Hubs with adequate infrastructure for both real-time and virtual usage.

Terrannovation Hubs offer aesthetically pleasing coworking space and halls suitable for;

• Training programmes;
• Seminars;
• Meetings;
• Projects;
• Interviews, etc.

The Hubs are fully equipped with state-of-the-art facilities such as comfortable work desk, air-conditioner, smart television; flip chart board; projector; white boards, etc.

The ambience the facilities creates lasting impressions on users and their partners, and enhances their productivity.

With Terrannovation Hub, you can elude several infrastructural challenges and expand your business.

Despite the large number of applications per job, recruiters are struggling to find candidates with the right skills. Your degree will have provided you with a whole host of subject-specific and transferrable skills. Despite this it’s imperative that you convey how you’ve gained the core attributes that you think would make you a worthwhile addition to the organization. 

Here are some of the most common key skills that graduate employers expect you to demonstrate. It’s vital that you understand these skills, and how you can show that you’ve developed them, in order to write a successful job application.

1. Resilience

This refers to your ability to deal with setbacks, and is something that graduate employers have increasingly started to consider. How well do you cope with stressful situations or when something goes wrong? How do you react to unexpected changes or problems that occur during a project? 

You aren’t expected to be unaffected by these events, but you need to be able to show that you react to them positively and are able to develop strategies to deal with them.

2. Commercial awareness

Also known as business acumen, this is all about understanding how an industry or particular organization works – where it sits in the market, who its competitors are and having knowledge of current developments in the field.

To exhibit commercial awareness, you’ll need to show you’ve done your research on the company and the sector it sits in. Membership of a professional organization or relevant work experience can also be used to illustrate this skill.

3. Good communication

This is about how clearly you put across your ideas and your ability to listen to others. Employers will be keen to see how you build rapport, persuade and negotiate.

Use your CV or application form to outline specific written and verbal examples of when you’ve put these skills into practice. This might be any public speaking you’ve done, or writing for a student newspaper, for example. Show how you tailored your message to the target audience.

4. Effective leadership and management

Even if you’re not applying for a management position, you’ll still need to demonstrate to employers that you have the potential to motivate and lead others in order to achieve common objectives. It’s also important to evidence the skill of self-management – demonstrating a situation where you’ve managed your own time successfully.

On application forms, detail situations where you’ve had the opportunity to plan and coordinate tasks during your degree or in extra-curricular activities such as university clubs and societies. The ability to solve problems and conflicts is always highly valued by recruiters.

5. Planning and research skills

To accomplish certain work tasks, you may need to come up with a suitable strategy and plan of action. This could involve seeking out relevant information from various sources. How you analyze, interpret and report these findings is what’s important here.

Highlight the relevant skills that you’ve developed during your degree – reading around a subject and analyzing that information before writing an essay, for instance, or interpreting the results of a scientific experiment.

6. Self-management skills

Self-management skills are skills that allow you to manage your time and be as productive as possible within the workplace. These skills ensure you prioritize tasks effectively, focus on your professional growth and contribute to your organization as a whole. Good self-management skills to include on your resume include time management, organization and self-motivation.

7. Organizational skills

Organizational skills are essential to an employee’s productivity, timemanagement and goal achievement. They are beneficial in any professional position and are highly sought after by employers. Organizational skills that are especially important include planning, critical thinking, attention to detail and conflict management.

8. Computer skills

Nearly every occupation requires the use of a computer in some capacity. Many jobs require more in-depth knowledge of computers, so including this skillset on your resume is necessary to show employers you are familiar with computer basics at a minimum. If the job you are applying for requires more advanced computer skills, be sure to highlight these on your resume as well if you possess them. Computer skills to highlight include being able to use word processing, spreadsheets, social media, data visualization and email communication.

9. Adaptability

Organizations’ want to stay competitive so it’s essential to show employers that you’re able to adapt to new situations and learn new skills in the workplace. Possessing this skill also tells employers that you’re a good leader who handles challenges well.

To evidence this in your application you could use examples of a time you’ve learned new skills or processes at university or an instance when you’ve adapted to a new or challenging situation in your part-time job.

10. Teamwork and interpersonal skills

Most graduates will have had the chance to work in teams during their time at university and in part-time jobs or work placements. Employers will be looking at your individual contribution towards achieving common goals.

This isn’t just about times when you’ve led a team successfully, but also when you’ve been an effective team member taking instructions and direction from somebody else.

11. Reliability and Dependability

Doing what you say you will by the deadline you have agreed, and turning up when you are meant to be there. Employers want employees who they can trust to perform their duties and meet deadlines without having to micro-manage them. Having a great work ethic ensures you can complete your tasks and manage your work effectively even when no one is regularly checking your progress.

12. Teachability

A willingness to learn new skills, whether those are job-specific or more general.

13. Relevant work experience

Having some work experience related to the job you’re applying for is increasingly important given the competition for graduate roles. It is something that most employers will look for when assessing candidates.

For many people today, a career for life is no longer an option. Most people will hold jobs with a variety of employers and move across different employment sectors through their working life.

We therefore all need to be flexible in our working patterns and be prepared if we believe there are better opportunities elsewhere.

For this, we need to understand that we all have a set of transferable skills or employability skills. These are skills that are not specific to one particular career path but are useful across all employment sectors. Your education and experience may make you eligible to apply for a job but, to be successful in most roles, you will need skills that you are likely to develop over time. Some will be specific to the job, but the vast majority will be so-called ‘soft skills’ that can be used in any job or employment sectors. These soft skills are ‘employability skills’: they are what makes you employable.

As a general rule, employers are willing to teach someone the job-specific skills required, such as how to operate particular pieces of machinery, or use particular computer packages that are very specific to that role or company. However, they usually want to see that you already have the other ‘soft skills’ before hiring, because they are much harder to teach.

Employability or ‘soft skills’ are the building blocks of your career. The media frequently run stories on how these skills are lacking in school-leavers, graduates and/or those already in employment. Organizations spend a lot of time and money training staff, not in job specific areas but in general and basic skills.

In times of high unemployment, employers have more choice of applicants and will favour those with well-rounded employability skills. Most of us start to develop these skills early on in life, but we may not be aware that we are doing so. Remember, though, that mastering these skills is a long-term process: there are few people who could—or would—ever claim that their soft skills could not be improved. Being able to apply for a job in the right way, and shine at interview—in other words, get a job—is not a key employability skill.

There are, inevitably, a wide range of skills that could be useful to employers. Each of us also has our own personal range of skills, and we therefore can each make a unique contribution to any organization. Learning to recognize and use your skills appropriately is essential.

It is worthy to note that an open mind, and a willingness to embrace new ideas, a growth mindset, is one of the most useful attributes that you can bring to any organization, 

Every human can achieve their goals.

We believe that anything that assists an individual in dealing with the challenges of life should be regarded as a strength. Strengths varies from person to person and, as such, it can be difficult to draw up an exhaustive list of strengths. Many researchers note that assessment tools in this field are still too often focused on deficits and inadequacies, and whilst there have been significant efforts to create and use assessment tools which incorporate strengths elements (Cowger and Snively, 2002; Early, 2001; Saleebey, 2001), these are still in the minority. 

Strengths-based practice is a collaborative process between the person supported by services and those supporting them, allowing them to work together to determine an outcome that draws on the person’s strengths and assets. As such, it concerns itself principally with the quality of the relationship that develops between those providing and being supported, as well as the elements that the person seeking support brings to the process (Duncan and Hubble, 2000). Working in a collaborative way promotes the opportunity for individuals to be co-producers of services and support rather than solely consumers of those services (Morgan and Ziglio, 2007).

Why strengths-based practice, and why now? With the growing focus on self-directed support (Scottish Government, 2010a), self-management of illness and long-term conditions (Scottish Government, 2008a), and working together to achieve better outcomes (Christie, 2011), there is increasing interest in identifying and building on the strengths and capacities of those supported by services, as a means to help them resolve problems and deliver their own solutions. Strengths-based approaches concentrate on the inherent strengths of individuals, families, groups and organizations, deploying personal strengths to aid recovery and empowerment. In essence, to focus on health and well-being is to embrace an asset-based approach where the goal is to promote the positive.

Many are of the view that use of strengths-based approaches will be instrumental in successfully shifting the balance of care, and develop services that are focused on prevention and independence (Scottish Government, 2010b). This will challenge social services’ historical focus on clients’ deficiencies to a focus on possibilities and solutions (Saleebey, 2006). In effect, the strengths perspective is the social work equivalent of Antonovsky’s salutogenesis which highlights the factors that create and support human health rather than those that cause disease (Antonovsky, 1987). Both emphasize the origins of strength and resilience and argue against the dominance of a problem-focused perspective.

This above insight provides an overview of the research evidence on effective strengths-based approaches for working with individuals, written by Lisa Pattoni. 

Strengths-based approaches value the capacity, skills, knowledge, connections and potential in individuals’, communities, and organizations; focusing on strengths does not mean ignoring challenges, or spinning struggles into strengths. Working in this way involves collaboration – helping people to do things for themselves. This way, people can become co-producers of support, not passive consumers of support. This approach in practice has broad applicability across a number of practice settings and a wide range of populations. Engaging the strength-based strategy improves social networks and enhances well-being.

The strength-based strategy is a work practice theory that has its foundation in social work. It focuses on the individuals’ self-determination and strength, builds their strengths, while specifically seeing them as resourceful and resilient when they are in adverse conditions. It is client led and centered on outcomes in the future individual’s set of strengths. It should be noted that when a strength-based strategy is used in any field outside of social work, it is referred to as the strengthbased approach (Strengths-Based Models in Social Work; McCashen (2005)). An interesting aspect of the strengths-based approach is that it is about getting people to affect change in them.

Change happens using positivity and affecting each person and how they handle their own attitudes about their dignity, capacities, rights, quirks, and similarities. Strength-based approach is so successful because the client is the actor or agent of change by providing the right environment for controlling change. This approach is highly dependent on the thought process, and emotional and information processing of the individual. It allows for open communication and thought process, for individuals to identify value and assemble their strengths and capacities in the course of change. It allows for habitable conditions for a person to see themselves at their best, in order to see the value, they bring, by just being them. Then moving that value forward to capitalize on their strengths rather than focusing on negative characteristics. not only examines the individual but also the individual’s environment. For example, it looks at how systems are set up, especially where power can be out of balance between a system or service and the people it is supposed to serve. It also tends to identify any constraints that might be holding back an individual’s growth. These constraints can be when the individual has to deal with social, personal and/or cultural issues in organizations that cannot be balanced fairly (McCashen, 2016).

There are 9 guiding principles that serve as the foundation of the strength-based approach.

1. Everyone possesses a uniqueness that helps him or her evolve and move along his or her journey. These unique characteristics can be either:
   • Potential
   • Strengths
   • Capabilities
2. What receives attention or focus becomes what we (or the client) strive(s) for and eventually becomes a reality.
3. Be careful with your words and language. Our language creates our (and our client’s) reality.
4. Accept change, life and our world are ever-evolving; don’t resist.
5. Support others as authentically as you can. You will see that your relationships are deeper and more meaningful.
6. The person or client is the story-teller of their own story.
7. Build upon what you know and experience to dream of the future.
8. Capacity building has multiple facets and organization. Be flexible.
9. Be collaborative. Be adaptive and value differences (Hammond, 2010)

Four Examples of a Strength-Based Approach

Given the definition and principles of the strength-based approach, let’s review some examples.

In the corporate world, many Human Resource (HR) managers will conduct performance appraisals on the employees. These appraisals are to hopefully benefit the employees, their supervisors, and the overall flow of the organization. Some of the key benefits can be improved performance, communication opportunities, and data on decision-making (Coens & Jenkins, 2000).

Each of us has those times that are really hard. We are in crisis mode and the last thing we want to think about are our strengths. However, when these trying situations arise, we need help in identifying our strengths. For health care professionals working with people going through these crises, it is vital for them to listen and identify strengths, and resources.

For certain clients, pursuing support and attending an appointment is a big task, and it should be recognized as a strength. For instance, if you are helping someone who does not have housing that is safe and secure. It is important to empower the person to build strong relationships with their family and friends. Another great way to empower your client is to remind them to utilize their resources and use their resilience and strength to tackle any challenges.

A great part of going through this conversation is that people’s strengths will crop up. It becomes natural for the client to share their strengths, and in giving back to the client – acknowledge and validate their strengths.

A distinct attribute of the strength-based practice is that it is mutual between the client and the practitioner (Duncan & Hubble, 1999). The relationship between the practitioner and the client is heavily dependent on the quality of their relationship (Duncan & Hubble, 1999).

In counselling, strength-based therapy is engaged to introduce positive psychotherapy. The practitioner is focusing on the internal strengths, resourcefulness, and not as much on weaknesses, deficits, or failures (Basic Counseling Skills, n.d.). Doing so, helps the person build a mindset which helps to set their intention and focus on positive capacity building. Also, when they understand that they are resilient, they make more reasonable expectations not only of themselves but of others too (Basic Counseling Skills, n.d.). Strengthbased therapy is a form of talk therapy where the client is the story-teller. The story can include traumas, pain, and any stressors (past or present). The practitioner guides the person to have the mindset of a survivor rather than a victim. Doing so gives the person understanding and control of the skills and strengths they possess (Basic Counseling Skills, n.d.). These skills and strengths enable them to survive and flourish no matter how tough life gets.

What are the Benefits of this Approach?

• Focusing on strengths rather than problems offers control to the person and a new mindset (Hammond, 2010).
• Resilience is improved as well as the overall function of the person in their family and community (Hammond, 2010).
• Offers a shared language and precautionary philosophy (Hammond, 2010).
• Resilience is the goal, which offers a theoretical map to lead the person to make efforts for prevention and evaluation, respectively (Hammond, 2010).
• Intervention tactics are client driven and relationship-minded, which in turn has these additional benefits:
• Distressed people are engaged with respect and compassion (Hammond, 2010).
• Respects that in order to build someone up, including their capacities, it takes time and there is a process of evolvement (Hammond, 2010).
• Sees people as creating and rebuilding, rather than broken or failing (Hammond, 2010).
• Focusing on strengths of a person also introduces and molds a person into being resilient. With resilience there are some added benefits, like feeling special and valued, optimistic, understand life is a journey (Hammond, 2010).
• Learn how to set goals and expectations (Hammond, 2010).
• Learn how to cope in a productive method that can foster growth (Hammond, 2010).
• Learn that when faced with a challenge it is better to confront than avoid (Hammond, 2010).
• Awareness of vulnerabilities and weaknesses, but focus on strengths (Hammond, 2010).
• Builds self-esteem and competence (Hammond, 2010).
• Learn effective interpersonal skills in order to look for assistance and support when needed (Hammond, 2010).
• Understand what can and cannot be controlled (Hammond, 2010).
• Understand supporting others and giving time to those that we care about (Hammond, 2010).
• Encourages connecting to a person’s social support like family, or community to spur on his or her own transformation (Hammond, 2010).

The practice of using the strengths-based approach is ever-evolving and has many configurations when delivered (Foot & Hopkins, 2010). For instance, sometimes there is a combination of methods used, or in other cases, just one solo method is used (Pattoni, 2012). All is dependent on the client and their needs (Pattoni, 2012). In order to meet the needs of the client, the practitioner must be able to support them.

When dealing with a client encourage them to lead the conversation and the decision-making process (Embedding a strengths-based approach in client conversations). Use these activities to help along the way:

• Work on what’s most important and meaningful to the client (consider their values, motivations, and readiness to change).
• Ask open-ended questions so the client has the opportunity to tell their story.
• Ask the client what they’d like to get out of your conversation/work together.
• Encourage the client to share their ideas about possible solutions, opportunities etc.

Terraskills innovative counselling services are designed and delivered by subject matter experts who are competent in providing relevant solutions to human capacity problems that continuously affect today’s business challenges. Currently, we boast of over 20 Training Categories which offers our client/customers over 300 Available Courses taught by over 70 experienced facilitators drawn from different fields of study. 

Organizations and business leaders are searching for the best ways to evolve and meet the growth requirement of the 21st Century and beyond. They are creatively looking to leverage higher productive and competent employees, emerging talents, to achieve career and economic success. These factors are at the heart of developing Terraskills Career Advancement Program(T-Cap) model. The training is for private and public organizations, faith-based and non-governmental organizations as well as international development partners seeking to enhance their employee’s productivity, and also for young professionals looking to build their capacity in the area of adding value to themselves and their community.

COVID-19 is facilitating the rapid change of the traditional workplace into a digital environment.

The economic research article published by Ekonomska Istrazivanja on Taylor & Francis online narrates their findings from the investigations conducted on the current status and future evolution of the workplace within the COVID-19 pandemic context. The analysis of the data collated from the research to find out more about the employees’ and organizations’ experience with remote working, the advantages and disadvantages of accessing the workplace during the pandemic, made possible the identification of patterns within the available literature regarding what has happened and, especially, its influence on the workplace.

The truth is that revolution initiated by COVID-19 has changed the way companies and employees work and will continue doing so, requiring a constant reinvention of how they operate and causing actions never seen before, generating deep changes in the workplace. Therefore, the idea of the workplace will never be what was expected before COVID-19, where reinvention of work, technology and safety are key points in its transformation process.

According to McKinsey (2020), the COVID-19 pandemic brought new ways of doing business requiring that organizations must change how they operate along with the role of offices in generating secure, successful and rewarding careers. Moreover, COVID-19 brought unparalleled challenges, where many companies around the world have demonstrated their ability to face the challenges, responding with pre-designed crisis management plans and creating new work conditions to protect workers within an unforeseen situation. Companies learnt from this situation, as they have recognized that remote working has been a key factor in the continuity of business, to explore new ways of carrying out the work as well as the new role of the office.

Exposing the weaknesses of businesses

COVID-19 exposed many weaknesses and issues that have been present in business for a long time, in particular how to carry out daily activities from physical to virtual interactions perspective. PricewaterhouseCoopers and BCG, stated that companies are able to identify which roles need to be carried out face to face or which of them do not, and to what extent. This process has become a mandatory action, where the best time to think about it and decide in an orderly manner is now, as depending on how it is organized, the workplace will inevitably evolve from basic on site towards face to face, remote or a combination of these (World Economic Forum,2020). For instance, under remote or hybrid scenarios, such as partially remote and partially on site, there may be advantages for both company and employees in the way the workplace is designed, as it can allow them to work from their home office or even a dedicated remote office close to employees’ homes, with fewer geographical constraints as compared to reaching the main headquarters office (Harvard Business Review).

Therefore, people will live where they prefer, sometimes at lower living costs or close to loved ones, which consequently will turn the workplace into a more attractive place to work. Assigning jobs to the different workplace models can help to determine which people can work locally or remotely. This can be an advantage for companies and employees, as it will allow employees to be more comfortable with their jobs and workplaces, and more motivated, resulting in greater productivity for companies (BCG, 2020, Diligent Insights, 2020). 

Since the last century, numerous investigations have been carried out on organizations and organizational life, where important findings have been found in the field of business organization (Alvesson & Spicer, 2019). In general, it has been observed that rationality, in its pursuit of efficiency, has been accompanied by a gradual dehumanization of organizations (Ritzer, 2005) which threatens employees’ sense of identity and their relationships with others (Gill, 2019). On the other hand, it has been found that internal and external intangible capital influences the productivity of companies and, therefore, economic growth (Rico & Cabrer-Borrás, 2020). Now more than ever it is necessary to understand the factors and processes that make it possible for a workplace to be transformed from a dehumanized place into a nice place to work, that can give meaning to people’s work and turn around society (Michaelson et al., 2014) and, as part of companies’ policies, can improve talent management practices (Younas & Bari, 2020). 

The COVID-19 Surprise

COVID-19 has taken everyone by surprise and the situation has changed radically since March 2020, leading to a serious rethinking of what the workplace currently is, and what it will be during and after COVID-19 (World Economic Forum, 2020b, 2020a). Initially, it seems that remote work, family reconciliation and flexible working schedules are determining the survival of the workplace during the pandemic period, however other variables such as engagement, passion at work, mindfulness, could also be considered relevant within this process as well as the COVID-19 context.

The analysis of the data collated by Ekonomska Istrazivanja during his research resulted in a process that led to a core category that showed how the workplace can be re-imagined, re-improved and re-invented, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, where five different strategic categories, namely: Opportunity to Break with the past, Workplace redesign, Technology, Digital strategy, Remote working and new sense of workplace, was identified to achieve that target. The workplace under COVID-19 may be understood as a situation given by the new circumstances where the COVID-19 has triggered a general worldwide transformation affecting the workplace in particular. Initially, companies were not prepared to face a situation where employees had to leave their workplace and do their tasks remotely from other locations or from their own homes.

The identified strategic categories are essential to reach the new workplace while at the same time they feed back to each other in such a way that allows certain patterns of observation to be established regarding what could be the workplace of the future, completely different from what is known so far. The future workplace is neither what is known today, as it is considered as a transition period, nor what could have been under the previous non-COVID-19 conditions, as they will never be the same again. However, inevitably it will be more inclusive, more mature and novel, considering employees’ business needs and creating a good balance between them. 

Effect of the lockdown

During the government-imposed lockdowns, companies inevitably adapted to continue working, assuring those main operations were done remotely. However, companies replicated what was done before the pandemic, by translating existing processes into remote working contexts. While in the past organizations were simply theorizing about new forms of work, the crisis of COVID-19 has forced them into taking actions, such as actually shifting to completely new ways of working, and even re-imagining new forms of work as required by the new pandemic circumstances. Therefore, companies must identify the most important processes within their organization, geography and functional structure, for their further re-evaluation involving both of management and employees.

This effort should re-imagine the existing career development paths proposed by Human Resources – such as promoting intrapersonal relationships with closest coworkers by requiring face-to-face office contact at the beginning while gradually shifting toward remote work – and the execution of different business activity processes or production stages, such as limiting face-to-face meetings for planning activities while working remotely for the actual execution. The use of automation will be one of the change opportunities for the workplace of the future. Jobs should be redefined according to the desired workplace considerations, such as performance or productivity, that will determine the level and type of automation, where the use of Artificial Intelligence and semi automation of repetitive and non-skilled work is the current reality.

However, the main future concern is going to be about shifting from currently established physical business activity to a virtual or hybrid approach with partial physical contact. This will mean rethinking the whole business process as this transition will inevitably involve a major use of automation where no workplace will be needed. Organizations must rethink their values and corporate culture so that they can be compatible with new ways of working, for instance: talent development must consider whether aspects such as face-to-face mentoring can be done in the same manner in the digital world. Similarly, the cultural values inherent in the company should be reconsidered. The temptation to return to pre-pandemic approaches should be avoided, preventing mistakes previously made. It is necessary to build the new processes for a digital world, educating and preparing the organization so that there are no differences between the processes related to face-to-face and remote work.

Finding New Ways of Working

New ways of working will force companies to redefine employees’ tasks and how they are performed, especially when working remotely. It will be necessary to reexamine organizations’ economic policies of reward and motivation, as well as to have an effective balance between the development of the career model and their productivity. Future jobs will not be the same as those of the past, leading to the need to rethink how performance is measured and, consequently, appraisals may not necessarily refer to the actual performance index but about the employee’s ability to overcome uncertainties, adapt to everchanging business scenarios and demonstrate leadership qualities. Therefore, breaking with the past, the first category to change the workplace must be engaged to succeed as an organization in this evolving future world of work. Organizations of any size should consider the present moment as their best opportunity to break the inertia of the past and eliminate old bad habits or outdated ways of doing things. This category implies that all organizations are able to imagine new ways of work, and how the workplace will be, either by their own means or by means of external consulting services. 

To prepare for the new post-COVID-19 situation, it is important that companies redefine the actual way work is performed and located. Depending on the type of work and the requirements to perform it, it will be important to comprehend the models and dynamics necessary to develop tasks and workplaces according to their needs. Companies will have to align their people, processes and technologies as well as career policies, work models, and even contracts. Therefore, workplace redesign is a basic and prior category on the road to achieving the re-imagined, re-improved and re-invented workplace.

The Terraskills Digital Literacy Skills (DLS) training is an opportunity for employees, entrepreneurs, employers and business owners to upskill and reskill themselves with 21st Century technology skills pertinent for engaging new ways of working.

The result of our training creates a workplace where your employees are engaged and the organization thrives.

According to Harvard Business Review, research from the Hay Group finds that highly engaged employees are, on average, 50% more likely to exceed expectations than the least-engaged workers, and companies with highly engaged people outperform firms with the most disengaged folks—by 54% in employee retention, by 89% in customer satisfaction, and by fourfold in revenue growth. 

Also, recent research done by Dan Cable, a London Business School scholar, shows that employees who feel welcome to express their authentic selves at work exhibit higher levels of organizational commitment, individual performance, and propensity to help others. Everyone has personal problems and it is only human that some personal emotions get brought into the workplace. 

A healthy workplace environment is ideal when it comes to maintaining a positive outcome in a stressful atmosphere, and the most important thing that influences employee motivation, happiness, how productive and efficient they can be, all goes down to their working environment.

Our Workplace Innovation and Skills Enhancement for Productivity (WISE-P) provides employers opportunities to retool, reskill, upskill and upgrade their organization with workplace innovative and creativity skills that will drive business productivity. 

Suppose you want to design the best company on earth to work for. What would it be like? For 17years of adding value to our clientele ventures, we have discovered that the majority of employees are either grossly under-skilled for their current position or over-skilled; whatever be the case, the fact remains that these employees are constantly searching for a better placement and organizations who must win in the market place must first win in the workplace.

Leaders and organizations that aim to create the most productive and rewarding working environment possible must let people be themselves, unleash the flow of information, magnify people’s strengths, stand for more than shareholder value, show how the daily work makes sense and have rules people can believe in.

However, implementing these elements is no easy task which is why we are here to help you in building the organization of your dreams where individual differences are nurtured; information is not suppressed or spun; the company adds value to employees, rather than merely extracting it from them; the organization stands for something meaningful; the work itself is intrinsically rewarding; and there are no stupid rules.

When companies try to accommodate differences, they too often confine themselves to traditional diversity categories such as gender, race, age, ethnicity, and the like which are laudable efforts. However, with our WISE-P training business owners are equipped to accommodate something more subtle like differences in perspectives, habits of mind, and core assumptions. 

The organization of your dreams does not deceive, stonewall, distort nor spin. It recognizes that in the age of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms, you’re better off telling people the truth before someone else does. It respects its employees’ need to know what’s really going on so that they can do their jobs, particularly in volatile environments where it’s already difficult to keep everyone aligned and where workers at all levels are being asked to think more strategically.

WISE-P equips you as an organization with the wherewithal needed for magnifying your best employees’ strengths while making the least of them better than they ever thought they could be. 

Elite universities and hospitals, Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, and design firms like Arup have all been adding value to valuable people for a very long time. Google and Apple are more recent examples. They do this in myriad ways—by providing networks, creative interaction with peers, stretch assignments, training, and a brand that confers elite status on employees. None of this is rocket science, nor is it likely to be news to anyone. But the challenge of finding, training, and retaining excellent workers is not confined to specialized, high-tech, or highfinance industries. We contend that the employee-employer relationship is shifting in many industries from how much value can be extracted from workers to how much can be instilled in them. At heart, that’s what productivity improvement really means.

Like many large companies, McDonald’s has extensive management training programs for its executives, but the firm also extends that effort to restaurant general managers, department managers, and shift managers who, as the day-today leaders on the front lines, are taught the communication and coaching skills

they need to motivate crews and to hit their shifts’ sales targets. The return on the company’s investment is measured not in terms of increased revenue or profitability but in lower turnover of hourly managers and their crews. Turnover has declined steadily since the programs were initiated, as reflected in the Great Place to Work Institute’s recognition of McDonald’s as one of the 50 best workplaces every year since 2007.

We recognize that promising to bring out the best in everyone is a high-risk, high reward strategy. It raises reputational capital, and such capital is easily destroyed. Goldman Sachs, for one, spent years building its reputation as the most exciting investment bank of all. That’s why Greg Smith’s scathing resignation letter, accusing the company of not living up to its own standards, was so damaging. Once a company heads down this road, it has to keep going.

WISE-P will create in you as an organization the consciousness of the need to stand for more than shareholder value. People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, something they can believe in. It has become commonplace to assert that organizations need shared meaning, and this is surely so. But shared meaning is about more than fulfilling your mission statement— it’s about forging and maintaining powerful connections between personal and organizational values. When you do that, you foster individuality and a strong culture at the same time.

An academic colleague once asked a set of individuals if they were working with anyone interesting. When they mentioned Novo Nordisk, the academic colleague produced from his briefcase a set of Novo pens for injecting insulin and simply said, “They save my life every day.” 

Engineers who design the side bars for BMW’s mini have been known to wake up at 4:00 in the morning to write down ideas that will make the cars safer. And that might be expected of people drawn to the idea of building “the ultimate driving machine.” But the advantage these companies have is not the businesses they’re in. The connections they forge, stem, rather, from the way they do business.

At Terraskills, we believe that beyond shared meaning, business owners seek to derive meaning from their daily activities. This aspiration cannot be fulfilled in any comprehensive way through job enrichment add-on. It requires nothing less than a deliberate reconsideration of the tasks each staff is performing. Do those duties make sense? Why are they what they are? Are they as engaging as they can be? This is a huge, complex undertaking. 

Take John Lewis, the parent company of Waitrose and the department store Peter Jones. In 2012, it completed a review of its more than 2,200 jobs, slotting them within a hierarchy of 10 levels, to make it easier for employees to take advantage of opportunities across the organization. This sounds like a homogenizing move, and it might be at a traditional company. But at John Lewis, which operates for the benefit of its employee owners, it was a deliberate effort to match its people with the work they want to do.

Beyond reconsidering individual roles, making work rewarding may mean rethinking the way companies are led. Arup’s organization, which might be described as “extreme seamless,” is one possible model. As such, it takes some getting used to. In describing how this works in Arup’s Associates unit, board member Tristram Carfrae explains: “We have architects, engineers, quantity surveyors, and project managers in the same room together…people who genuinely want to submerge their own egos into the collective and not [be led] in the classic sense.” That was a challenge for Carfrae, who as a structural engineer wrestled with the question of when to impose his will on the team and push it toward a structural, rather than a mechanical or an architecturally oriented, solution. To participate in such an evenhanded, interdependent environment is extremely hard, he says. There were “incredible rewards when it worked well and incredible frustrations when it didn’t.” 

The challenge is similar to that of fostering personal growth. If you don’t do it, the best people may leave or never consider you at all. Or your competitors may develop the potential in people you’ve overlooked. When you do make the investment, your staff members become more valuable to you and your competitors alike. The trick, then, is to make it meaningful for them to stay.

When you undergo the WISE-P training as a leader at any level, you build capacity on how to make rules people can believe in. No one should be surprised that, for many people, the dream organization is free of arbitrary restrictions. But it does not obliterate all rules. Engineers, even at Arup, must follow procedures and tight quality controls—or buildings will collapse. 

Organizations need structure. Markets and enterprises need rules. As successful entrepreneurial businesses grow, they often come to believe that new, complicated processes will undermine their culture. But systematization need not lead to bureaucratization, not if people understand what the rules are for and view them as legitimate.

Take Vestergaard Frandsen, a start-up social enterprise that makes mosquito netting for the developing world. The company is mastering the art of behavior codes that can help structure its growing operations without jeopardizing its culture. Hiring (and firing) decisions are intentionally simple—only one level of approval is required for each position. Regional directors have significant freedom within clear deadlines and top- and bottom-line targets. Knowledgemanagement systems are designed to encourage people to call rather than e-mail one another and to explain why someone is being blind copied on an e-mail message. Vestergaard sees these simple rules as safeguards rather than threats to its founding values.

Authentic organizations are clear about what they do well. They are also suspicious of fads and fashions that sweep the corporate world. Despite the flattening of hierarchies, the ensuing breakdown of organizational boundaries, and the unpredictability of careers, institutions remain what Max Weber calls “imperatively coordinated associations,” where respect for authority is crucial for building and maintaining structure. However, we know that, increasingly, employees are skeptical of purely hierarchical power—of fancy job titles and traditional sources of legitimacy such as age and seniority. And they are becoming more suspicious of charisma, as many charismatic leaders turn out to have feet of clay. What workers need is a sense of moral authority, derived not from a focus on the efficiency of means but from the importance of the ends they produce. 

A productive organization gives you powerful reasons to submit to its necessary structures that support the organization’s purpose. In that company, leaders’ authority derives from the answer to a question that Steve Varley, managing partner of Ernst & Young UK, put to senior partners in his inaugural address, after he reported record profits and partners’ earnings: “Is that all there is?” (In reply, he proposed a radical new direction—a program called “Growing Successfully, Making the Difference”—aimed at achieving both financial growth and social change.)

People want to do good work—to feel they matter in an organization that makes a difference. They want to work in a place that magnifies their strengths, not their weaknesses. For that, they need some autonomy and structure, and the organization must be coherent, honest, and open. WISE-P builds your organization’s capacity in this area. The training will be delivered through lecture, simulations, group work, discussion, and exercises while the materials will be designed using illustrations.

Getting the best hands to handle specific job roles is always the intention of every organisation and HR Manager. They have to go through filtering vast streams of data to find the best fit. Most of the selection is usually done using gut feeling.

Some Managers have resolved to get the myriad of applications by dividing them into batches just to make sure that they are able to screen every applicant. This process is not just time consuming but not cost effective and the chances you don’t make the wrong decision due to burn out is low.

Here is how technology is impacting hiring;

1. Getting the best talents

Not only will hiring technologies such as JobPrimers save you a lot of time, you’ll also gain access to the best talent. The platform has a lot of talents, including not only individualswho are looking for work, but also those who are currently employed. In addition, skilled workers who are actively looking for jobs tend to register with recruitment agencies because of their efficiency and high placement rates. This gives you the chance to take advantage of the wide network of contacts that a third-party recruiter has.

2. Hiring technologies save money 

Multiple factors contribute to a company’s cost per hire, including time to hire, job postings, training and onboarding costs and more. When a position is left unfilled, companies tend to lose money from decreased resources. By cutting out some of the costs associated with candidate sourcing, and testing, employers can significantly lower costs using technology, which ultimately makes their jobs a lot easier.

3. Enhanced Process Design

Most hiring technologies are compact systems that put together all the hiring process and unlike most of the systems JobPrimers is developed using AI, a compact ATS system for sorting resumes based on the requirement for each job role and a testing platform that combines Technical, Aptitude and Personality (TAP) tests. 

Using a testing technique that allows applicants to take supervised technical, aptitude, and personality tests from their various locations ensures that employers get the best talent from all over the country and, if desired, from all over the world. This is a departure from the traditional practice of using location as a criterion during the hiring process. The personality test not only helps you understand your prospective hire, but it also helps you understand how they will fit into your team.

4. Hiring technologies reduce HR burden  

Because organizations may advertise multiple openings, the hiring process is typically a burden for most HR departments. And this is usually a burden because of the large number of applications received, and searching through the hip of applications shifts the department’s priority. Hiring technologies, as a compact system, relieve the department of the burden and increase the chances of a better hire.

REDUCE COST-PER-HIRE WITHOUT SACRIFICING QUALITY

Today’s recruiters require tools to help them successfully compete for talent, with new jobs being created every day and hiring demands steadily rising.

However, if you want to lower your cost-per-hire or have a limited recruiting budget, you’ll need tools that are both effective and gainful.

It has become crucial that employers use efficient hiring tools because the cost of a bad hire is overwhelmingly high.

Below are the secrets to reducing cost-per-hire without sacrificing quality;

1. Leverage already built talent community 

If building and maintaining a pipeline of interested, qualified candidates can lower your cost per hire, why not take advantage of a talent community that has already been built and maintained at no additional cost? Isn’t that incredible?

The JobPrimers talent community ensures that you save money by reducing the costs of job advertising and the time spent interviewing unqualified candidates. Reducing the time, it takes to fill a position can also eliminate the need for a temporary replacement, which is a major contributor to high cost per hire and lost productivity.

2. Take advantage of hiring technologies

Hiring technologies like JobPrimers are transforming the hiring process. Social media is widely used by employers to connect with job seekers. However, sifting through thousands of applicants is a difficult and time-consuming task. Even though social media platforms are common and easy to use, relying solely on them to assess competencies can be misleading because your required talent may have all of their skills on social media. As a result, it’s critical to entrust the process to technologies like JobPrimers, which have a pool of pre-screened and qualified candidates.

3. Launch a corporate career site 

The use of a corporate career site has been attributed to the majority of successful hires because a career site can advertise your jobs and employment brand throughout the duration of the job opening, allowing you to reach significantly more candidates at a very low cost.

Career sites have been one of the top internal sources of hire, demonstrating their ability to attract quality candidates. JobPrimers integrates with your career site, making it simple for applicants to go through the 7-step recruitment process with the click of a button.

WHAT DEFINES A BAD HIRE

Employers often refer to some hires as bad hires; especially those that didn’t have the right skills, couldn’t adjust and fit into the team and organisation culture, or simply never clicked with the leader.  In other words, there was something intrinsically wrong with the person who was hired.

While it may be true that a hire lacked requisite skills, or wasn’t really a personality or behavioural fit, or just didn’t know how to adapt to the style of leadership being offered. Therefore, labelling anyone a ‘bad hire’ may not be completely fair because a decision was made concerning that hire. The dilemma for most stakeholders involved in hiring is who will take the blame? Whether the hiring manger or the new hire bears the blame, the organisation suffers most.

The point here is that hiring managers often point a finger at new hires for not performing forgetting the decision to hire was theirs.  It is actually the hiring manager and his/her teams decision to hire someone who didn’t work out.

How successful hiring managers avoid bad hiring decisions

Even better than turning a bad hire into a good one is avoiding hiring that bad fit in the first place.

Rather than:

TO PREVENT BAD HIRES; USE THESE TIPS

To eliminate bad hiring decisions, employers must reconsider their recruitment practices and make strategic improvements in attracting, selecting, and onboarding talent.

Here are proven tips to help you prevent bad hires

1. Strategic Interviewing 

Many employers still do not have a well-thought-out hiring strategy in place. Hiring issues such as inconsistent screening, unconscious bias, and unclear candidate personas quickly arise in the absence of a standard interview protocol, resulting in unsubstantiated and ad hoc hiring decisions. Platforms like JobPrimers have taken the time to carefully design a standardized interview process that provides employers with the necessary guidance and tools to effectively screen and assess candidates.

JobPrimers understands how important it is for employers to have a clear candidate persona and thus assists them in identifying both red flags and green lights to look out for. It accomplishes this by matching employers’ detailed job requirements in terms of each applicant’s skills and personality.

2. Intelligent hiring

The key to successfully lowering the risk of a bad hire is to ensure that you have all of the necessary tools and technology in place to screen, assess, and evaluate candidates. Employers who gain sufficient insight into their candidates are able to make informed decisions and effectively separate required skills from the crowd.

The use of modern recruitment technology, such as JobPrimers, can assist employers in gaining a deeper understanding of all-important candidate requirements and making more informed hiring decisions.

3. Smooth onboarding

When it comes to retaining talent, employee onboarding can make or break the situation. While new hires may arrive with all of their boxes checked, great hires can quickly turn into bad ones if they are not properly onboarded. A smooth transition and making new hires feel welcome and encouraged to be a part of the team are critical to the success of new employees.

JobPrimers Recruitment System is a Seamless Process for Organizations and Job Seekers

JobPrimers recruitment process removes the burden of recruitment and Job search while reducing costs by a huge margin.

Employees are the true assets of organizations, as an organization is only as strong as its people. Hiring the right employee enhances work culture and pays employers back a thousand times over in high employee morale, accomplishment of challenging goals, and enhancing business productivity and success. Employees are investment that Companies make for a better Company, but as is the normal course, there are problems in the recruitment and selection process.

According to Glassdoor, 76% of hiring managers admit attracting the right job candidates is their greatest challenge. 

The common challenges faced by Hiring Managers include;

1. The Need to Make Quick Hire

One of the major struggles that the recruiters these days encounter is the need to hire in a very short span of time. 

Hiring teams want to hire as fast as possible, because vacant positions delay operations and costs money. Yet, depending on the industry, making a right hire with the traditional approach can take longer period, thus putting pressure on recruiters and frustrating hiring teams.

2. Screening Large Applications

The sifting of multitude of profiles for a few Roles is one of the major challenges in the recruitment and selection process. With the traditional approach, Hiring Managers find it difficult to organize data in an efficient and streamlined way, thus making sorting and tracking of data and trends tedious.

3. Selecting the Right Candidate

According to Career Builder Research, 74% of employers admit they have hired the wrong person for a position. Now, more than ever, organizations are realizing that their success relies on the quality of their employees, as hiring the wrong employees has far negative implications for any organization. 

Bad hires cost organizations a lot, whether they decide to fire them out rightly, or keep them for some time. Asides from the cost of replacement, a bad hire can damage company’s reputation, increase turnover, lower overall morale and productivity and lead to loss of clients. 

These problems associated with bad hire have made it clear for companies that they need to hire better. Yet, employers are battling with the challenge of hiring the best candidates.

Our Solution

The right candidates are available and can be hired using an efficient hiring tool; JobPrimers Recruitment Systems (JRS).

What is JobPrimers?

JobPrimers is a Staff Recruitment Platform that allows verified Employers to post job vacancies and receive applications of most qualified candidates based on their criteria/requirements while prospective applicant can apply for jobs, write timed computer-based testing with real-time results thereafter they are recommended for employment while unsuccessful applicants are offered employability skills courses to better prepare them for other opportunities.

JobPrimers Recruitment System streamlines hiring process by making it possible for hiring team to collaborate and keep all candidate data in one place.

Its unique features and benefits include it’s;

• Built-in templates, which makes it easy for employers to post job ads.
• CV builder which makes it easy for employers to collect vital applicants’ information and sort large application data, thus helping them stay organized. 
• AI powered ATS that cut the time spent on screening CVs and sorting applications by 99%. It helps HR narrow their applicant pool by automatically surfacing and highlighting top candidates that meet HR Requirements.
• Technical, Aptitude and Personality (TAP) test system which helps employers evaluate skills and abilities of applicants, and ranks candidates according to job specific requirement.
• Scheduling tools and calendar integrations, which helps employer schedule interviews fast and minimize back-and-forth communications.
• Interview scorecards, which makes the shift towards structured interviews smoother.
• Time Rewarding User Experience: Employers and candidates alike find it simple to use the features, making job applications and hiring a rewarding experience for all.

The JobPrimers Recruitment Approach

The Recruiters Mandates

Before any Job role is listed on the platform, the Recruiter must state his mandate or criteria which will be used as a basis to determine the suitable candidates for the advertised job role. This mandate is based on the following;

• Gender
• Age
• Religion
• State of Origin
• Complexion
• Height
• Course of Study
• Grade Level
• Experience Level
• Professional Certification
• Additional Skills

Candidate Assessment Approach

Candidates are assessed through Job-Specific Technical Test and customized/In-build Aptitude and Personality Tests.

1. Technical Test

The marketplace is certainly competitive and for roles requiring experienced and highly qualified personnel, it’s important to get it right. The JobPrimers Technical Tests are role-based assessments designed to understand candidate’s technical abilities, including their skill sets and responses to specific technical problems. It involves evaluating applicant’s domain expertise and job knowledge to determine their suitability for specific roles

2. Aptitude Test

The JobPrimers Aptitude Test is used to determine an individual’s employability skill or propensity to success in a given activity. The tests assume that individuals have inherent strengths and weaknesses, and have a natural inclination towards success or failure in specific areas based on their innate characteristics. These tests are broken down into four (4) major categories;

• English
• Arithmetic
• Intelligence
• ICT

3. Personality Test 

Today, the key to successful hiring is to be able to predict future success to make the right hiring decisions. Studies have shown that job experience and qualifications alone only allow predicting job performance with 16% accuracy, whereas the combination of cognitive ability and personality allows 78% accuracy in future performance prediction (Frank L. Schmidt, 2016).

As such, screening candidates based on their CV, and abilities is not enough to drive the selection process. Personality is a scientifically-proven predictor of job performance and assessing the candidates’ behavioural tendencies in a work environment allows recruiters to understand whether they will, in fact, be top performers and whether they’ll the culture of the company. 

JobPrimers Recruitment System (JRS) has been designed to measure the characteristic patterns of traits that people exhibit across various situations. The amazing solution about the platform is that it can help identify suitable applicants who have great personality skills and will contribute positively to workplace success

With JobPrimers, Employers are rest assured of hiring right efficiently!

Due to the rising technology and disruptive forces such as artificial intelligence, the gig economy, and automation, the nature of employment is fast changing. The precise impact of these and other developments is uncertain, but one thing is clear: the talents that companies value and rely on are shifting. As a result, a “skills gap” has emerged, with firms unable to find suitably qualified staff.

In the context of manufacturing alone, a recent Deloitte analysis states that “the skills gap may leave an estimated 2.4 million positions vacant between 2018 and 2028, with a potential economic effect of $2.5 trillion.”

Skills Gap and Employee Performance   

Organizational growth is inextricably connected to employee performance. Employee input, performance, and attention to their individual and collective responsibilities are directly related to organizational growth, whether measured as employee engagement, the measure of employee involvement and commitment, or productivity, the measure of employee output and quality thereof.

As a result, a low-skilled employee may be damaging to the organization’s overall effectiveness.

The skills gap is a real issue for corporate success. Organizations are discovering that talent pools in particular areas/professions are restricted, resulting in jobs requiring longer to fill. This lack of skilled individuals has a number of consequences for firms, including:

• a loss of productivity;
• a greater rate of staff turnover;
• lower levels of morale;
• worse-quality work;
• an inability to develop the business; and
• a loss of income.

In PwC’s 22nd annual global CEO survey, “four out of five CEOs bemoaned their employees’ lack of essential skills and identified that as a threat to growth.” With a worldwide skills gap that was one of the top three concerns of 79% of the CEOs surveyed, what can companies do?

In 2017, the McKinsey Global Institute estimated that 14% (375 million) of the global workforce would have to switch occupations or acquire new skills by 2030 because of automation and artificial intelligence. 

In a 2019 McKinsey Global Survey, 87% of executives said they were experiencing skill gaps in the workforce or expected them within a few years. But less than half of respondents had a clear sense of how to address the problem. Terraskills, having studied the dynamics of the evolving workplace, remote engagement and outsourcing, believe that professionals must begin to adapt to these dynamics.

The role of employers in Addressing Skills Gap

Skills gap is a critical policy issue, and companies are on the front lines of this war. In this setting, understanding employer views on hiring, training, and retraining a competent workforce is critical.

According to a recent Harvey Nash analysis, over two-thirds of chief information officers who responded to a poll were concerned that a lack of IT skills would hold back their company. The biggest shortages, however, were in Project Management and Change Management, which are not generally considered ‘IT’ capabilities.

The lack of consensus on which area has the greatest talent gap indicates that disparities exist in several elements, sectors, or businesses.

Businesses are always on the lookout for staff with industry-relevant skills due to the high expense of training and retraining. Being relevant is no longer enough these days; continued progress is increasingly advised due to the shifting terrain of the job.

Because of the high expense of staff training. Organizations rely on already qualified, experienced, and career-minded individuals to fill open jobs. As a result, organizations in Nigeria frequently seek employees with extensive expertise to fill even entry-level roles.

Aside from the upfront expenditures of employee training, there are also hidden costs involved with staff training. These include:

• the time of the manager/supervisor and the employee;
• the cost of supplies;
• transportation/travel time; and
• other administrative expenditures.

The role of employees in addressing skills gap

Employees have a critical role in bridging the skills gap. And that function is to improve what I refer to as personal infrastructure. Making sure your profession is future-proof entails constantly developing your talents while remaining relevant through appropriate interpretation of your present function and being adaptable enough to accept others.

According to estimates, approximately 20% of the workforce will be considerably under skilled for their employment by 2030. As a result, many people may find themselves less productive, dissatisfied with their jobs, or perhaps out of work entirely. The option is not difficult to see, yet many will act to future-proof their professions, while others will stay statistics.

Here are six job development strategies you may employ to secure your future:

1.  Become a life-long learner

“Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.”

— Peter Drucker

Continued career growth is essential to staying relevant. Take a look at your existing skill set and think about what abilities you could learn to improve your long-term employability. Once you’ve identified your areas for growth, create a personal learning plan to outline how you’ll acquire those abilities.

Seek out learning opportunities. Accept new duties and apply for new positions. Participate in training classes and other professional development programs. Look for a mentor. It’s all about taking charge of your career, so spend some time figuring out where you want to go and what steps you need to take to get there.

2.  Think globally

With the advancement of technology, the development of remote labour, and the expansion of worldwide networking, organizations are operating more internationally and culturally diverse than ever before. Your co-workers, clients, and stakeholders most likely work all over the world. Working in a global workforce entails working with people from various languages, cultures, and backgrounds. The more experience you have with them, the more confident you will be. This will make you more productive in the future workplace.

As a result, it is critical that you expand your capacity to operate worldwide by learning about other cultures and technology, as well as developing your expertise in skills that will position you for global advantage.

3.  Build your professional network

It is critical to invest time in building connections with people both inside and outside of your organization. As the workplace landscape shifts, these individuals may provide vital assistance. You may pick up ideas and methods from outstanding leaders while also increasing your exposure to fresh chances.

There are several platforms that improve professional networking throughout the world, but LinkedIn stands out. However, there is always a give and take when it comes to expanding your network. As a result, you should establish your professional portfolio with relevant abilities that will help you advance and flourish in your job.

4.  Understand the future of your industry

Understanding the future of your sector is critical to future-proofing your career. Everything that happens in your business will most certainly have an influence on the organization for which you work as well as your function. To stay informed, keep up with changes in your career, industry, and the broader economy. Aim to work in industries and for firms that have a bright future and long-term viability.

One important method for future-proofing your job is to try to predict which technology your company is likely to embrace. You may accomplish this in a variety of ways, such as by keeping an eye on technological developments in your business. You should also pay attention to what officials say about the company’s digital transformation aspirations.

5.  Be flexible and open to new opportunities

Embracing flexibility is critical to future success and professional security. Companies will begin to view work differently as more organizations automate fundamental operations. Your function or job title will no longer define or constrain your work in the future. It will be built on people’s improved capacity to apply their own distinct set of skills, knowledge, and abilities to their work.

6.  Upskilling to adapt change

Continue your professional growth by obtaining transferrable abilities that are desired by all companies. Core competences in today’s and tomorrow’s occupations include, for example, leadership, communication, innovation, and stress management.

Developing a diverse set of competences, skills, and talents can help you land a new career or break into a new field. As a result, you could see a nurse with business abilities and a web designer with financial knowledge.

Strategy to enhance career development

To encourage career development Terraskills developed T-CAP (Terraskills Career Advancement Program). Which helps employees and professionals adapt to the changing landscape of the workplace. To adapt to the changing landscape of work, service delivery and product design and delivery, professionals must continually build new competencies that will enable them to adapt to the changing demands of the workplace. Keeping up with the pace of technological advancement and process development is a challenge for most professionals. This and thecoronavirus pandemic have made upskilling and reskilling more urgent. It has become pertinent that workers and indeed all professionals across industries figure out how they can adapt to the rapidly changing professional ecosystems; and professionals must as well prepare for the dynamisms of job roles.

The dynamics that indicates that the structure, content, and process of work have changed.

Work is now:

• more cognitively complex
• more team-based and collaborative
• more dependent on social skills
• more dependent on technological competence
• more time pressured
• more mobile and less dependent on geography.

The dynamic that shows the increasing pressure on organisations to be more competitive, agile and customer focused indicates that organizations today are:

• leaner and more agile
• more focused on identifying value from the customer’s perspective
• more tuned to dynamic competitive requirements and strategy
• less hierarchical in structure and decision authority
• less likely to provide lifelong careers and job security
• continually reorganizing to maintain or gain competitive advantage.

To meet these challenges, Terraskills developed the Career Advancement Program (T-CAP) based on a model specific to professionals in all works of life to position them for continuous success in the global workforce and contribute to a strong Organisational and National Economy.

Discover new skills that match the growing needs of employers.

Develop industry relevant skills from our array of courses; explore courses below;

Healthcare Management

The world’s population is aging. In 2015, 12.3 percent of the global population was above the age of 60. It is expected that by 2030, this will have risen to 16.4 percent, and by 2050, it will have risen to 21.3 percent. This is just one aspect of healthcare, there are many that show that there is shortage of healthcare professional to handle the increasing healthcare challenges that arise.

When these shortages are compared to the expected growth in demand, we can see that healthcare workers will be in great demand, not just in the employment market, but by mankind as a whole. The coronavirus epidemic, without a doubt, has let us all realize this more clearly than ever before.

Marketing and Sales

Sales and marketing do not appear to be very promising occupations. However, these skills are having increasing relevance, and will be more necessary in future workplaces since they cannot be mechanized. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), these positions presently account for the highest part of the existing and future employment market and will continue to do so in 2022, expanding over the following two years.

Technology has transformed marketing by introducing new channels such as social media, affiliate marketing, and digital content. More crucially, analytic tools enable hitherto unheard-of levels of data collecting and performance monitoring. This raises the stakes, pushing marketers to step up their game in order to remain competitive.

Digital Innovation and Transformation

According to WEF, data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be significant drivers of future growth in the foreseeable future. The breadth and variety of big data will only expand in the next years, allowing machine learning and automation. Data is the language that will enable the connectedness that is at the core of Industry 4.0. As a result, people who can organize data collecting, understand the outcomes, and make decisions based on this information will be in great demand.

There is now a skills gap in data literacy. According to Accenture and Qlik research, 74% of employees are uncomfortable dealing with data. This has a knock-on impact; on average, businesses lose 43 hours of productivity per employee per year owing to a lack of data literacy. Furthermore, according to PwC study, while 69 percent of businesses needed data skills from employees in 2021, this percentage is likely to grow exponentially.

Information Technology

Digital technologies have emerged as a key factor of economic development, national security, and international competitiveness. The digital economy has a significant impact on the global trajectory as well as the socioeconomic well-being of the people. It has an impact on everything from resource allocation to income distribution and economic growth.

The ICT sector is a growth engine. In recent years, the industry has made amazing strides, propelling genuine economic growth and job creation. The expansion of digital technology will continue to cause enormous structural changes in global economies, securing the IT industry’s place as a key source of growth and employment.

Leadership and Management

A renewed emphasis on leadership is critical for guiding the workforce of the future. Leaders must identify successful methods to manage their team as it is now while simultaneously developing their style and implementing small modifications to future-proof the approach and guarantee it works just as well in the future. Focusing on leading a team rather than managing it is one method to do this, by putting employees’ needs first and providing them with the tools they need to succeed.

As jobs are transformed by the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, more than 1 billion people need to be reskilled by 2030. By 2022 – 42% of core skills required to perform existing jobs are expected to change – World Economic Forum (WEF).

The shift from analogue to digital, as well as digital ubiquity, has had an impact on practically every area of our lives. Playing, working, socializing, literacy, educational practice, and, lastly, the job market has all seen substantial transformations. Global labour market changes are redefining and generating new employment, with new needs for updated ICT related knowledge and skills. Today, the vast majority of professions need a working knowledge of technology, and employees should be able to communicate, collaborate, and handle information using relevant tools.

In general, digital literacy skills are linked to the notion of employability since it is a key skill that many businesses look for when evaluating a job application, and as such, it is vital to students all over the world who are looking for work.

Automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, machine learning, the Internet of Things, and blockchains, among other sectors, will revolutionize the opportunities and problems encountered by young women and men in the labour market.

These shifts are resulting in the emergence of entirely new sectors, employment, commodities, and services, as well as increased productivity. New technologies can help low- and middle-income nations “leapfrog” to more advanced phases of development by lowering the cost of manufacturing and service delivery.

They can also help to promote the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations. Continuing technological advancements, on the other hand, may disrupt labour markets and disproportionately favour nations with a strong technological foundation, resulting in even higher inequality.

According to a Dell Technologies assessment on the influence of emerging technologies on society and work in 2030, 85 percent of anticipated employment for 2030 do not yet exist, owing to the fast advancement of technology. Digital skills give a measure of “future-proofing” for job searchers as a result of fast technological advancement, as the skills are important to professions that are less likely to be automated in the future. In general, digital skills improve analytical and creative abilities, which are less likely to be replaced by robots. Digital skills can assist people to grow more quickly in their employment. Employees may develop through their professions with skill sets that boost their marketability by gaining high-demand digital skills.

Three categories of digitally intense occupations

1. Door Openers

These are middle-skill jobs with a strong need for digital abilities, but they’re usually entry-level jobs. Digital skills, particularly productivity software abilities, are becoming essential entry points into nearly every sector of the middle-skill job market. More than a third of middle-skills employment (36%) are in occupations where the sole digital need is productivity software knowledge.

Moreover, these productivity software abilities are frequently one-of-a-kind criteria for these jobs, providing a distinct, easily attainable road to employment. For middle-skill job seekers in fields like administration, customer service, and business management, the digital skill need is virtually completely in productivity software, whereas advanced roles require more technical skill sets, such as CRM software and digital design software. Because 53 percent of job ads are for entry-level individuals, these jobs provide great chances for entry-level applicants with the right qualifications.

2. Career Advancers

These professions are more advanced in terms of both the amount of necessary expertise and the sophistication of the requisite digital skills. Digital abilities will become increasingly important for workers as they work their way up the corporate ladder. To develop into Network /Systems Administrator roles, you may need to upskill or get skilled in network infrastructure, and add networking certifications. There is also a rise in the use of productivity tools in managerial positions across all sectors.

The ability to use productivity software is a requirement for progress in the retail, construction, production, and maintenance industries. In these professions, the types and applications of digital skills differ. For instance, recruiters utilize social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter to find and recruit exceptional employees; and to assist the effective administration of projects, Project Managers are expected to have productivity software abilities, such as Microsoft Excel; frequently, and many other productivity software that allows and enhances collaboration such as Microsoft teams and ClickUp or Slack.

3. Specialized Roles

Specialized roles are a collection of specialized tasks that need a domain or even role-specific digital abilities, particularly in manufacturing and health care. For workers to enter the profession, they must have a basic level of digital proficiency.

Individuals with the necessary digital skill sets can find a robust collection of entry-level possibilities in specialized areas. The majority of them are healthcare employment, such as healthcare technician positions, that need specialized digital knowledge but are frequently entry-level. It has been estimated that 87 percent of positions in the industries demanding these Occupationally Specific Digital Skills are expected to be entry-level, and more than half of job advertisements require less than two years of experience.

Where it begins 

Digital Fundamentals

Foundational technological abilities, such as typing, and competencies, such as computer basics (Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel) and business applications, are the starting points for digital literacy.

Beyond the fundamentals, these abilities help employees to think critically and act decisively when choosing the “best” digital tools for a given task. These abilities also help employees to communicate efficiently, and express themselves clearly by enhancing their confidence.

Digital Skills Gap in Africa

Africa is grappling with a massive digital skills gap, which is stifling economic growth and development. According to research by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group and the largest global development agency focused on the private sector in developing countries, 230 million jobs throughout the continent would require some degree of digital skills by 2030. The necessity for these skills has only been more obvious in recent months, as the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many firms to move digital in order to survive.

According to recent research conducted by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the World Bank (through the Digital Development Program Trust Fund) in Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Rwanda, digital skills will be required for 50-55 percent of jobs in Kenya by 2030, 35-45 percent in Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Rwanda, and 20-25 percent in Mozambique.

By 2030, these five countries will have 57 million occupations that demand digital skills. As more businesses embrace digital technology across a wide range of industries, most of the need for digital skills will come from general vocations rather than narrowly defined ICT professions. Foundational digital skills will account for around 70% of demand, while non-ICT intermediate level digital abilities will account for the remaining 23%.

Agribusiness employees, for instance, will require training on how to track income and spending using financial software. Professionals will need to know how to create online presentations using cutting-edge software programs. Tourism businesses will want to learn about digital marketing techniques that may help them develop their businesses, such as which social media platforms to utilize and how to create a visually appealing website. These are only a few of the fundamental digital gaps that will need to be bridged.

How Terraskills is Bridging the Digital Gap

Work from Home, Learn from Home, and telehealth became the standard across the world as a result of the COVID pandemic; these trends aren’t going away, and they’re accompanied by substantial transformations in the utilization of ICT infrastructure.

Bridging the digital gap especially in Nigeria is a challenge that necessitates solutions in the areas of accessibility, cost, and digital skills, all of which are intertwined with social economics, infrastructure, and technology.

Terraskills developed the Digital Literacy Skills (DLS) faculty to cover the skills gap targeting one area at a time. The understanding that digital skills gap is caused by two key reasons that influence different industries and economies in different ways was of great importance to the uniqueness of the syllabuses.

These reasons include;

• The dearth of digital skills among current employees: this maybe most important
• The dearth of appropriately prepared graduates to fill digital positions in increasing technical businesses.

Both of these issues have the potential to significantly limit the growth of individual businesses as well as entire economies, potentially causing a recession. Employees lack of digital skills is a fundamental issue that makes it difficult for firms, particularly huge, well-established corporations with enormous workforces, to adopt digital technologies that would increase their productivity. Companies who fail to meet this challenge, are likely to be surpassed by those that do, or by new businesses that aren’t encumbered by a staff deficient in digital capabilities.

The challenge of shortage of graduates with IT skills, is particularly unhelpful to developing countries. For individuals, an opportunity arises in bridging their own skills gap. Graduates, applicants, professionals skilled in ICT currently have their pick of the best ICT jobs. Adding a digital qualification to your resume while the skills gap remains open can turn a career jump into a career leap.

Understanding the importance of digital skills in organisational success as well as in individuals career, Terraskills® developed the Digital Literacy Skills (DLS). The DLS consolidated syllabus has over 90% inclusion of ICDL syllabus. Our strength relies mostly on our ultra-modern facilities and up-to-date software as well as our competent computer instructors who over the years have shown high level of professionalism with their incessant creativity and innovations in the IT world.

In today’s highly competitive business environment, organizations must maximize profits from their current capabilities while also acknowledging and adapting to the fact that today’s organizations and business environments are dynamic. Organizations must work hard to create a conducive work environment that enhances employee engagement and well-being in order to increase or maintain competitive advantage, profitability, efficiency, and effectiveness. In today’s organization, employee engagement and well-being have become a critical concept that requires the utmost attention from management. For growth and survival in today’s globalised economy, business leaders require a high-performing workforce.

Despite the recognition and programmes implemented by organisations worldwide, the majority of employees remain disengaged at work. According to Gallup data, the overall proportion of engaged workers in 2021 will be just 39%, up from 36% in 2020.

What is employee engagement?

Gallup defines employee engagement as the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace. Sandhya (2016) expanding on this definition described engagement as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind characterised by vigour, dedication, and absorption; but it is distinct and is expected to predict a full range of outcomes.

Performance predictors such as satisfaction, commitment and loyalty have been found inadequate compared to actual employee involvement and enthusiasm in their workplace. Although satisfaction among employees is desirable, satisfied employees may not necessarily display vigour in their work. On the other hand, employees who show commitment or are committed to their organisations may not always have an in-depth commitment to their job. Satisfaction and loyalty are related to performance, but engagement appears overall to be a better predictor of employee performance.

According to Ellis and Sorenson (2015), employee engagement is described within the context of a relationship between an employee and his employer; it relates to the ability of and opportunity given to an employee to willingly participate in the decision-making process and activities while also taking affirmative steps to further the organisation’s prestige and interests.

Who is responsible for employee engagement?

The current level of global employee engagement is a far cry from what should be attainable for increased organisational and business growth. Most programmes built for employee engagement don’t yield expected results because they are usually drawn from the wrong angle or for a wrong target. Employee engagement strategies that work are designed holistically to cater for all or major factors that contribute to employee engagement. And these factors are usually unique to the specific environment and businesses. Hence the need for Needs Assessment (NA). Low engagement can be caused by several factors including lack of recognition by managers, poor company communication and not being aligned with the mission of the company. More than ever, employee engagement is a strategic business objective because engaged employees lead to long-term employee retention, higher levels of productivity, and improved quality of work.

Effective management of employee engagement, employee well-being effectively, and the organisation’s objective is crucial to ensuring a sustainable and viable future for their organisation. Organisations and Businesses are gradually recognising that a highly engaged workforce can increase innovation, productivity, and bottom-line performance and thus enable employees to be committed to the organisation. More so, empowered employees are said to be in the position to make quick decisions and respond to any changes in the environment. Thus, the process of transferring power, authority with responsibility and accountability to the employees enables organisations to be more flexible and responsive to lead improvements in both individual and organisational performance.

To the question, who is responsible for employee engagement?

Employee engagement is much more interactive and a two-way exchange process of efforts between an employer and the employee.

Certain literatures suggest that making employees feel valued by management, management’s interest in employee’s well-being or giving more opportunity for employee’s growth enhances employee engagement. These studies point the finger to management as the chief stakeholder in employee engagement. According to Taris and Schaufeli (2015), the well-being of employees at work is dependent upon diverse factors some of which includes; job satisfaction, employee participation, engagement, work-life balance, work environment/conditions, employer-employee relationship status and a few more. It was alluded that these factors can either contribute to an increase or decrease in the productivity of employees and as such, organizations need to be sensitive to employees’ needs even when they keep it private.

We believe in the perfect union and application of the concepts organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and employee Commitment. Therefore, to truly inculcate the culture of employee engagement, organisations must first create the atmosphere and culture that promotes OCB which in-turn will enhance employee commitment.

Why is employee engagement so important?

For engaged employees who are happy and completely committed to their work, it’s more than just a wait for the end of the month (salaries); it is the dedication towards their employers and role that makes them passionate about their work, which is often reflected in their outcomes.

What we’ve discovered in our years of in dept research in the topic of employee engagement is that every organisation that is prepared for employee engagement has its unique kinds of employees. Not all qualified candidates have the emotional and social connection to the values of your organisation. A research that birthed JobPrimers® Recruitment Solution (JRS).

Often, companies miss the core issues related to employee engagement because business owners/managers assume engagement is directly linked to salary and compensation. Most leaders figure employees leave the company due to the lack of promotional opportunities or the lure of better job packages elsewhere.

Adequately compensating employees is truly crucial in ensuring employees are comfortable. However, they are certain employees that are always in search of bigger paychecks and job packages. However, employees who take ownership of their job roles and see themselves as stakeholders of the organisation are those who are ready to be engaged.

Apart from making sure employees are adequately compensated, recent studies have suggested important factors directly impact employee engagement. These include:

1. Employee trust in the company’s leadership,
2. Employee relationships with the management teams/supervisors, and
3. Employee pride in being a part of the company.

Synergising these factors will yield engaged employees. When employees are engaged, they are more likely to invest in the work they do which leads to a higher quality of work produced. 

According to Glassdoor data, a one-point rise in company rating is related with a 1.3-point increase in customer satisfaction. Those that are engaged are more involved and work more, but employees who are disengaged are likely to perform the bare minimum to get by. According to the Harvard Business Review, firms with greater levels of employee involvement had 48 percent fewer safety incidents and 41 percent fewer patient safety events.

The importance of investing in employee engagement

By investing in employee engagement, your business or organisation will be able to increase productivity, work quality, and retain top talent. After a record high engagement level of 38% in 2000, Gallup reported a 1% growth in 2021 yielding 39%.

1. Employee retention

Organizations with high engagement reduce both turnover and hiring costs and disengaged employees are a major factor contributing to high employee turnover.

Engaging employees is critical for retaining valuable talent and is an important piece of the employee satisfaction puzzle; as disengaged employees are more likely to leave their jobs. According to Forbes, employees who are engaged in their work are more likely to be motivated and remain committed to their employer. This leads to achieving more business goals and helping to drive the organization forward.

2. Employee productivity

Employees who are engaged at work are more likely to be productive on a constant basis, resulting in increased income. According to TechJury, companies with a high degree of employee engagement are 21 percent more lucrative. According to the Workplace Research Foundation, people who are engaged are 38% more likely to be productive.

3. How to improve employee engagement

Many researchers have diagnosed the field of employee engagement to determine the factors that will increase employee engagement in the organisation. The employees are willing and enthusiastic to work where they find meaning. The workplace is the prime spot where employer and employee can come closer together for the benefit of both, the employee feels a sense of community, comfortable space for themselves and find opportunities to contribute to the growth of the organization.

Armstrong et al. (2016) proposed a new model of engagement like the Maslow’s need hierarchy has also been developed by the researchers where the lowest level is the basic need like pay and benefits; higher needs follow once the employee is satisfied to spot opportunities, the possibility of promotion and leadership and the final level of this hierarchy is aligning personal values with the values of the firm and discovering a common objective and a sense of connection. There must be more opportunities to grow and a robust employee-employer relationship for initiating employee engagement. According to Sofian (2016) there must be five essential factors to create a highly engaged workforce;

• Align efforts with strategy
• Empower
• Promote and encourage teamwork
• Provide opportunities to grow and develop
• Recognize the efforts

This is why the Workplace Innovation and Skills Enhancement for Productivity (WISE-P) model was developed.  The WISE-P model is a New Model of Engagement Strategy developed from extensive research of employer – employee needs and implementing recommendation from these studies with alignment with Gallup’s workplace transition model;

Enhancing that interactive process ensures employees come to terms with evolving technologies and processes; and to build the requisite soft skills to ensure enhanced collaboration, efficient innovation that will bring about increased employee output through increased work motivation and engagement.

To achieve this, Terraskills while taking into consideration the need for employees to advance their career and increase organizational growth, developed the WISE-P model following International Training Standards to ensure hands-on learning with the aim of supporting education with technological and soft skills, driving social and professional inclusion of underemployed and disengaged individuals.

The WISE-P model was developed based on 7 dimensions of employability and skills enhancement;

1. Academic learning and orientation: the model provides an in-depth knowledge and orientation to developing interest and combines academic strengths and knowledge in the context of career aspirations.
2. Experiential learning: WISE-P engages participants in purposeful and meaningful experiences, utilizing real life examples and social experiments to enhance personal and career interest through guided reflection.
3. Career maturity: WISE-P engages participants to believe in a clear picture of self as it relates to the world of work, having knowledge and direct experience with career exploration and engagement activities.
4. Professional skills: the model helps employees demonstrate skills that employers’ value for successful transition to the workplace such as planning and prioritizing work, communication, problem solving, teamwork and collaboration, and leadership.
5. Career management: the model also ensures employees develop and employ the skills necessary to successfully navigate the workplace and make informed, sound judgments in relation to lifetime career progression.
6. Meaningful connections/Network development: the WISE-P module ensures that employees capitalize on mutually beneficial relationships that expand perspective, build interpersonal communication skills and create access to opportunities.
7. Global perspective: the model helps employees navigate the global economy by developing a broader understanding of the different cultures, economies and systems of the world and applying that perspective to the context of work.

The Model’s 7 dimensions are geared towards achieving a total organisational productivity driven by engaged employees.

Discover how we are providing lasting solutions to unemployment in Nigeria. The key to securing gainful employment is acquiring essential skills that are relevant in today’s world.

Unemployment appears to be the root of the majority of social crimes committed by graduates in today’s Nigerian society. The rise in prostitution, armed robbery, oil bunkering, cybercrime, drug addiction, trafficking, rape, abduction, and other forms of social vice may be traced in great part to the rise in unemployment.

According to Osalor (2012), Nigerian tertiary institutions graduate a minimum of 300,000 students each year, and this number continues to rise arithmetically, if not geometrically, resulting in more unemployed Nigerians roaming the streets. The ramifications of widespread unemployment in Nigerian society are not far-fetched, as poverty is a negative factor that leads individuals to engage in illicit activities in order to earn a livelihood.

We are in dire times

Nigeria witnessed the macroeconomic impact of the decrease in international oil prices as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, causing the country to enter a recession in the third quarter (Q3) of 2020. The gross domestic product (GDP) fell by -3.62 percent year on year in Q3 2020, resulting in a full-fledged recession and the second consecutive loss after -6.10 percent in Q2 2020.

Furthermore, the economy’s resurgence in Q3 2020 reflected the lingering impacts of mobility and economic activity limitations imposed across the country in early Q2 2020 in reaction to the COVID-19 epidemic. Nigeria’s GDP increased 0.51 percent year on year (YOY) in the first quarter of 2021, slightly faster than the 0.11 percent increase in the previous quarter, marking the second consecutive quarterly growth since the country’s economy entered recession in the third quarter of 2020, aided by easing COVID-19 restrictions and higher oil prices (Trading Economics, 2021).

Despite the fact that Nigeria’s economy is progressively recovering from the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment and inflation have remained high despite the decline in confirmed cases and the relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions. Nigeria’s total unemployment rate increased to 33.30 percent in Q1 2021 from 27.10 percent in Q2 2020, with jobless youth accounting for 53.4 percent of the population in Q1 2021, up from 40.8 percent in Q1 2020.

The emergence of the omicron strain of the virus raises the prospect of a coming shutdown. These are definitely ominous times.

Global unemployment

Around 497 million young people, or roughly 41 percent of the global youth population, are in the labour force. Of these, 429 million are employed, while nearly 68 million are looking for, and are available for, work (these are defined as unemployed). More than half of young people – around 776 million – are outside the labour force, meaning that they are not in employment and are not looking and available for a job (ILO, 2020).

Unemployment affects 67.6 million young women and men, or 13.6 percent of the youth labour force (Table 1). 

Table 1: Youth unemployment rates 2019–2021

Efforts to reduce unemployment in Nigeria

Various initiatives have been implemented by various administrations over time to combat young unemployment, which has been a major public concern since the days of SAP. Indeed, young unemployment became a focal point of the social policy of the military administration that controlled Nigeria for much of its independence. The government’s initial response was to recruit jobless youngsters to public initiatives like Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) and the Directorate of Food, Road, and Rural Infrastructure (DIFRRI), which gave people interested in agriculture immediate and direct work.

More organized and planned measures followed, which are divided into three categories:

Labor demand: this strategy focused on creating jobs immediately through public works or creating certain jobs in the private sector aimed at promoting entrepreneurship and skills enhancement.

Labor supply: this strategy dealt with the training and education of prospective job seekers.

Labor market interventions:  this strategy focused on improving the labour market and matching demand and supply interrelationships.

However, with the transition to civilian rule in 1999, successive civilian administrations tried to refocus unemployment programs, discontinuing many of the old programs, restructuring some of them and creating new ones.

Among the policy measures adopted to tackle the hydra-headed malaise of unemployment in Nigeria through job creation as social intervention effort of the Nigerian government include the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) adopted in 2003; Vision 20:2020 of 2009 which later inspired successive national development plans and the Transformational Agenda of 2011-2015 thereby making job creation an integral part of sector level reform; the Youth Enterprise With Innovation in Nigeria (You-WIN); Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) and more recently, the National Social Investment Programme (N-SIP) popularly known as NPower programme.

The SURE-P

The SURE-P was introduced in February 2012 and focused on management and investment of federal government savings derived from proceeds accruing from the partial removal of the subsidy on petroleum products. The SURE-P was the flagship of efforts to provide job opportunities to graduates of tertiary institutions. It was a whole range of activities and programmatic schemes, including the Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS), Community Services Scheme (CSS), Vocational Training Scheme (VTS), and Community Services, Women and Youth Empowerment (CSWYE), among others.

One of the more successful schemes of the SURE-P is the Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS), which offered unemployed graduates the opportunity to undergo a one-year internship in firms, banks, ministries, government departments and agencies, as well as in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), relevant to beneficiaries’ disciplines. The purpose of GIS was to help beneficiaries acquire the appropriate skills and practical knowledge that will make them more suitable for the job market.

The History of SURE-P

The establishment of SURE-P can be traced back to the deliberations of the Economic Management Team chaired by the then Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in the last quarter of 2011 on phasing out the oil subsidy. According to Okonjo-Iweala (2018), the debate took place in early December 2011 and it was agreed that there would be further debates and communications with the public, with a tentative implementation of the subsidy phase out in April 2012.

Although, such was the expectation, President Goodluck Jonathan announced the subsidy phase out on January 1, 2012. This created social turbulence in Nigeria, nationwide strikes and massive extremely well-organized demonstrations with Lagos being the epicentre of the public agitations. The tense situation led the President to call for negotiations with labour and civil society and as part of their demands; a program which would be known as the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) was to be established, which would comprise a committee headed by an eminent and trusted Nigerian including labour, civil society and a cross-section of Nigerians who would oversee and manage the subsidy funds.

By 16th January, 2012, after the labour called off the nationwide strike on subsidy removal, SURE-P was established, having Dr. Christopher Kolade as its pioneer Chairman. The scheme became one of the pivots of the Transformation Agenda of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s led-administration after being inaugurated on the 13th of February, 2012.

N-Power

N-Power is a youth empowerment scheme sponsored by the federal government of Nigeria which addresses the challenge of youth unemployment by providing a structure for large-scale and relevant work skill acquisition and development, while linking its core and outcomes to fixing inadequate public services and stimulating the larger economy. It is a well-articulated policy effort of the present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari that is aimed at combating the twin evils of poverty and unemployment among Nigerian youths of age bracket 18-35 years through capacity building, investment and direct financial support by the federal government of the Nigeria

The History of N-Power Programme

Following the quest to combat wide-scale poverty, high crime rate and increasing rate of unemployment, the civilian administration of President Muhammadu Buhari designed and implemented its own strategy as National Social Investment Programme (N-SIP). This programme consists of four major components, one of which was the job creation and empowerment initiative otherwise known as N-Power. The N-Power programme was the job creation and youth empowerment initiative of the National Social Investments Programme of the Federal Government of Nigeria designed to help young Nigerians acquire and develop life-long skills to become solution providers in their communities and to become players in the domestic and global markets (NSIP, 2016).

As captured in the N-Power selection and deployment plan in NSIP (2016), the whole idea of N-Power was to ensure that young Nigerians will be empowered with the necessary tools to go on and create, develop, build, fix and work on exceptional ideas, projects and enterprises that will change our communities, our economy and our nation.

Hence, the N-Power establishment committee strategically designed the programme for all eligible Nigerians looking to work gainfully. This was however after the initial programmes were designed for young Nigerians between the ages of 18 and 35 before being implemented. The implementation of N-Power was marked with the launching of the programme on June 12, 2016 when its application process commenced through an online process and closed on August 31, 2016. By December 1, 2016, all successful applicants of the N-Power scheme were engaged and the scheme began its operations fully.

However, helpful these programs have been, they have failed to address the increasing rate of unemployment.  

How COVID-19 is affecting youth unemployment

Globally, job losses in 2020 were mostly reflected in increased inactivity rather than unemployment. Inactivity grew by 81 million2, accounting for 71% of worldwide job losses, resulting in a 2.2 percentage point drop in global labour force participation in 2020 to 58.7 percent. In 2020, global unemployment rose by 33 million, with the unemployment rate climbing by 1.1 percentage points to 6.5 percent.

New annual estimates reveal that labour markets throughout the world were disrupted on a previously unparalleled scale in 2020. Assuming a work week of 48 hours. In the same year, 8.8 percent of worldwide working hours were lost compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, corresponding to 255 million full-time jobs (ILO, 2021).  Working-hour losses were most severe in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as in Southern Europe and Southern Asia. Working-hour losses in 2020 (during the heat of the pandemic) were around four times higher than during the 2009 global financial crisis.

Figure 1: Estimates of the working hours, employment and labour income lost in 2020, and projections for 2021

A report by the Africa Union estimates that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, “nearly 20 million jobs are threatened with destruction”. In a continent where, 85.8% of employment, and 95% of youth employment, is in the informal sector.

It has been estimated that by 2030, one fifth of the global labour force and nearly one third of the global youth labour force will be from this region. While 10 to 12 million youth enter the workforce each year, only 3 million formal jobs are created. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will likely exacerbate this trend.

In Nigeria, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), with support from the World Bank, launched the COVID19 National Longitudinal Phone Survey (NLPS); a monthly survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,950 households to monitor the socioeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and other shocks. Their report indicated that the overall share of Nigerians who are working remains slightly lower than before the COVID-19 crisis. Around 71% of the working-age population were working in September 2020 compared with 77% of the working-age population prior to the crisis, in July/ August 2018 when the post-planting round of the 2018/19 General Household Survey-Panel (GHS-Panel) was fielded.

In addition, the World Bank says over 11 million or more Nigerians may lose their jobs due to the high inflation rate, and an estimated 7 million Nigerians may have been pushed below the poverty line in 2020 due to rising prices alone without considering the direct impacts of COVID-19.

Factors enhancing the unemployment rate in Nigeria

There are myriads of factors responsible for youth unemployment in Nigeria. Although a holistic collection or documentation of these factors is lacking, many studies have been carried out to determine these factors in various populations within the country. Based on these selected studies, we’ve categorized the challenges of unemployment into infrastructure, policies, skills and population.

Infrastructure

• Lacks of social infrastructures make rural life unattractive
• Concentration of social amenities in the urban centers
• Outdated and inappropriate school curricula
• Rapid expansion of the educational system
• Lack of vibrant manufacturing sector to absorb the youths
• Lack of steady and sustainable power supply

Policies

• Gap between government policies and implementation
• Inaccurate public policies relating to employment
• Poor Macroeconomic and business environment
• Excessive Labor market regulation and employment

Skills

• Lack of employable skills and experience among youths
• Lack of entrepreneurial skill
• Supply of skilled youth is higher than demand
• Low levels of education among youths
• Lack of job hunt skills
• Lack of career information and business potentials
• Lack of vocational education and technical skills
• Skill mismatch

Population

• Rapid population growth
• Rural to urban migration

Source; Ongbali S. O, Afolalu S. A and Udo M. O (2019). With modification in categorisation.

What Terraskills is doing to solve the youth unemployment crisis

With the introduction of the Graduate Employability Skills (GES) Programme which is poised to equip graduates with requisite workplace skills and Emotional Intelligence (EI) necessary and sufficient for 21st Century living, for self, business, community and the nation Terraskills utilises the Labor Supply strategy which deals with the training and education of prospective job seekers to enhance the employability skills of young Nigerian Graduates. Hence, the development of the GES Model.

The model was developed to meet the needs of graduates and employers of labour; it stems from a holistic research of employers’ needs and the need to deliver a standard training model different from what is attainable in the Nigerian educational system. The model and method of delivery was developed taking into consideration the unique problems of the Nigerian graduate and the factors that surround his/her inadequacies. The model aims at supporting educational and social inclusion of fresh Nigerian graduates through a mechanism of orientation, tutorial action, and practical classes.

The GES model aims at fulfilling the following purposes;

1. To create successful learners with:
   • enthusiasm and motivation for learning
   • determination to reach high standards of achievement
   • openness to new thinking and ideas
   • the ability to use literacy, communication and numeracy skills
   • ability use technology for learning
   • the ability to think creatively and independently
   • the ability to learn independently and as part of a group
   • ability to make reasoned and sound evaluations
   • the ability to link and apply different kinds of learning in new situations.
2. To create confident individuals with:
   • self-respect
   • a sense of physical, mental and emotional wellbeing
   • secure values and beliefs
   • ambition and able to relate to others and manage themselves
   • ability to pursue a healthy and active lifestyle
   • ability to be self-aware, develop and communicate their own beliefs
   • the ability to assess risk and make informed decisions
   • the ability to achieve success in different areas of activity
3. To create effective contributors with:
   • an enterprising attitude
   • resilience
   • self-reliance and able to communicate in different ways and in different settings
4. To develop individuals with the ability to;
   • work in partnership and in teams
   • take the initiative and lead
   • apply critical thinking and new contexts
   • create and develop and solve problems.
5. To create responsible citizens with:
   • respect for others
   • commitment to participate responsibly in political, economic, social and cultural life
   • understanding of different beliefs and cultures
   • make informed choices and decisions
   • the ability to evaluate environmental, scientific and technological issues
   • the ability to develop informed, ethical views of complex issues.

The Terraskills Model will achieve these by;

Supporting development: it provides participants with a range of measures to support the development of problem-solving skills.

Developing measures targeted at helping participants meet the needs of employers: the measures Terraskills have developed to create and enhance ‘ ‘work readiness” in participants include a combination of basic skills and activities that focus on developing behaviours and attitudes that employers expect from young graduates when they enter the workplace. These measures are tailored to meet individual participant needs; this is why Terraskills utilizes the KYC tool to understand the Strengths, Weaknesses, Threats and Opportunities (SWOT) of each participant. This was taken as a major criterion in developing the GES model taking into consideration the uniqueness of an individual, noting that some individuals may require measures that primarily focus on developing emotional skills before focusing on social skills such as behaviours, attitudes and employability skills. Terraskills have identified that participants benefit from diversified support; this requires input from specialist professionals or via outreach, that is why Terraskills uses professional TED talks, case management, counselling and leadership roles and simulations.

Ensuring flexibility in meeting participants’ individual needs: The GES modules are unique because training is delivered in sub-cohorts; this is targeted at enhancing individual contribution to team building and learning. This is delivered in small groups or a one-to-one basis.

Enhancing employability skills through helping participants achieve work readiness: the model focuses on motivation, building self-confidence and self-esteem to help build a range of skills, and personal qualities to support participants in their overall integration in the workplace.

Creating opportunity through technology: the GES model takes into consideration the importance of technology in the society, workplace and in the lives of participants. Hence, it embraces technology to help young people access skills training and new job opportunities.

The Target

Terraskills is poised to train 1000 Nigerian graduates by 2023 under its GES Programme, tagged ‘EMPOWER 1000’. The target is to equip these graduates so that they can compete favourably, get employed and have a meaningful life. The main slogan for Terraskills ‘EMPOWER 1000’ is: Get Skilled, Go for Internship and Secure your future.