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By Sunday Ani
Dr Deji Osesona has advised Human Resources (HR) professionals to ensure the mental health and wellness of their workers, stressing that productivity and profitability in place are dependent on that.
He disclosed this at the two-day HR Expo Africa and Data Analytics and Modeling Conference, DAMC recently held in Lagos.
Speaking on the topic, “Improving the health of the workplace: Focus on mental health,” Dr Osasona, who is the Principal Consultant, Winbox Consulting, described the HR professionals as the intermediary between business owners, leadership and employees. He added that they are advocates for employees and business owners.
“It is about HR professionals understanding the importance of mental health and wellness in the workplace.
“You cannot adjust or introduce a policy on mental health without taking into consideration the profitability for the company. You must be able to tag the benefits to profit and this is why HR professionals must upskill.
“We must know that the human brain is resistant to change. Most business owners and leaders in Nigeria are used to running businesses like slave masters and that is what their brains have been used to.
“So, introducing a change, their brains would resist it at first but there are ways to break the barriers, including collating data to assess the psychological states and the stress level of the employees as well as taking feedback and presenting them every six months.
“And once, it is observed that the trend is going into doom, there is a need to introduce activities, including wellness campaigns, corporate or group work, team bonding to relax, physical exercise, speak out initiative, coaching cycle, mental health communication and wellness tips every week. These are results-oriented initiatives that could bring about efficiency and effectiveness in the workplace.
“For those organisations without HR, it becomes the responsibility of the business owners to adopt these methods and keep pushing them until they get the desired results,” he said.
Founder, HR Expo Africa, and organiser of the HREA Work Festival, Erefa Coker, said the work festival is so widely anticipated and it is a vehicle for discovering the trends defining work and the best strategies for staying ahead of the curve.
She noted that with the theme, ‘Culture, People and Technology,’ it is pertinent to closely look at the intersection between the concepts, revealing the strategies for seamless integration and preparing organisations and their talents for a time impactful and sustainable drive into the future.
According to her, “HREA Work Festival is an annual event that brings together leading innovators, professionals executives, entrepreneurs, thinkers, researchers, policymakers and HR leaders, who inspire the most defining trends in the world of work in Africa and the rest of the world.
“Over the years, it has hosted over 10,000 participants, 5000 organisations and 300 speakers who have delivered about 1000 sections in 7 years.
“Some of the topics for the HREA 2023 include people engagement and Digital HR, technology (Fintech, edutech, AI&Tech enabled solutions), Resilient, Wellbeing and Ethics(Financial, Mental, Physical) Workforce Upskilling as well as Culture.
“People drive the culture and culture is very important. People do not leave organisations, rather, they leave the managers, co-workers, supervisors and when the culture of a company is toxic, people leave.
“We are looking at bridging the gap between culture and the people using technology to advance the workplace. The big question is how do we use technology to drive our culture and people within the workplace and that is what we are discussing.
“One of the new innovations to this year’s event is the dual-tracked structure. It features the long-standing work festival alongside a new addition, the data conference.
“We have brought different speakers to speak on wellbeing, manupause symptoms, cancer, how to make people more productive in the workplace and how does our culture support it and how do we use technology to advance our culture and improve the standard of the people.
“HR professionals are also employees, they are to boost the moral of the Management and the employees. The future of work is now and it is changing.
“It is important to understand that every company in Nigeria needs to explore the advantage of HR to boost productivity and profitability.
“We are hoping to drive a conversation where company owners would put their employees into consideration and come to the reality of a technology that drive productivity and profitability.
“Coming to office everyday does not necessarily means that the person is productive. But, with little time spent outside of the company, you can be productive. A happy employee is a productive employee. An employee can be engaged with the organization when the organization is also engaged with what he or she is going through.”
Speaking on Data Analysis, Managing Partner, DBrown Consulting, David Brown said: “Data analysis is everything. Data is about the people. Lots of speakers all over the world have been able to dwell on the theme, ‘People, Culture, Technology and Digital Transformation’ and that is what we are discussing.
“The Data conference tagged, ‘Data Analytics and Modeling Conference, DAMC’, is focused on transformation and how it can work for you. This is the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and it is important to discuss how to get data to work for us so as to add better values to customers.
“Data is around people, culture and technology and that is why it is important for HR professionals to leverage on this strategic solutions to enhance profitability.
“Some of the participants have been able to understand the importance of data in the operation of HR. For them, the big question is how to connect with what they do and that is how it works.”
One of the delegates, Stephen van DER Vat, CEO, Management Drives, explained that, “It is important that employers know what drives their employees. He added that there is room for improvement, especially where potentials are shared.
“It is, however, critical to know that employers of labour consider improvement of workers as well as the company and that is what people are looking for.
“All events have been geared towards responding to industry-defining changes with strategic solutions.”
