Great Place to Work, a global research, consulting and training firm, plans to reach 1000 customers in 12 African countries within the next five years.
Great Place to Work helps organisations identify, create and sustain great workplaces through the development of high trust workplace cultures.
Through its Great Place to Work Awards in Nigeria, launched five years ago, the company has been helping to transform the level of productivity at Nigeria and indeed, African workplaces as well as their financial performance.
Currently operating in five African countries, the company said it plans to grow its client base to least, 1000 customers by expanding its reach across 12 African countries including South Africa, Kenya and Cote d’Ivoire, among others.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Great Place to Work Africa, Mr. Kunle Malomo, said part of the 1000 customers the company was targeting for the next five years will come from Nigeria, where it plans to reach six additional states.
Malomo, who made these known on Thursday at the company’s 5th Anniversary Celebration in Lagos, said Great Place to Work has been in Lagos for the last five years, but targets to be in six more states by nest year.
He listed some of the states that will come on line in 2018 to include Oyo, Rivers, Kano and the Federal Capital Territory (Abuja), among others.
Malomo said criteria for choosing the states include good business base, good economy and representation of a concentration of corporate employers that have typically worked with the company in Lagos.
Preparatory to its aggressive expansion, the company had acquired a United Kingdom (UK) office through the help of its investors. “We wanted to be able to expand across Africa; that we needed the technical and research expertise of a similar business that has a lot more spread.
That UK business was 16 year old when we acquired it. It helped us to address some of the challenges in terms of finding the people, the talent to help drive growth,†Malome said.
He said going forward, the company will also move beyond recognising companies that have created better workplaces to focusing on managers that help create those great workplaces. “We are going to honour specific managers who are transforming the workplaces,†he announced.
Malome defined a great place to work as “….one where you trust the people you work for, have pride in what you do, and enjoy the people you work with.â€
Reviewing some of the company’s activities in the last five years, the CEO said it now serves over 100 corporate clients. According to him, more than 80 per cent of the biggest banks in Nigeria including financial services companies and multinationals make up the company’s huge clientele.
“We have surveyed hundreds of thousands of employees who work across more than 100 of those companies so, we are already very excited,†Malomo said.
He added that feedback from its clients also show that the company was on course, as many of the companies have changed their workplace practices, while others recorded improved financial performance.
For instance, Sanofi, a global health care company, acknowledged how Great Place to Work helped transform its workplace culture, helping it to communicate the values of being a great workplace. The company said it was able to reduce its unwanted turnover from 29 per cent to six per cent in just two years.
Also, the Head, Performance and Talent Management, Human Resources management, Sterling Bank, Mr. Oludare Shobajo, testified that in the last five years, its partnership with Great Place to Work has been exciting and hugely rewarding.
While noting that being a great place to work is a continuous process, Shobajo, who represented the Bank’s head of Human Resources, said Great Place to Work has become a reference point for companies seeking to transform themselves into great place to work, adding that it enabled the bank to constantly evaluate itself in today’s global workplace.
The highpoint of the company’s fifth anniversary was the cutting of the 5th anniversary cake.
