CCD: It is about a year since you spoke with the Frontline; it means a lot must have happened in your Department. Could you please share with us what these things are?
Khadija: HR has been engaged in so many activities. If you recall, sometime in January this year, we had Strive Workshop, which unveiled the new structure of the company and alongside other things, which we are gradually implementing. Some of the new inventions aimed at driving productivity include: Performance Management System, Reward and Recognition and the new career part.
For the Performance Management System, we have done our first year, that is 2017, unfortunately being the first performance Management exercise of the Company, we have not been able to fully conclude it but I assure you that this year by December, we would have that of 2018 and there won’t be any more hitches.
For the Reward and Recognition, we had our first one and continuously we are doing our Shining Star of the month that is where we reward top performing staff in every location whether in the Regional Office or here in the Head Office.
Other activities that we intend to carry out this year are Reward and Recognition Ceremony the largest of all, the overall ceremony, which is supposed to hold annually.
These involve a lot of activities like CSR activities, award night, Customers Engagement among others. It is going to be a ceremony that all employees are going to be involved in one way or the other and finally we would close it down with a lunch with the Board of Directors. We hope to be celebrating while we are in 2billion Naira then.
Then the career part is the project we are currently working on, hopefully by December it is also going to be concluded alongside the employee Hand Book and the Condition of Service. We are expecting to have our last meeting on the 28th of this month to conclude on those documents.
CCD: You have been in this position for more than three years now, if I am not mistaken. Have the challenges remained the same?
Khadija: Ironically, I would say that the challenges have remained the same and they are mostly human challenges; people problems. Our main challenge is the inability to meet our target or even half of it. This gives me great concern as my Department is in charge of recruiting the people and if there were no productivity from employees, our rating would be low.
This was what gave birth to the Learning and Development Unit of this Department; we are trying hard to see how the L&D can tackle these problems though I know we cannot fully tackle them except people are willing to change.
Also, if we don’t have the right people at the right places, we will keep having the same issue but L&D is doing all it can to resolve this.
At present, our linesmen are undergoing training on customer orientation because one of the observations made at the Situation Room recently, is the fact that some members of staff do not have technical background and some talk rudely to customers.
So, we decided to do a non-technical training for technical staff. We have equally been focusing on doing technical for non-technical but now, it’s the other way around we are doing non-technical for technical people and from the feedback we are getting, things seem to be going smoothly.
Interestingly, L&D has a new training room; hope you will go and take pictures of it.
Before now, we were using the board room for our trainings but we now have a dedicated facility and the long-term plan is to have a facility around Kaduna South, which is going to be a technical training school, and this hopefully should be ready by the beginning of next year because we have approval for that already.
CCD: The ICT Department is automating work processes across the various Departments. Have they designed any for HR?
Khadija: At the moment, ICT has touched almost every Department. They developed the CRM system for Commercial; they develop the Billing App and lots more. So, for us in HR, they are trying to develop payroll software to start with, then Employee Management Software. As soon as these projects are completed with a successful pilot, you will be notified.
Recently, I was at Jos Disco. Their ICT has developed software for their HR team, which means they will go paperless even though I doubt if technology can totally erase the use of paper. The reason for the use of paper is for record purpose; there are instances when we need to make reference to them.
Our ICT team is currently developing something similar for us, which will greatly improve our efficiency.
CCD: Recently, over 90 successful candidates were employed. Tell us about it and why there was the need to employ more hands?
Khadija: The recent recruitment was part of an ongoing process that started since the beginning of this year and we have been doing it so that we can fill the current gap we discovered from the manpower analysis carried out in the Company.
The process began with an advert, for our internal employees who consider themselves suitable to fill the position before making it open for external applicants.
We organized an orientation programme, a little bit late as some of the new employees had already started working but we needed to have a complete batch before the commencement of the training.
Hopefully, we expect to employ more people by end of this year and early next year because we are always having a massive turnover. Another reason is because there would be new departments like Enforcement so we have to employ people with technical background.
If you look at some of the disconnections, they have just two people in a team that is why we need more hands.
CCD: What message do you have for staff as the person that manages Human Resources?
Khadija: Let me say hello once again since I am now talking to my people. As usual, I want to congratulate all members of the Kaduna Electric family for working till the 12th month of the year.
I want to use this medium to caution all members of staff to stay out of trouble. Keep up the good work and put Kaduna Electric first. These are the things I have to say to my colleagues, and please do not be involved in fraudulent activities; say No To Fraud!
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