By Ebele Orakpo
Mr. Leke Olufade is the Chief Executive Officer/Team Leader of Total Business Solutions (TBS) Consulting Limited, an outfit set up to help organisations move to a higher level of corporate performance through customised, cost effective and timely business solutions using technology and people.

The graduate of Chemistry from the University of Ibadan, who is also a qualified Chartered Accountant and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), spoke to Vanguard in Lagos during a one-day workshop with the theme: Training on Trial, organised by the firm in conjunction with Centre for Management Development recently. Excerpts

According to Mr. Leke Olufade, TBS Consulting is into management consulting and capacity-building to help organisations to become more competitive.

Speaking on the choice of the theme of the workshop, Olufade said: “Training on Trial, the idea came because we suddenly found out from our interactions over the years that we are no longer paying attention to training. Training budget just became a welfare budget in which case we just spend it without expecting much from it and so we get nothing from it.

But now, it is getting to a complaint level where people no longer want to budget, they no longer want to train
people and it is affecting productivity in many organisations. You see people with very high degrees – MBA, MSc., etc. but they are not as productive as the older managers with only school cert and the difference is training.

There are no coaches, no mentors in the workplace and so we just felt we should throw it open as a national discussion so that we begin to see where we got it wrong, what they do in other climes and how we can get back on track. In other climes they still spend money on training, they still develop their people,” he noted.

He regretted that in the so-called computer age, so many people cannot use the computer and this does not help productivity.

“Now, you get to some organisations and you find out that people cannot even use the computer. It affects their productivity and yet, they will tell you ‘we spend money on training people on computer and they cannot use it.’ So if you train someone on computer and he cannot use it, training cannot be one off.

There are different stages so if there are specific competencies you know are important to your productivity in the workplace, you need to focus on them until the person becomes better or you change him. You have to train him to be able to do what you have engaged him to do,” he stated.

Continuing, he said: “People are complaining, especially banks, that they have huge training budget but there is no return on investment or they could not measure the return on investment. And we say ‘fine, you will get to that level because you have really not designed your training budget to focus on need and if it is not focused on need, then you cannot evaluate the return on investment. So what we want to do at this workshop is to come up with all those issues
and then discuss the way forward and put it in a document that we can make available to all Nigerians.”

Decrying the situation where people are just sent on training without taking into consideration the needs of the organisation, Olufade said:  “How do we come about the training needs of our people? Are we doing it well or somebody just sits down and says ‘oh, I have this request for training, ok, you go.’ Or you sit down and say ‘ok, for this person to perform this assignment creditably, he needs this skill so we send him on training so when he comes back, if he
still cannot do that job better, then we know he is either not trainable or the training was not the right one so you take a decision.

If for example I have an accountant who is supposed to be using an accounting package and I send him on training and he comes back and still cannot use that package, then something is wrong. But you find out that it is not so. At the senior level, you have executive training, people go for MBA and come back and cannot apply those things because they need follow-up discussions and engagements which they don’t get because they just look at training as means of making money. “ On whether the time allocated to most training is adequate, Olufade said:

“It is how you design the training. For example, there are skills you need to acquire, I can design it in modules so you can do one day training, go back to your work, put it into practice, come back may be one month after to do module two. So I can design it that way but if it is not properly planned, a one day or three-day training is not just adequate. You will not learn enough to apply but if somebody had planned that you need this skill, even if it is taking you six months, he knows that it is six months.

But here, because we are not planning and because we just felt we are helping people, we say ‘ok, three days training, who is available? Ok he is a nice guy, you go.’ So that will not be adequate. We have seen instances where people come for training and we ask them questions, they say, ‘I’ve attended this training before, but because they said I should come I’m here.’

Let us change that, let us use training to drive national productivity, It’s a capacity-building thing, either in civil service or private sector, you need to have a focus in making that staff a better staff and that is what training is all about.  Even though training alone cannot do it, there is what we call performance management aspect of it because if you are well trained and somebody is not managing your performance, you may still not be productive.

For example, a good driver is well trained, you don’t need to send him on training but if you are not managing his performance, he could just be a useless driver. He may not come on time, he may be careless about something and you are not checking that and you say he needs training, no it is not training, it is performance management.

Give him targets, see whether he is complying with those targets and then evaluate him and give him feedback on how he is doing. That is performance management. But if he has no skills, doesn’t know the highway code; that is
where we get to a T-junction and he doesn’t know what to do. Then send him on training and when he comes back, you see whether when he sees those signs he is able to react.”