Making lives better for our employees by changing the way we work
Bettering the lives of our employees to perform at their best
HEAD OF HUMAN RESOURCES & ADMINISTRATION
Milton Owor
Material Matters
Strategic Objectives
Stakeholders
Capitals
Risks
At the Fund, we recognise that our staff are the engine of our success and sustainable growth. We therefore focus on creating an enabling environment where our staff are fully engaged, respected and empowered to consistently perform to their best. This is supported by appropriate development interventions and an equitable competitive reward system, to drive intrinsic satisfaction and engagement. In this way, our staff consistently volunteer their discretionary energy and commitment to deliver Fund strategy, to their best ability.
In the past year, we have worked under exceptional, unprecedented circumstances, mainly driven by the Covid-19 pandemic. This drastically changed the way we work, and even the very concept of work itself. A large majority of our staff have had to work from home for long periods of time. While this presents many opportunities, it also presents several challenges including connectivity issues, personal effectiveness challenges, Work-Life-Balance concerns, all of which resulted in heightened stress for staff. Leaders at the Fund have had to adapt their leadership style, so that they remain fully present and proactively supportive of their teams, even when they work remotely.
With several businesses closing down or drastically downscaling operations, our staff have felt heightened vulnerability driven by anxiety around their job security and sustainability.
One of our staff Barbra Obonya during the step challenge walk competition
90% of our staff, across all levels, actively participated in the month long 5000 daily step challenge
During the lockdown, we engaged our staff in a Step Challenge to keep fit and active
Making Lives Better
In the midst of these unprecedented challenges, we remain true to our Purpose, which is to Make Lives Better. To this end, we have focused on Employee Wellness, Ubiquity, Employee Connectedness, Mental Health, among others.
Employee Wellness for us encompasses physical, social, emotional and financial wellbeing. We started our Employee Wellness journey by conducting a baseline health review for all staff, which enabled us establish their key health issues. We used these findings to develop and implement immediate remedial interventions and devised a robust 5-point action plan for implementation over the next 6 – 12 months. These revolved around encouraging an ‘active’ lifestyle, eating healthy, mental wellbeing, and establishing a Medical Board. We also completed a month long 5000 daily step challenge where close to 90% of our staff, across all levels, actively participated.
On Ubiquity, we focused on enabling our staff to remain effective even while working remotely. Staff were given laptops, MIFI, data and airtime, to ensure they remained connected and able to work. Employee connectedness was strengthened through smaller departmental team engagements, buddy groups, all reinforced by the quarterly MD Townhalls.
Understanding the anxiety our staff were experiencing, we took the conscious decision not to downsize the organisation nor review staff emoluments. Counselling services were extended to cover all staff, their families, and close associates, all significant in providing staff the necessary emotional balance and psychological stability.
In addition to providing all requisite information on Covid-19 and the SOPs, testing for staff, where required was facilitated at the Fund’s expense. Staff and their dependents who tested positive were fully treated by the Fund, and provided post treatment counselling support as needed. Arrangements were also made with MoH for staff to be vaccinated from our offices.
View the 'Our Employees' write-up
Strategic Pillars
Despite the Covid-19 disruption, we made great progress on our strategic pillars – strategic Talent Management and driving a High-Performance culture in the organisation.
We adopted the hybrid workplace, with 70% of our staff working from home, and only 30% working from office on a rotational basis.
A broad range of learning opportunities were provided for our staff, leveraging Percipio, our on-line learning platform. We delivered 94% of our annual learning and development plans, Executive Coaching for EXCO, 4D training for planned EXCO successors, and trained our managers and supervisors on how to lead remote teams. As a result, 8.5% (FY20: x7.1%) of our staff experienced growth and promotion during the year.
On driving High Performance, we continue to leverage our reward framework to ensure we remain market competitive. We maintain the right balance between guaranteed and flexible pay, so staff and teams that perform strongly, are rewarded accordingly. In addition to the gym service, we also provide a creche for our lactating young mothers.
We continue to make great progress with our Records digitisation project, having digitised more than 50% of all our Records.
Through all of these interventions, our employees remain highly engaged, evidenced through the recent Employee Engagement survey with a score of 92%.
Future Plans
This FY, we will be focusing on our organisation redesign programme (and the related change management implications), re-skilling and re-deployment, embedding the Fund Purpose, introducing an Agile Performance Management system and commissioning a new HR Information Management System.