Talent management drives EABL to the top

In EABL, all stakeholders are involved in the acquisition of staff. These include hiring managers, human resource business partner, and a resourcing manager.

By Kenneth Kwama

Employees value companies that engage and involve them more in key decision-making processes and are likely to stay on for longer if there are prospects of further career growth in the future.

These are the findings contained in a survey titled ‘Best company to work for in 2012’ that was conducted by Deloitte.

In the survey, which was done among 16 companies, East African Breweries Limited (EABL) was named the best company to work for in Kenya.

EABL’s lot was boosted by the presence of Paul Kasimu – one of the country’s best-ranked minds in human resource – as its human resource director. Kasimu worked at Kenya Airways before he left for EABL, which is part of Diageo.

He attributes the firm’s success to an internal employee survey, which the company conducts annually, and which he says allows the beer maker to improve on shortcomings.

“After the survey, we have improvement action plan on items where we scored low. Deloitte external survey, in particular, showed that we are improving on areas where we scored lowly before. The Deloitte survey also validated our internal survey because both set of surveys had similar issues themes,” says Kasimu.

The burning question

But with the beer maker becoming a dream target of job seekers, the question now is, how easy is it to get employed by EABL?

Kasimu says that the firm has a strict resourcing policy, which allows it to explore its values and leadership capabilities further with prospective candidates. This, in turn, ensures that it recruits employees who identify with its values.

“All our stakeholders are involved in the acquisition process. Hiring managers, human resource business partner, and a resourcing manager. And for senior roles, a talent acquisition manager as well,” ays Kasimu.

In this context, the talent acquisition manager is an in-house headhunter who understands the firm’s corporate culture, and what to look for in external candidates. But Kasimu says EABL’s main aim during recruitment is to retain a healthy number of employees.

EABL talent management includes a performance management philosophy that encourages employee engagement whose pillars Kasimu refers to as ‘know me, focus me and value me’.

Class Training

The company also has various learning programmes that integrate both leadership and functional learning through emphasis on on-the-job training, with tailored classroom training where necessary. As part of Diageo group, its employees have access to the Diageo Academy where they get online training.

“We have a number of talent management programmes to accelerate talent readiness for future roles as part of our succession planning mechanics.  These include early career programme, future leaders programme, growing leaders programme and Diageo leadership performance programme – these programmes look to accelerate the leadership potential of talent identified to have the potential to be future leaders of the business,” says Kasimu.

Kasimu says that the talent reviews that take place regularly across the business allows the management to discuss business needs.

In the Delloitte survey, Microfinance firm Kenya Women Finance Trust was ranked as the second best company to work for, while media firm Nation Media Group was ranked third.

Anonymously interviewed

The survey saw a sample of employees in the companies who were anonymously interviewed give out views and also state whether they enjoyed working in the firms or not, and why.

During the survey, it was noted that the major contributor to employee turnover in most companies is bad work relations and communication between the workers and their line managers.

David Conradie, a director at Deloitte Consultancy South Africa said employers must focus more on personal welfare of their employees in order to improve their productivity and loyalty to the company.

“The organisations that are likely to keep their staff are the ones which can easily enter into a dialogue with their employees and even involve them in key decision making processes on what actions to take going forward,” said Conradie.