Counselling engagement can scale up productivity – Ambode

By Kazeem Ugbodaga

Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode on Tuesday argued that counseling engagement of staff could help scale up productivity in the civil service.

The governor spoke at a two-day seminar, with the theme: “Human Resources Counselling in the Workplace,” held in Ikeja, Lagos, Southwest Nigeria.

According to Ambode, without doubt, high performances had been known to increase in organisations that exposed their human capital to counseling and leadership development through training programmes.

Ambode, who was represented by the Commissioner for Establishments, Training and Pensions, Dr. Benson Oke said it had been shown that counselling engagements increase productivity.

“The right, consistent counselling can increase the productivity of the people in an organisation. At its primal level, counselling is about understanding people emotionally. Emotional intelligence involves being smart about emotions and using empathy effectively to empower and engage employees. Counselling engagements that encompasses emotional intelligence can hone these emotional skills in people managers and leaders.

“Counselling engagement also helps retain and maximise the capacities of people in organisations such as the Lagos State Public Service.
It has been discovered that employees leave because of ineffective managers and managers with poor leadership skills that could be addressed by an adequate dose of counselling. By investing in counselling engagements, an organisation can retain its people and reduce costly recruitment expenses,” he explained.

Ambode added that counselling engagements helped nurture future leaders, stressing that organisations needed to be strategic about developing and nurturing future leaders.

“Without strategy, important roles are often given to the most forward candidates with dominant personalities. Quality appointment is a combination of the right qualities and the right training. Nurturing future leaders supports succession planning and offers career pathways to employees, further increasing retention,” he stated.

According to the governor, counselling engagements also increase employee participation, disclosing that 43% of highly engaged employees received feedback at least once a week compared to only 18% of those with low engagement.

“Giving feedback is a skill of successful leaders. Through counselling engagements, organisations can teach effective ways to give feedback to motivate and increase the skill level of their people,” Ambode submitted.

The governor said he was hopeful that the training would examine the implementable counselling strategies that could provide the government with modern and efficient Human Resource teams that would provide a source of expertise on people, policies, processes and recruitment campaigns.

“This is because the government relies on the Civil Service to support the government workforce and help departments and specialised offices to build a modern, effective Civil Service,” he said.