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HR MISTAKES BY YOURS TRULY 4

 I wish to state here that one of the greatest mistakes made by yours truly was accepting to work for one-man businesses. During my active work-life, I worked for three one-man multi billion naira companies at the time the naira had some value.

One common problem with all of them was the absence of codified HR Policies and Procedures. The HR Policies and Procedures were usually in respective heads of the owners. They accepted codified HR Policies and Procedures to humour you until actual implementation when they will refuse outrightly.

In one of them, I did a job classification and salary structure, only for the owner to set it at nought at implication. We also agreed out-station allowance for junior staff. The first beneficiaries were denied by the Chairman and his family members claiming, I was trying to unionize the workers.

In another, I was told one of the most fantastic Industrial Relations story, that there were Industrial Arbitration Panel and National Industrial Court rulings that the company's workers cannot be unionized. Of course , it was not true but a wrong interpretation of the rulings. Again, when NLC wrote to inform the company of her intentions to picket the company, the company procured a High Court injunction against NLC which could be enforced. My opinion to the company was both the Lawyer and High Court Judge were Jokers.

As regards the third, we agreed that the company with the majority of Senior Staff would form the basis of all Senior Staff Association for the group of companies, I had to convince other Senior Staff Associations to accept the management position. However, when negotiating the procedural agreement and they  demanded the annual salary increment negotiation which I rejected stating that would be taken care of by the Company's Performance Management System, which they also rejected. At conciliation at the Ministry of Labour, the management position was upheld. In the interim, the owner made it convenient for the second-in-command to jettison everything as regards organizing the Senior Staff of the company till date.

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