MTN Nigeria has been formally accredited by the Investors in People (IiP) Governing Board, United Kingdom as an Investor in People organization.

MTN Nigeria is the first company in Nigeria and indeed in West Africa to be so recognised; it is also the first operating company of the MTN Group to attain this status.

The assessment of MTN Nigeria was carried out by a team of IiP assessors from the UK and their findings culminated in the highly prestigious accreditation.

“Achieving the IiP accreditation is for us a validation of the strength of our Employee Value Proposition also known as the MTN Deal. MTN Nigeria strongly believes that our people are our most critical competitive asset and a key differentiator in the marketplace. The IiP accreditation is an independent and objective confirmation that we care about our people and deploy best practice people solutions and policies that make MTN Nigeria a great place to work,” said Amina Oyagbola, Human Resources Executive, MTN Nigeria.

Oyagbola said the company is particularly delighted by the accreditation as it reinforces MTN’s position as an Employer of Choice.

Oyagbola recalled that as an example of one of the five pillars of the company’s robust employee value proposition of Investing in Talent, MTN Nigeria introduced the Accredited Learning Scheme (ALS) in 2005.

“This initiative seeks to foster the educational and professional development of long serving and high performing employees across the organization by providing the platform for employees to continue their educational pursuits in reputable universities in the UK while in full-time employment,” she said.

‘To date, close to a thousand staff have taken advantage of the scheme’, according to Oyagbola

Elaborating further, Oyagbola said that the ALS and MTN’s Talent development strategy amongst other people investment interventions which had been carefully implemented over the years have facilitated rapid career development and up-skilling of the Nigeria work-force across all Divisions of the company.

She commented that 99% of MTN Nigeria’s workforce is Nigerian, and that 98% of senior management  were also local staff, in line with MTN’s robust local content policy.

Another laudable initiative is the development of a homegrown Career Management Framework known as Y’ello Careers. Y’ello Careers was developed to create employee awareness on career development opportunities and support employee development and mobility.

The initiative received an endorsement from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), UK.  Richard Braybrooke of CIPD said: “This is one of the most comprehensive in depth approaches to Career Management we have ever seen. CIPD believes this is the missing ingredient in making a comprehensive talent management approach successful. Many organizations who are keen to win the competitive war for talent get the organizational systems in place, only to forget the individual’s contribution in jointly recognizing their career aspirations. We are sure that MTNN, who are currently training all their managers and employees in effective career management, will see a marked positive effect on their business bottom line by retaining and developing their talented employees.”

In reaction to the IiP award, Akinwale Goodluck, MTN Corporate Services Executive, said, “We are delighted to receive this recognition; it is the highest accolade in people management practices from an independent and internationally recognized body. It has given us additional impetus and determination to continue to deploy best practice people solutions for the benefit of the organization and all our stakeholders.”

Ken Baylis, a registered specialist of Investors in People International and a member of the team that carried out the assessment said, “MTN is a great example of a company using Investors in People to improve business performance. They have worked hard to improve people management and talent development”.

The company’s talent development creed has been demonstrated over the years in the number of Nigerians who have been appointed to strategic positions across various MTN operations.

Karl Toriola was appointed CEO of MTN Cameroun in 2011 and only recently, Mike Ikpoki became the first Nigerian CEO of MTN Nigeria having served as CEO of MTN Ghana for two years.