L-R: Immediate Past President of CIPM, Mr. Olusegun Mojeed, FCIPM, fnli; Guest Speaker, Dr. Bisi Aina; President and Chairman of the Governing Council of CIPM, Mallam Ahmed Ladan Gobir, FCIPM, fnli; Registrar/Chief Executive of CIPM, Ms. Oluwatoyin Naiwo, FCIPM, Chartered FCIPD, at the Corporate Members Forum of CIPM, held recently in Lagos, Nigeria.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPM) has urged business leaders and human resource professionals to rethink traditional approaches to productivity, insisting that organisational performance in today’s challenging economic environment will be determined more by leadership quality, workplace culture, and system design than by external economic conditions.
The call was made at the Corporate Members Forum 2026, organised by CIPM under the theme,”Re-engineering Employee Productivity Amidst Macroeconomic Stress.” The forum brought together business executives, HR leaders, and corporate decision-makers to examine strategies for sustaining performance amid inflationary pressures, exchange rate volatility, talent shortages, and technological disruption.
In his opening remarks, the President and Chairman of the Governing Council of CIPM, Mallam Ahmed Ladan Gobir, FCIPM, fnli, said organisations must move beyond viewing productivity merely as an operational metric and begin to see it as a leadership imperative capable of driving long-term competitiveness and growth.
According to him, while many organisations blame economic conditions for declining performance, the bigger threat often lies within.
“The biggest threat to productivity in today’s economy is not actually inflation. It is uninspired leadership,” Mallam Gobir said. “Inflation may increase the cost of doing business, but uninspired leadership increases the cost of lost ideas. Exchange rates may depreciate currencies, but toxic leadership depreciates human confidence.”
He noted that despite economic uncertainty, organisations that invest in people, inspire purpose, and build resilient cultures are more likely to emerge stronger from challenging periods.
Mallam Gobir described human capital as Nigeria’s greatest resource, stressing that sustainable productivity growth depends on leaders’ ability to unlock the potential of their workforce.
President and Chairman of the Governing Council of CIPM, Mallam Ahmed Ladan Gobir, FCIPM, fnli, at the Corporate Members Forum of CIPM, held recently in Lagos, Nigeria.
The CIPM President further challenged organisations to move from compliance-driven management to people-centred leadership capable of converting workplace pressure into capability, innovation, and performance.
Delivering the keynote presentation, Dr. Bisi Aina, Managing Director of SoftAlliance and Resources Limited, argued that productivity challenges confronting organisations today are fundamentally systemic rather than employee-related.
Drawing attention to rising inflation, exchange rate pressures, escalating operating costs and the continued loss of skilled professionals through migration, Dr. Aina said organisations must redesign work systems instead of demanding more effort from employees.
“Productivity today is no longer an employee problem. It is a system design problem,” he said.
According to the keynote speaker, organisations often ask the wrong question by focusing on why employees are not working harder, rather than examining whether existing systems enable them to work smarter. He maintained that average employees operating within exceptional systems consistently outperform exceptional employees trapped in inefficient systems.
Dr. Aina outlined five critical levers for improving productivity: simplifying work processes, digitalising operations, empowering managers, continuously building workforce capabilities, and shifting performance measurement from hours worked to value delivered.
Panel discussions at the forum reinforced the need for outcome-based performance management and employee-centred workplace policies.
Mrs. Chinyere Olusanya, HR Coordinator at Mota-Engil Nigeria, said many organisations continue to confuse activity with productivity, measuring performance by attendance, long work hours, or physical presence rather than actual results.
She called for the development of systems and frameworks that focus on the quality and impact of employees’ contributions rather than traditional indicators of busyness.
Also speaking during the session, Mr. Ibem Kalu Idika, Group HR Lead at SystemSpecs, advocated more flexible and personalised employee welfare structures that align benefits with workers’ actual needs while improving organisational efficiency.
He noted that productivity should not be viewed in isolation but as part of a broader pursuit of operational excellence that balances efficiency, quality, innovation, and employee wellbeing.
As the forum ended, one message stood out: organisations can neither control inflation, exchange rate volatility, nor broader macroeconomic conditions, but they can redesign work, strengthen leadership, leverage technology, and build high-performance cultures that enable employees to thrive despite adversity.
For participants at the CIPM Corporate Members Forum 2026, the message was unmistakable: in an era of economic uncertainty, the organisations that will outperform are not necessarily those with the deepest pockets, but those with the courage to re-engineer productivity, unlock human potential, and transform pressure into performance.
