Emeka Okoroanyanwu
Ecobank Nigeria Plc said it will not be able to renew a two-year contract it entered into with some vendor workers in 2017. This was even as the contract workers last Thursday morning besieged the head office of the bank on Victoria Island protesting the non renewal of their contracts.
The contract workers said they had two years ago negotiated a two-year contract arrangement with the bank, with a provision for a rollover of the terms and conditions of the previous agreement on negotiated terms.
According to them, the major reason why the bank was unwilling to renew the two-year contract agreement was that it is at present grooming over 300 young graduates at its academy to assume full-time positions in various capacities at the bank.
But in reaction to the protest, the bank said it has decided not to renew the contract of the protesting vendors, noting that the decision not to renew the contract was consistent with the bank’s rebuilding strategy and its human capital development plans.
The bank said while rebuilding its operations through organic human capital development, it decided to review its staff mix, but in doing so, cater to the immediate welfare of the vendor-related personnel. The effort at reducing the impact of the disengagement of vendor-employed personnel involved the payment of N0.5bn to the staffing-vendor. Also, the bank said it allowed those with relevant qualifications to apply directly to the bank for permanent employment.
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According to a release, the bank said it equally provided opportunity to the contract staff to still benefit from the bank’s business value chain by becoming Xpress point agents of Ecobank.
The bank’s press release further stated that it was not under obligation to renew the contract of the staffing vendor, noting that this was particularly clear when viewing the issue in the context of the huge personnel development costs incurred to groom new graduates for permanent employment positions with the bank.
According to Ecobank, “In the light of recent operating challenges of the bank and the adverse impact compliance with IFRS9 and IAS21 had on the bank’s annual financial statement in 2018, the current review of internal processes, staffing and costs are understandable. The implications of the impact of IFRS9 saw the bank witnessing a fall in turnover and weakened shareholder capital resulting in the parent company providing additional capital support of USD58m in 2018.”
The bank said it has been able to hold impairments down from N411.05m in 2017 to N263.9m in 2018. “The improvement in impairment was the result of a slowing down of lending activities and a rolling back of poor credit in both the commercial banking sector of the bank’s business and Investment banking activities,” it said.
The bank said its training development programmes are part of its talent development strategy to produce medium to top-level banking professionals to feed into the bank’s talent pipeline. The corporate communications department notes that the programmes prepare candidates for banking careers in positions aligned with their competencies and experience at the entry point of functional pre-managerial roles.
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As part of its forward plan, the bank noted that 100 fresh graduates recently joined Ecobank at the Entry Level programme – which involved two months of training for fresh graduates in preparing them to join the Bank’s staff Corp expected to grow their experience along with the ranks.
The bank’s first batch of 25 Graduate Trainees who passed out after 12 months of training has resumed full employment.
According to the bank’s chief executive, Mr. Patrick Akinwuntan, “this programme is our way of creating future leaders for the industry. We are investing in people to accomplish our vision as a bank. A key success factor of any bank is capital, and we must, therefore, train those who will be empowered to oversee this capital and put it to good use in the interest of depositors and investors.”
The bank said its strategy of training entry-level staff for integration into the bank’s various operations has placed it in conflict with its contract personnel who are seeing their employment threatened by new graduate trainees, resulting in the protest at its head office.