The Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPM) has urged business leaders and human resource professionals to rethink traditional approaches to productivity. The call was made at the Corporate Members’ Forum 2026, organised by CIPM under the theme, “Re-engineering Employee Productivity Amidst Macroeconomic Stress.” The President and Chairman of the Governing Council of CIPM, Mallam Ahmed Ladan Gobir, 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. “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 said. 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. 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. He urged 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. He 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. 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.
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