The Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPM) has urged business leaders and human resource professionals to rethink traditional approaches to productivity, saying organisational performance in today’s difficult economic environment will depend more on leadership quality, workplace culture and system design than on external economic conditions. The call was made at the Corporate Members Forum 2026, held recently in Lagos under the theme, “Re-engineering Employee Productivity Amidst Macroeconomic Stress.”
Speaking at the forum, the President and Chairman of the Governing Council of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPM), Mallam Ahmed Ladan Gobir, FCIPM, fnli, said organisations must move beyond seeing productivity as only an operational measure and begin to treat it as a leadership responsibility that drives long-term competitiveness and growth. He added that organisations that invest in people, inspire purpose and build resilient workplace cultures are more likely to perform well despite economic uncertainty.
In his opening remarks, Gobir said many organisations blame inflation and other economic challenges for declining performance, but the bigger threat often comes from within the organisation.
“The biggest threat to productivity in today’s economy is not actually inflation. It is uninspired leadership,” 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 described human capital as Nigeria’s greatest resource, stressing that sustainable productivity growth depends on leaders’ ability to unlock the full potential of their workforce.
Gobir further challenged organisations to move away from compliance-driven management to people-centred leadership capable of turning workplace pressure into capability, innovation and improved performance.
Delivering the keynote presentation, the Managing Director of SoftAlliance and Resources Limited, Dr. Bisi Aina, said the productivity challenges facing organisations today are largely systemic rather than employee-related.
Speaking on the impact of rising inflation, exchange rate pressures, increasing operating costs and the continued migration of skilled professionals, Aina said organisations must redesign their work systems instead of simply expecting employees to work harder.
“Productivity today is no longer an employee problem. It is a system design problem,” Aina said.
According to him, many organisations ask the wrong question by focusing on why employees are not working harder instead of examining whether their existing systems enable employees to work smarter. He said average employees working within exceptional systems consistently outperform exceptional employees trapped in inefficient systems.
Aina identified five critical ways organisations can improve productivity. These include simplifying work processes, digitalising operations, empowering managers, continuously building workforce capabilities and measuring performance based on value delivered rather than hours worked.
During the panel discussion, HR Coordinator at Mota-Engil Nigeria, Mrs. Chinyere Olusanya, said many organisations still confuse activity with productivity by measuring attendance, long working hours and physical presence instead of actual results.
She called on organisations to develop systems and performance frameworks that focus on the quality and impact of employees’ contributions rather than traditional measures of busyness.
Also speaking, the Group HR Lead at SystemSpecs, Mr. Ibem Kalu Idika, advocated more flexible and personalised employee welfare structures that align benefits with workers’ actual needs while improving organisational efficiency.
Idika said 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, speakers agreed that while organisations cannot control inflation, exchange rate volatility or broader macroeconomic conditions, they can redesign work, strengthen leadership, leverage technology and build high-performance cultures that enable employees to thrive despite adversity.
The forum concluded with a clear message that in a period of economic uncertainty, organisations that will perform better are not necessarily those with the deepest pockets, but those willing to re-engineer productivity, unlock human potential and transform pressure into performance.
