16 November 2015, Lagos – Diamond Bank said it has empowered over 16, 000 small and medium enterprises in Nigeria through its Diamond Express seminar over the past four years. Head, MSME and Agency banking, Diamond Bank, Chidimma Lawanson, disclosed this last week while addressing journalists at the sideline of the 62nd Diamond Express Seminar for SMEs held in Lagos.
She said: “Physically, we have impacted more than 16, 000 small businesses across the country through this seminar. This is the 62nd edition and we have been doing it since 2011. The feedback has also been tremendous. More so, we also get SME owners to go online and watch some of these seminars. And we take this across the six geopolitical zones of the country.”
Speaking on theme of this edition, which is: ‘Global Best Practices In Human Resources’, she said: “We call this training one of the non-financial benefits and services that we give to the Micro Small and Medium Enterprises, MSME sector. It is a capacity building offering to help them grow their businesses.
Today we talked about global best practices in human resource management. Many of the MSMEs struggle with human resource issues regarding who to employ. For instance, do they have to employ their family members because they think it is cheap and at the end of the day, may cause them issues since you cannot fire them if they are not doing so well? So we brought consultants who have done well in their own businesses to teach them how to structure their own businesses better.”
Also speaking, Managing Director/Publisher of Castle Lifestyle magazine, Dipo Davies in a keynote address tasked the participants to develop formal systems and processes if they must grow sustainable large businesses.
*Jonah Nwokpoku – Vanguard
