Nermine Fawzy & Sherif Amer provide a Double Course in Alexandria ~ AHRA

Performance Management and Employee Engagement

Coverage: Youssef Abdelaziz

Photography: Alia Faramawi

Alexandria 24-3-2016. It was 9:37 in the morning, I was already 7 minutes late and it wasn’t the best first impression that could be given. I jogged until I arrived at the entrance of Hilton Cornish… I took a deep breath, and then I entered. After several good mornings and inquiries I reached the room which the course will take place in. A big flyer of AHRA “Alexandria Human Resources Association” alongside another big one of the main sponsor of the day “Prime Health” a medical insurance company and member of medgulf insurance group issued the entrance scene. The scene of the room was solemn; a scene full of people that looks so important must be. About 10 minutes later, everyone was in his and her seat, the quiet reined the room and a gentleman in a suit started talking.

Mr. Emad Nasr “CEO of AHRA & HR Director of Lecico” started the event by a speech; welcoming the guests and mentioning the participating companies and organizations. Then, he introduced the speaker of the performance management session “Ms. Nermine Fawzy” – Regional HR & Admin Director Middle East and Africa of Cargill Company.

Ms. Nermine started her talk with joking about the time of the course saying that she accustomed to give courses at 7 and 8 A.M unlike today. The main subject of Ms. Nermine’s talk was the change of the performance management system in Cargill from ordinary performance appraisals focused system to a new system without ratings. In the course, Ms. Nermine noted that the main reason of changing is changing the culture of the company from system that has traits like centralized decision making, rule based organization, bureaucracy, focusing on short term goals and policing into a system with traits like long term goals, focusing on growth interactive business reviews, empowered relationship, urgency and low cost of condor. She said that “the company wanted the relationship to be between the employees and their managers with no other third lines attached”. She also highlighted the change in performance appraisals approach from a one-way communication, rigid and annual rating to an agile, two-way communication and coaching and no ratings, clarifying that “I don’t go to my manager and say all what I have and he only shakes his head anymore, it’s now an ongoing discussion and two-way dialogue to make this or break that”.

Then, Ms. Nermine turned to talk about the benefits of this transformation; explaining how hard the journey was but on the other hand the results are so comfortable. Empowering the employees-managers relationships was the most beneficial thing alongside the focusing on the on-going feedback and coaching, therefore employees feeling that they are not on a pass or fail exam. Then she talked about what is important to consider when you are intending or planning to change. Firstly, she talked about the bigger role of performance management than performance appraisals. Secondly, the simpler the process is, the better the progress goes. As she ended her session by saying that the managers and the HRs must know that: “We don’t give feedback to say that you’re either good or bad, it’s to say what you did wrong and how we should do it”.

After the presentation, questions took place and HR Revolution had a chance to ask her a question, “How did the team members who adopted the idea of system change deal with the black hatted colleagues and managers?” And she answered, “First of all, you must be so strategic about convincing people with your idea and know exactly when to talk to whom. Then, grabbing the opinion managers who influence a big number of people into the idea and also try to win middle managers who have a big capacity of employees and attract them to your idea”.

 Mr. Ibrahim Saad – Sales Manager at Hapag-Lloyd company – said that currently, his company applies the classical system of performance management but after the presentation of Ms. Nermine he thinks that the new techniques and mindsets will suit the sales directorate and other directorates as well, “We have obvious targets but we can easily count on the flexibility of performance management new system to develop the employees and their performance to reach our targeted numbers. I think that it will need some time to apply it in Egyptian companies. But internally, we can use some new techniques said by Ms. Nermine, maybe not all the system but some things that we can count on this period.”

After a 5 minutes break, Ms. Fatima El-Zein – Business Development Manager at “Prime Health Company” – talked with the audience about the company. Ms. Fatima explained the policy of Prime Health; she said that “we are focusing on the quality of their product, maybe some people accuse as for high prices. But on the long term with the more awareness people will gain, they will know who sells the best quality insurance”. Ms. Fatima summed it all up by saying: “We tailor according to the client’s request”. Then, Ms. Fatima pointed to the challenges that face her company to deliver the best quality with the third party “providers” like hospitals and pharmacies. She also highlighted an important problem which is that many TPA “third party administrator” companies deal with companies as insurance company, and they deal with them for only less value. Another important topic was mentioned which was justice in networking of insurance. Ms. Fatima explained that the networks of insurance must vary from the managers to the employees to the blue collars as everyone should have an insurance network that suits his salary. Ms. Fatima said, “You can’t give a blue-collar 200 pounds and say to him go and have dinner at Hilton, he will probably be pleased.. But he will have to pay extra 500 pounds to cover the dinner price”.

 All the attendees had a 20 minutes coffee break to refresh their minds. In the coffee break HR Revolution had a chance to ask some questions to Ms. Mariam Bahgat – The new Administrator of AHRA. She spoke with us about the plans she wants to implement in her new working environment. She said that all what is she trying to do is to provide new things and new ideas for AHRA and also increase the number of memberships. She also works on attracting more sponsors as she promises for special and important events organized by AHRA in the upcoming period.

After the coffee break, Mr. Sherif Amer – HR consultant – spoke about the other topic of the course “Employee Engagement”. Unlike the course of Mr. Ahmed Badr two months ago, Mr. Sherif talked about the topic from a different angle which is “Value Based Engagement”. Before starting, Mr. Sherif applied with the attendees what he called “Value Exercise”. He started distributing pieces of paper among the attendees with number of values written on them and the attendees must pick five values that can’t be abandoned in their lives. After picking, Mr. Sherif asked the attendees to exclude 3 values from the five they have already chosen to remain only two. It was a very tough choice but Mr. Sherif said after the exercise that the benefits of this exercise was to know every once in a while to know what are the values you are carrying in your life depending on the changes that happens through your experience.

In the course, Mr. Sherif talked about the different between the values of the startups and big companies. “Startups are some people who look like each other in their mindset and values so it is so easy to run the startup in this case because you have basic values shared by everyone, unlike the big companies who have a lot of employees and managers with different minds and characters,” he explained further that you have to hire according to a value based system to hire the people who carry values similar to that of the company’s. “The previous behavior is the best indicator of a future success or failure,” those were the words of Mr. Sherif pointing to the importance of hiring according a value based system. He also highlighted the role of disengagement in the organizations that causes a 450 to 500 billion loss.

Also, Mr. Sherif presented one of the most important factors in engagement which is internal communication with your employees, stressing on the role of HRs in creating an engaging atmosphere to the employees by simple steps like team building and transparency, which he considered the most important of all. He said, “A happy employee makes a happy costumer”. He also went to an important point and explaining the importance of embracing failure and that it is as important as celebrating success. Then, Mr. Sherif turned to a powerful point which is “managers”. He explained that many employees leave their work because of their managers. Having an academy for managing is an important step to produce great managers. Adding to that, “Countries like Egypt hire managers because they are experts at their fields, and not because they are good managers, which eventually cause huge troubles.”

Ms. Lamees Maher – Senior HR at ABCO United Group – saw that Mr. Sherif was on point in his presentation as she thought that he covered almost everything. She also saw that lack of engagement is a huge challenge that faces all the Egyptian companies including her company as the employees don’t feel that the values of the company are meeting theirs but they are still working on it to settle this problem and make the employees more comfortable in their work. She was also asked about whom to hire, a very qualified person with different values than your company or a less qualified person carrying the same values of the company? And her answer was, “If the less qualified person is trainable he/she is absolutely the right guy.”

FACEBOOK PAGE:

https://www.facebook.com/AHRA-122662534571622/?fref=ts