By Favour Nnabugwu

Managing Director of Leadway Assurance, Tunde Hassan-Odukale anchored women as the centrepiece of the company’s strategic importance, following this year World International Women’s Day

As the world celebrates 2022 International Women’s Day (IWD), Hassan-Odukale, emphasized the critical role women in the organisation have played in advancing the company’s vision and performance in the African insurance marketplace. 

According to him, “Women in our organisation form the most vital nucleus of our core values, strategy formulation, innovation, governance structure, business continuity model and superior customer service delivery. These values have been the DNA, or dare say, the secret of our exemplary corporate existence and globally celebrated performance. The indisputable reality is that our Women are the centrepiece of our strategic importance.”

“It is essential that organisations like ours eliminate management and operational structures, toxic corporate culture and HR practices that remotely allow bias against women in the workplace. Even with the appropriate structures in place, it is equally important to continuously re-evaluate policies and consistently build internal awareness to check against unconscious bias against women from the Board level cascading towards the entry hierarchy.

“We must realise, as leaders, that the workplace is complexly dynamic and continually evolving, especially in the 21st century where we have three sets of generational talents; with parallel orientation, beliefs, value system and expression, coexisting, interacting and working together. These complexities with limited intersections may create room for relationship friction, therefore today’s leaders must be mindful of creating a work environment with zero tolerance towards every form of discrimination, especially against women.”  

He said that this philosophy is the entrenched approach at Leadway Assurance to ensure that women get an equal shot at career development, growth and reward. He revealed that the Board mandated consistent reviews of Leadway’s HR policies towards talent attraction, recruitment process, retention, appraisal, development, training, advancement, rewards and remunerations, and employees’ overall engagement and treatment to ensure alignment with the international sustainable workplace best practices.