This Article is being brought to you by Meri in collaboration with the Mastercard Foundation. Since the launch of Young Africa Works in Ethiopia in late 2019, the Mastercard Foundation through various partnerships has enabled 1.4 million young people to get access to work opportunities in Ethiopia. These opportunities have been cultivated through partnerships across the Foundation’s priority sector, agribusiness, agro-processing, manufacturing, and the digital economy. In Ethiopia, the Mastercard Foundation aims to enable 10 million young people (70% women) to have access to work opportunities by 2030.

Meri Summit is a quarterly summit designed to facilitate interaction among accomplished entrepreneurs with our audience. It serves as a platform for engaging with influential voices in the entrepreneurial sphere and advancing professional pursuits. Through discussions and networking sessions, participants can expand their connections and cultivate valuable knowledge at Meri Summit. 

Mr. Samuel Yalew, Mastercard Foundation Country Director for Ethiopia, commenced our premier Summit by highlighting the significant partnership between Meri and the Mastercard Foundation. He acknowledged the alignment of our shared values and missions, recognizing Meri's role in providing learning opportunities for individuals, entrepreneurs, and leaders seeking to expand their knowledge. 

Following Mr. Samuel's opening remarks, our main speaker, Mr. Meried Bekele, took the stage and introduced the session as an HR (Human Resources) masterclass focusing on creating a high-performing team, aiming to share his knowledge and experiences that he gained from running IE Network Solutions for 15 years.

Mr. Meried Bekele began by presenting the employee life cycle at IE Networks, spanning from hiring to exit, and it encompasses four different teams;

1. Talent Acquisition, Onboarding, and Exit Team 

Talent acquisition involves identifying individuals who align with the company's values and seeking those who are prepared to achieve excellence, challenge their limitations, and meet deadlines. To that end, the hiring process at IE Networks involves the following procedure:

• Induction: Introducing new hires to the company culture and their roles.
• Probation Target: At IE Networks, specific targets are set for probation, covering technical skills, attitude, and attendance. Failure to meet 80% of these targets within 60 days results in termination.
• Coaching: Each new employee is assigned a senior employee to guide them through their probation period.

2. Employee Engagement, Training, and Leadership Development Team

This team is responsible for new hire training, skill development, certifications, engagement activities, and leadership training. 

After meeting probation targets, employees undergo a two-week new hire training, different skill development sessions, and quarterly certifications tailored to their needs. 

Within IE Networks, they conduct Stay Interviews to understand employee experiences and Exit Interviews to gather feedback upon resignation. Meried highlights the need to conduct Stay Interviews to recognize employee disengagement before formal resignation, asking questions like, 'What causes frustration or dissatisfaction in your role?' and 'Are there aspects of your relationship with your manager you wish him to improve?’, These kinds of inquiries aim to uncover underlying issues which lead to resignation. Similarly, Exit Interviews aim to offer departing employees a positive reflection on their time at the company, involving gathering feedback on their overall experience and potentially addressing any remaining concerns or grievances.

Meried said, "We foster a culture of Conversation, Feedback, and Recognition (CFR) where an employee engages in a one-on-one session with their manager, participates in a quarterly session with the CEO, and completes more than 10 anonymous surveys per quarter to provide comprehensive feedback.

Engagement activities at IE Networks include running sessions, football matches, and different team-building games.

3. Planning and Performance Management Team

This team oversees goal-setting, Objectives and Key Results (OKRs ), Key Performance Indicators ( KPIs), daily standup meetings, weekly check-ins, bi-weekly meetings, monthly performance reviews, and performance improvement plans. Meried underscores the importance of measurement, citing Peter Drucker's quote: "If you don't measure it, you can't manage it." 

At IE Networks, they use a tool called Basecamp, an organized and cost-effective product for project management, performance tracking, reporting, and internal collaboration.

4. Attendance, Benefits, and Compensation Team

This team manages the company's routine work environment, including attendance, benefits, loyalty programs, incentives, bonuses, payroll, and variable payments that will be added to the employees' base payment based on their performance.

After his presentation, Mr. Meried responded to questions raised by our host, Kenean, and addressed queries directly posed by the audience. Below is the summary of the key discussion points: 

Hiring and Termination Practices 

Under IE Networks, hiring decisions are decentralized with each department manager, having the authority to request new employees quarterly. The management evaluates these requests, and if approved, the requesting manager oversees all aspects of the hiring process, including drafting job descriptions, advertising vacancies, and conducting initial interviews with the HR team.

According to Meried, it's important to be data-driven rather than relying on gut feeling when it comes to disciplinary actions or terminations as emotional decisions can lead to unintended consequences, particularly from a legal standpoint. He recalls the experience shared by his friend who has worked in a U.S. company, where warnings and terminations are handled without emotional involvement there. Instead, individuals receive automated letters detailing the decision, which are then filed in their HR records.

Managing Team Conflict 

Meried advocates for embracing debate and diverse viewpoints within the working environment, and he underscores the importance of addressing underlying issues. To manage conflicts effectively, implementing a structured conflict resolution process is preferable, with the HR team taking a lead role in facilitating resolution among employees, documenting meetings, and clarifying issues to resolve conflicts internally. However, for more significant conflicts that HR cannot reconcile, the CEO may occasionally intervene to mediate and facilitate resolution.

Leadership Approach for the New Generation

Meried asserts that the current generation craves challenge, inspiration, purpose, impact, and appreciation. Recognizing that most employees at IE Networks are youngsters, he recommends creating an environment that acknowledges their efforts and assigning meaningful tasks will lead to higher accomplishment, and by meeting these needs, discipline can be instilled in the new young generation efficiently.

How to Manage Company Growth

Meried draws inspiration from the book 'Sapiens,' highlighting that in this era, one of humanity's greatest achievements is uniting hundreds of thousands of individuals to achieve a common goal. He acknowledges the importance of early documentation and process definition, considering it as crucial as completing tasks since maintaining the company culture requires developing documentation from the outset. He suggests incentivizing employees with additional credits for creating documents and developing documentation shouldn't be seen as an additional burden but as an integral part of the workflow.

Essential components of documentation include Standard Operating Procedures, How-to Manuals, internal process flow diagrams, and policies related to HR and technical aspects. Meried believes that sharing knowledge through documentation shouldn't be perceived as making oneself easily replaceable, but it opens doors to various opportunities and advantages in the long run, considering that knowledge is available everywhere nowadays.

Operating Without the Founder

Establishing a functional system in the absence of the founder poses challenges, and these crises require decision-makers within the management team to manage business operations and maintain transparency. Meried references a well-known scenario, if a CEO were hit by a bus and died, would the company survive? The answer lies in the company's processes and raises critical questions like, Are approvals solely dependent on the CEO? Are there essential pieces of knowledge exclusive to the CEO? Questions like these are important to foster a culture of preparedness for such eventualities.

Managing Performance 

According to Meried, founders should invest their time and energy into developing a robust HR team and establishing clear KPIs. Defining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should align closely with an employee's actual job responsibilities, for instance, a salesperson's performance should be evaluated based on their sales achievements. 

At IE Networks, managers are responsible for conducting one-on-one performance evaluations with individual employees and overseeing team performance, while the HR team serves as a consultant to managers in this process.

The Importance of Mission Over Vision

Meried underscores the importance of mission over vision. Through his experience at Stanford Seed, he learned the necessity of prioritizing the mission statement and focusing on the company's purpose. He exemplified IE Networks' mission to change lives in Africa through a disciplined work culture and systemic thinking, which led the employees to come to the office to create a disciplined working environment and to think systemically rather than to do different tasks.

Building Company Culture 

Meried recalls advice from Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin regarding organizational culture. They underscore starting organizational culture from the company's inception, as they did when creating Google in a garage, and he recommended hiring an HR employee at the outset of the company's establishment, ideally at the earliest stages.

Future Plan

IE Networks aims to expand its services beyond projects, including cloud service provision and IT outsourcing (BPO), with plans to transition internal operations software and applications into cloud services products.

Meried plans to list IE Networks on the newly emerging Ethiopian Capital Markets within the next two to three years, transitioning it into a public company with proper corporate governance and a new CEO. He is considering leaving the company to explore opportunities in coaching, consulting, and venture capitalism, aiming to assist startups to succeed. Additionally, he has a passion for teaching and plans to share his knowledge through writing books, with the ultimate goal of transforming his experience.

Thank you for taking the time to read our Meri Summit summary brief! For further insights about building a high-performing team, Click Here to enjoy the complete episode on Meri Podcast YouTube channel!