 Employees spend a lot of time in the workplace and correlating wellness goals with work-life balance is a mission critical to driving business outcomes. As business owners, HR experts, managers and employees, we can all openly agree that healthcare costs are significant that are simultaneously vital to employee life and a major threat to an organization's profit. A workforce is essential but a lot in productivity is detrimental. A culture is crucial but a decent-gauge population that creates low morale is a ticking time bomb. Now having a corporate wellness program is imperative to the foundation of your business. Your guess is as good as mine. Corporate wellness is our focus on this edition. Welcome to Business Insights and Plus TV Africa. I am Justin Acadone. The Central Bank of Nigeria retains monetary policy rate at 11.5% holds other parameters constant. Nigeria's national career among others were part of business headlines for this week. Here are the highlights. Monetary policy committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, has voted unanimously to retain the benchmark interest rate at 11.5% while keeping order monetary parameters constant. This was announced by the CBN governor, Gadwin Hamefeli, while reading the communique at the end of the 282nd Monetary Policy Committee meeting on Tuesday. The MPC stated that its policy over the previous month has begun to show a result owing to the 4.03% growth in real GDP and the sixth consecutive monthly decline in headlines inflation. The federal government of Nigeria says it is not in consensus with the International Monetary Fund's economic growth projection of 2.7% for Nigeria for the year 2021. The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, made this known during the Nigerian Development Update report launched for November 2021, tagged time for business as usual. The IMF had recently reviewed Nigeria's outlook projection to a new 2.7% and 2.8% for 2021 and 2022 respectively. But the Minister says Nigeria in the last three quarters of this year has hit a 3.3% growth and will improve to reach 3.5% by the end of the year. Nigeria's economy is expected to grow by 2.8% in 2022, on the back of stronger household spending and an increase in crude oil export value. This is according to projections in the Nigeria country risk report by Fate Solutions. The projections were made following expected growth of 2.1% in 2021 from the 1.9% contraction recorded in the previous year, which was affected by the COVID-19 lockdown measures. According to the report, government consumption is expected to rise in the coming year based on the 2022 budget announcement by the Finance Minister. The Federal Executive Council FSC approved April 2022 as the commencement date for the operations of the country's national career, Nigeria Air. This was disclosed by the Minister of Aviation, Sanitohagi Silica, alongside the Minister of Transportation, Rotomiya Mechi and the Finance, Budget and National Planning Minister, Dr Zainab Ahmed, in a meeting with newsmen after the FEC meeting on Wednesday. The aviation minister revealed that 49% of the Nigerian Air project will be owned by strategic equity partners and 46% by Nigerians, while the federal government will own 5% of the shares. The federal government has announced the launch of an enhanced e-passport, which they say will improve the passport application process for Nigerians at home and in diaspora. The rollout of the e-passport was conducted at the Nigerian High Commission in London, United Kingdom. In a statement on Tuesday, the Minister of Interior Affairs, Ogbenir Aoufa Regbeshola assured of the federal government's commitment with the enhanced e-passport stating that the federal government is committed to providing passport to all citizens. Welcome back. Fala Oshoshon is a well-being strategist and international speaker, trainer, content developer and principal consultant at corporate wellness consultant. She joins us on the show today as we measure return on investment in relation to having an employee wellness program. Fala, many thanks for joining us on Business Insight and Plus TV Africa. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. All right. For people who may not really understand the concept as it is, what exactly does corporate wellness entail? Employee well-being in terms of the psychological, the physical and psychological. That means emotional and mental well-being, social. Everything that has to do with employee well-being, like a total package. So it is just, it's beyond physical wellness. It's everything that employee needs to be productive at work basically. So invariably it's about making sure that your workforce has all that it needs to ensure better productivity. So basically what you're trying to tell me right now is that all employers of labor should have some sort of corporate wellness program. Most definitely, most definitely because it's a driver of productivity as I said earlier. In the sense that you can be at work. For instance, we employ people for the value they have, but they are retained for the value they have. So how do we move you from being potentially valuable as a member of a team to actually delivering that value that you embody? So wellness is actually a tool that can help an employee become, like an ordinary employee become a star pick performer. Because when we touch on well-being, we're talking about mental wellness, we're talking about your emotional wellness. And you have to be able to get to this part of you for you to actually put your mind to work. So if you come to work and all those part of you, you are kind of distracted. That is why we experience presenteeism at work. People are there physically, but mentally they are absent. So it's a form of, it's like when you say someone is absent, you know, the person is not physically at work. But presenteeism is when you are physically at work, but mentally. You're not having value to the bottom line. You're not having value. Alright, so basically now, what are the things that employers need to know if they have to set out a workable corporate plan? What do they need to do? Is it something that they do consciously or they have some sort of goals and they need like a team to just work this out? Okay, what we encourage corporate executives to do is one, for it to be effective. Because we are talking here on return on investment. For it to be effective, it has to be championed by wellness champions at the workplace. Because these are people that are passionate about wellness. They might not necessarily be HR executives. They are passionate about wellness and how it impacts on a person. So these are in an organization for you to actually make it effective. Your wellness programs, you have to get a wellness champion that actually is passionate about a people. You know, they are people, they are people, persons. They could call them people persons. They care about you. They can pick when you are not at your best at work. These are people that generally, they want to have value to people. So they can help start the conversation around wellness and drive it further. Also, it has to be an experience. You have to create experiences around wellness at the workplace. And that is what will make it a lifestyle. I can come and say, OK, now today we are signing up a team for a gym membership. If you do not make it an experience, like everybody goes together. Some people might not even come out for it. There has to be an experience around this. Let us do it together. It cannot actually employ you well being in isolation. So it's a teamwork. We have to do it together. That's why you see people work together as a team. We encourage it in workplaces to, like, do not let it be done in isolation. Create an experience around it. And once there is an experience around it, then it becomes a lifestyle. Because you always look forward to it. You will be the one asking your wellness champion that when is, when are we having our next walk? When are we having yoga session next? So basically, it starts from being an experience, then becomes a lifestyle. Then it becomes measurable when we talk in terms of return on investment. I'm glad you mentioned the return on investment. Let's talk about cost implications, if we may. Is it something that's copied wellness that, you know, would eat so much to the bottom line of the organization? Or is it something that no matter how small you are, you could actually feed it into your own shadow? Definitely. Wellness is, as I mentioned, a lifestyle. And for it to be a lifestyle, it has to be affordable. It has to be something that you can do with the minimal budget. So we can start with walks. As I mentioned, we can take a walk. We can have walking meetings. Instead of we sitting, we can stand to talk. And we can... That's very affordable, like for starters. Then we can take it further. Like do the gym memberships. Do experiences like yoga, Zumba. Introduce all these activities to the workforce. If we want to actually take it further, make it more exciting and interesting, then there will be a budget that is set aside to him. Because it's boring if you do the same thing every time. But you can start with the basics. Like let's take a walk for instance. Let's do walking meetings instead of sitting. Let's bring an... Fine, we have the regular options when it comes to meals. Let's do earlier options. A day in a week. It becomes like a lifestyle for an organization. And start with the organizational culture. If they see suit managers are not seeing the need, it will be a difficult experience to make happen. Very interesting. But then again, when we talk about corporate wellness, is it just about physical health? Ensuring that your mental well-being is balanced. Ensuring that you are in good form health-wise to be able to meet tasks assigned to you. Or is it more, or is there more concerning that specifically? Does it also entail maybe social psychoanalysis of the worker? Or just to be sure that he has the right temperament to be able to deliver? I always say that we are humans first before work. If you would introduce me now, you'd say Fola, before you now go on and say wellness strategist. So even as a human, wellness is what keeps us together. And the truth is, beyond the work, beyond work, we have life. So wellness cuts across the work and life. And there's a driver of wellness, and that is horse, me as Fola. There's a part of me that is walking, there's a part of me that has a family life. There's this Fola, the person of Fola, that needs wellness, that needs to be in a good frame of mind, that needs to know herself. And when you talk of wellness, it touches on self-awareness. It touches on emotional intelligence. It touches on every aspect of you that makes you even human in the first place. It talks on your empathy. Are you empathic? You need all these soft skills to be productive at work. And wellness actually makes this possible. But if you are in a mentally good space, you can work as a team member. If you are not feeling great, not all the time, we do not feel great all the time. But because we are mentally aware and we are self-aware that I need to deliver. Because first, this is why I'm here, that you bring everything, you put whatever concerns you have aside, then you walk. So basically it is a total package. It affects your work, it affects your life. So it's something we cannot, the conversation that we cannot say we are having enough of it already. I'm going to read something to you. They'll just get your reaction concerning them threats to wellness and all of that. Someone just said, let me just read verbatim. When done properly, an effective employee wellness program can be the difference between a company with an engaged, resilient workforce and an organization that has unproductive unhappy employees. So if I should put differently, the threats do not have a wellness program becoming my result in unproductivity and some lackluster attitude of workers. Yes, definitely. Let me cite a personal experience. My first experience as a professional was in the banking sector. That experience for me was, all we were told to do was to deliver. We were told to deliver. Then I was pregnant with my first child and even while on maternity leave, I was expected to do to meet my targets. I felt that was even what actually inspired me to think there is more to productivity than to get bottom line. We have to be innovative. You have to be creative. It does not come when you are under threats that you have to meet the deadline. It puts you under pressure that you cannot even deliver in a creative space. So then I had to just let go, let resign, take care of myself, my child. Fortunately for me, I now go to work in another organization. That was when I appreciated wellness because I could not even believe the results that I was delivering on. Because naturally when you are told, you do this, but you know that you are not under pressure to deliver. They put everything in place, all the structures in place to make sure that you are mentally strong, balanced, to work, to think creatively. Then your performance changes at that level because you are working from a point of rest, not from a point of pressure. So it impacts on the bottom line. It impacts on turnover. You know, staff turnover. When you are not paying attention to the well-being of your... They tend to migrate easily. They tend to migrate easily. And the cost of recruiting is even more higher than the cost of retaining your staff. So it's something we should pay attention to. Okay, I just want you to just maybe lay some sort of example what you would suggest or propose for maybe an average organization. What would you suggest they do? For instance, a workforce of about 20 to 50 people. And they are interested in getting this corporate wellness and planning into the day-to-day, or maybe monthly activity. So how often should they have some sort of maybe corporate yoga together, corporate walks, or maybe a time-out at a gym, or maybe would that be like a provision where they adjust that, make some subscription to a place and members could just actually go whenever they like. Just how does it work? Yes, most organizations do the subscription thing because it's cost-effective and you get discounts when you come as a team. You have to know what your team members, what their preferences are when it comes to wellness and what they prefer or what not. So the interesting thing we should notice is that as much as we are trying to be part of a corporate culture, it must be consistent. Consistency is the key word. It's not about having a wellness week once a year. It's something we should do every day. That's why I touched on making it a lifestyle. Yes, we encourage, and most organizations are in that space already, they encourage their team members to take the stairs, not the elevator, that is one. Yes, there are LD bars, LD snacks available at work. And from there, it becomes like a lifestyle. Everybody is conscious, it's about the consciousness that there are options to living healthy. And in doing that, it impacts on the bottom line. I would love to come to work because I know that beyond work... Something exciting, something new to experience daily. So it's something that we should... and it's affordable. You can just say, okay, for an organization, get an instructor to come around, a Zumba instructor, yoga. It shouldn't always be chimp, chimp, chimp. You could even talk about maybe drinking water more. Mindful games. We do mindful games. There's mindfulness. It's something we need in times like this. There are exciting things about wellness. It's beyond walking, gym and all that. So we can explore those options. All right, for that time, all this seems to be running so fast that when you have been just having a very interesting conversation. We must say a very big thank you to you for all of the input and the insight you've given to not just the employees, but also the employees because this culture is something that should be imbibed if you just want to have a healthy workforce. We do appreciate your time. Thank you for having me. It is our pleasure. All right, moving on now. The Labor State Governor Babaji Desonglu presented a budget proposal of $1.388 trillion to the State House of Assembly for Approval for the 2022 fiscal year. We'll leave you with the details of that report put together by love Ikuku Oyodokun. See you again next time. I am Justin Akadone. Bye for now. The Labor State House of Assembly was filled with State Executive Council members, lawmakers, judges and traditional rulers who came to hear Governor Babaji Desonglu present his 2022 budget proposal. The time came for the governor to take the stand and present it as planned. There is $138 billion nearer more than that of 2021. The year 2022 budget of constitution with a budget such as 1 Sweden $388 billion $285 billion $459 million $990.51 This budget comprising a total of $103 million $135 billion $159 million $092,822.30 He targeted the budget of cancellation. $564.9 billion was budgeted for a current expenditure while $823.5 billion was spent on capital projects. The budget is further analysed as a recurring expenditure of what we said at $564.9 billion and a capital expenditure of $59.6 billion at $823.35 billion. The deficit financing will be by way of accommodation external and domestic loans and bonds. The speaker of the House of Assembly passed a vote of confidence on Covno for his achievements. But he gave an advice to the governor. The speaker also called on President Mohammad Buhari to work towards reducing unemployment, insecurity and poverty. The government's employment in relation to security and infrastructure in the country is at an alarming rate. As such, I call Mr. President to work towards reducing the economy. Lagos 2022 spending plan is called the budget of consolidation because it is meant to help the government perfect on the gains recorded over the years. Thank you.