Q AND A With Exim Bank, The Country’s Overall Winner of the Best Local Employer 2019 Award

Exim bank Human Resources Head Mr Frederick Kanga (Second left) together with other Exim Bank senior officials represented the Bank in receiving two awards, namely Overall Winners of the Best Local Employer 2019 Award and overall winner in Employee Engagement award at the Employer of the Year Award (EYA) 2019 organized by Association of Tanzanian Employers (ATE). The award ceremony took place at Serena Hotel in Dar es Salaam. 

Exim Bank Group finished the year 2019 with a bang. The bank was named the country’s overall winner of the Best Local Employer 2019 award during the  Employer of the Year Award (EYA) 2019 organized by Association of Tanzanian Employers (ATE).

The awards also saw the bank winning the overall winner in Employee Engagement award as well as being declared to be among 10 Best Employers in the country in the competition that involved more than 800 Employers.

Mr Frederick Kanga, the bank’s Human Resources Head talks about the remarkable milestone for an inspiring local financial institution.

Q. Tell us a brief historical background of Exim Bank (T) Limited.

Exim Bank (Tanzania) Limited, a locally established Bank in Tanzania since Aug 1997, continues to remain in the forefront of providing quality banking services in the country and beyond.

Within a short span of 22 years of its existence and in 5 markets now, the bank has built a strong brand through its geographical reach (Tanzania, Comoros, Djibouti, Uganda and Ethiopia), innovative products, relationship management and its ability to provide a faster turnaround in services and in the process building a strong loyal customer base.

The bank is among the top five in the country in terms of total assets and total deposits. The bank’s total assets as of December 2019 was at TZS 1.7 Trillion.

Q. We are aware that Exim Bank has been participating a lot in CSR, what motivate you to be a leader in serving the Community.

The realization and comprehension of the fact that we, Exim Bank, do not exist and operate in isolation but rather as part of the community, is what, primarily, drive our Exim Cares initiatives.

We have been ambitious and aggressive in our business conduct but not at the expense of our surroundings. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has always been and is at the core of our philosophy, driven by our desire to bring positive changes in our communities through high priority sustainable practices.

In line with the vision of our CSR program, Exim Cares, we strongly believe in transforming lives through our actions. Over the years, Exim Bank, has made numerous contributions to the communities that surrounds us, either on environmental issues such as our Go-Green initiative in which we maintained parks and gardens across cities or need-based donations like emergency funds to relief organizations, desks for local schools, beds & mattresses for hospitals across the country and many other as part of giving back.

Our CSR program expands the definition of CSR from the common notion of giving back to becoming an organization that operates in a way that protects and benefits societies in a sustainable manner through aligning our business strategies, invest in causes in local communities and standing up for social justice issues.

We are motivated to address important social issues and builds on our commitment of Exim at work today, for tomorrow mantra which aims at working for a better tomorrow for the communities that support and surrounds us.

Q. How do you emerge to be a winner in the category of local employer of the year 2019?

We emerged winners for four consecutive years, not by default but by design. Our experience in dealing with this science is tremendous and it is our passion to see that we are connecting the dots to make sure that the most valuable asset of our organization is properly linked to the intended Organizational success. I am doing this function for about 28 years today and I have acquired enough experience to handle the challenge. My passion is to see that I am creating strategies that will bring a sense of belonging by employees feeling that they belong to the Organization and the organization belongs to them, I always do thorough diagnosis of employees’ wants and engage them in designing the strategies. We have got a wonderful Board of Directors which is among the strongest in the market vested with professionals around different fields and knowledgeable enough to accommodate the dynamics of Human Capital requirements.

As Local employers, we have done a lot in transforming our Human Resources processes. Unlike some of colleagues who are privileged to have their Headquarters elsewhere and operate in Tanzania as subsidiaries (hence receiving some guidelines from their Corporate Offices), we make our own Human Resources strategies and execute them. We create our own agenda that suits our business, our growth strategies considering both our short term and long-term Strategies.

Exim Bank embarked the Transformation journey from the year 2013 and we identified 3 key pillars to as our success factor, People being the first and most important determinant, being followed by Technology and Processes. We have been consistent in addressing this right because we believe that it is a backbone of our survival in the market and sustainability of our business. Since then, we have brought different innovations in Human Resources practices starting from creation of sound HR Infrastructure which supports the growth of both business and employees themselves.

Another strategy is Capacity Building, which we take very seriously, we have gone an extra mile of creating our own Academy which provides tailor-made learning opportunities to our employees. Our Talent Management Program is non-comparable as we have invested a lot in making sure that we have thorough means of identifying, developing and retaining our talents to become future business leaders, we have developed a good number of Tanzanian talents who have taken over some critical positions in our Bank.

We have efficient ways of employee engagement whereby no Eximite who feels left-out at any time. We have got different periodic meetings whereby we discuss all issues related to our Bank and agree on the way forward, we have created sustainable platforms for employee communication. This success story is what makes employees rely on internal platforms of addressing their concerns (if any) rather than relying to a third party. Following this, we have only 2 members of Trade Union out of the 700 employees despite the fact that we encourage them to join the union. We have goy our own quarterly magazine by the name of “Eximite” which is useful in communicating various initiatives to all employees. Our quarterly townhall and our Staff Committee have remained to be the best platforms of employee engagement.

We have made Exim Bank to be a good place to work as we make it free of Industrial Relations disputes. We normally practice Preventive Human Resources Management by providing much education to employees on our policies and procedures. However, whenever there is a dispute, we resolve it proactively and professionally. Like any other organization, we sometimes have problems, but we normally resolve our problems in a mature way.

We have a thorough Performance Management System which allows employees to own their future, we have also automated most of our HR Processes to enable smooth management of employee information. To us, performance is the key to every employee’s success, and we have got transparent means of recognition of outstanding performance.

We take care of our employees’ welfare and we are always flexible in our policies in accommodating the diversities. We are equal employers as we provide equal opportunities to gender, place of origin and disability.

Q. In term of Human resources Management, how do you treat the employees in term of fringe benefits and compensation.

Our compensation is attractive in all means and has been distributed in monetary and non-monetary. We always compare ourselves with the market and pick the most attractive practices. We have annual salary reviews which consider the market position especially with our peers. We also have got a long list of benefits which are also flexible and that are amended from time to time

Q. You have been winning as employer of the year for some years, what is the secret behind.

We have been winning these awards for four consecutive years now, the secret behind is that we are clear on where we want to place the Bank in terms of Employer Brand, commitment to attain that position, clear strategies and consistency. It is a passion to thrive for excellence, this is our passion and we are committed to maintain the pace. We always come up with innovative ideas on how to improve our practices. Innovative Human Resource values is what enabled Exim Bank to clinch the awards and our target remains to be the Overall Winner in all the categories, just stay tuned ……….

Q Final question- Any message you want to share to the public related to building good relationship

To the public, who are our major stakeholders, rest assured that Exim is a local Bank that you can trust. As days go, our Bank strengthens and our smiling employees are always ready to serve you, our innovation is here to stay, and we are committed to bring a smile to our customers as well.