In 2001, VLA expanded its service offerings to include recruitment and selection services. Mo Abudu found the expertise that she had acquired from successfully managing a high street recruitment firm in the UK for several years invaluable in achieving this goal. By 2002, VLA again expanded its offerings to include Human Resource Solutions, providing services in the areas of Reward and Performance Management.
With VLA's business growing rapidly and the attendant significant increase in market share in the area of training and development, the organization identified a need for the development of a good quality training and conferencing facility in the Lagos area specifically geared towards the delivery of its training programmes and corporate retreats.
Vic Lawrence decided to promote the development of a purpose-built executive centre with residential facilities. Vic Lawrence approached SME Manager Limited which agreed to consider an equity investment in both Vic Lawrence and the Executive Centre: The Protea Hotel, Oakwood Park—a purpose built complex, offering state-of-the-art training and conferencing facilities—is located in the high-brow Lekki axis of Lagos State.
This strategic partnership with SME Manager gave Vic Lawrence the needed leverage to attract high potential human resources and penetrate blue-chip customers that may have been otherwise difficult to access. SME Manager focused extensively on building VLA into a robust and lasting institution.
Three years after the investment, not only had Vic Lawrence been able to increase and improve the quality of its service delivery; its customer base also increased significantly. The company was also able to surpass some of the leaders in its industry; increasing turnover by 400% and staff strength by over 500%.
Given the significant profitable growth recorded by VLA between 2001 and 2004, the need to further strengthen the management with high caliber talent was identified by the Managing Director. This was particular crucial to enable VLA consolidate its position within the industry. However, inviting such top level people into management required that their interests be aligned with those of the Company, hence the MD’s decision to invite shareholding partners into the company.
Given that the minimum investment period of three years specified under SMEEIS agreement had been achieved and the business really did not require an additional cash injection, in June 2004, the Managing Director approached SME Manager with an acceptable buy-out offer in collaboration with an experienced Human Resources professional, Alero Otobo, former Head Human Capital Development, United Bank of Africa (UBA) and Bunmi Lawson, former Executive Director of FATE Foundation. Both Alero and Bunmi then joined the company as Executive Directors and part owners.
Notably, VLA was the first organization in the SMEEIS scheme to successfully exit. The exit process was completed in March 2005.
VLA reached a new dawn with the leadership of Mo Abudu, Ola Ogunneye (General Manager) and other members of the VLA team. During that period of the organization’s development, the VLA team consisted of five senior industry sector heads, specializing in the fields of telecoms, oil & gas, manufacturing, finance and public sector services.
This highly specialized team equipped the firm with the required capacity and competence to understand the people management and HR issues within the identified sectors and to proffer effective solutions to diverse HR consultancy assignments. These customized solutions included: learning management, recruitment and selection, induction, career development, performance & reward management and exit management.
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