It was the great management guru, Peter Drucker, who once said “there is no success without a successor”. This is a quote that well justifies the commitment of Mrs Taiwo Dayo-Abatan to raising another crop of HR professionals who can outperform her successful two and half decades in the industry.
Taiwo Dayo-Abatan may be described as one of the most respected HR personnel in Nigeria. She is a seasoned Human Resource Management Specialist, a trained coach and a mentor. She is listed among the Top 100 Career Women in Nigeria and also the 100 Power Women in Nigeria in 2021.
Dayo-Abatan has a quarter-century worth of experience that has made her an expert in Performance Management, People and Cultural Transformation, Learning and Development, Manpower Planning, Recruitment and Selection, Organizational Development and Employee Relations.
She recently joined VFS Global Services as Regional HR Head, Sub-Saharan Africa. But she is not stopping at building her career. She is now impacting and mentoring a younger generation through the HR Foundry and Taiwo’s Coffee Chat.
Taiwo Dayo-Abatan Educational Background
Taiwo attended the University of Ado-Ekiti where she bagged a first degree in Economics and then proceeded to The Federal University of Technology, Akure where she bagged an MBA in Management in 2002.
Much later, she attended the London Academy Business School. She is also an Alumnus of the Olusola Lanre Coaching Academy where she trained as a Life Coach, Mentor and Career Counselor. Dayo-Abatan is also a Certified Senior Professional in Human Resources, International (SPHRi) as well as a trained Adult Learning Experience (ALE) Professional.
She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM); International Coaching Federation (ICF), Nigeria; the Association of Professional Facilitators and Trainers in Africa (APFTiA); The Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM); Nigerian Institute of Training and Development (NITAD); and the Institute of Professional Managers and Administrators (IPMA).
Her Career Trajectory
After completing the compulsory one-year National Youth Service Corps as a Bank Operations Officer at United Bank For Africa Plc, Jigawa State, Nigeria, Taiwo spent another 14 months as a Funds transfer officer still with the UBA group.
In April 2000, she joined Gerizim Group Limited, Lagos, Nigeria and spent almost a decade working in different capacities including Treasury Dealer, Head, Leasing and Investment, and Head, Human Resources and Administration. This extensive experience within the same company explains how she acquired depth and breadth in her career experience.
She spent two years with Bellforte Integrated Services Limited, Lagos, Nigeria as Office Administrator, before joining Total Health Trust Limited, Lagos, Nigeria (A member of Liberty, South Africa) as Head, Human Resources. While she was there, the company made a transition from being an Owner-Managed Enterprise into a fully corporatized entity after the 100% takeover by Liberty, and Dayo-Abatan was critical in driving the culture change that accompanied this transition. Taiwo led her team to win the CIPM HR Best Practice Award in 2014 and 2017.
Her rich career includes her time at Mutual Benefits in Assurance PLC, as Group Head of Human Resources & Administration, overseeing the 4 subsidiaries of the Organization across Nigeria and the West African Coast with a workforce of over 4000.
Taiwo joined Primera Africa Finance Group and worked as the Group Head, Human Capital and Corporate Services. Her role entailed leading the team in Strategic Planning, Organizational Leadership, Change Management, and Process Automation and providing Thought – Partnerships and driving the Human Capital Agenda of the Group.
In October 2022, she joined VFS Global Services, a visa outsourcing and technology company, as
Regional HR Head, Sub-Saharan Africa. Her current role includes overseeing Human Resources Operational activities in the 36 locations where the company has operations across West, South & Central Africa.
Building a generation of HR Professionals
Taiwo is not just a full-capacity HR professional. She also seats on the faculty of some Consulting Firms like Beth’s Consulting Limited, Rome Business School, and Bellforte Consulting, and the Advisory Board of Vantage Consulting, CA. She is also on the Advisory Council of the Association of Professional Facilitators and Trainers in Africa and the Board of Trustees of The Power Women Network.
Abatan is also the Founder and Host of “Taiwo’s Coffee Chat” a capacity-building platform for HR professionals. The platform holds a free attendance event to impact and build young professionals in HR.
She also started The HR Foundry – a learning platform for building and raising exceptional HR Professionals – with hundreds of members. There is also another mentoring platform called “Premium Mentoring Program with TDA” where she mentors female professionals.
Taiwo convenes and speaks at different events for HR professionals like the HR Banters With TDA which she convenes. She is also a Facilitator with Vantage Certifications and was also a facilitator with Certification Edge till December 2019. She was a Conference Speaker at the HREA 2022 Work Festival in Kigali, Rwanda; Conference Speaker at HREA 2021/2022 Work Festival in Lagos Nigeria; a Voluntary Lecturer at CIPM Study Centre, Lekki till 2016; and Lecturer, at Rome Business School, Nigeria (RBSN) since 2021.
She has written a book – Climbing the Career Ladder for Success – for young career professionals to use as a guide.
Awards & Recognition
Over the last decade or so, Abatan’s efforts have attracted the recognition and acknowledgement they deserve and she has several awards to show for it. Some of them include the Top 50 Nigerian Influencers on LinkedIn, and Revenue Leadership Award – Premium Content Creator, both from SalesRuby in 2019; the 2020 Africa LinkedIn Influencer Award – HR/Recruiter Category from Tech Times Africa in 2020; and Top 250 Hr Influencers in the World – Social Micole in 2020.
She also bagged the HR Thought Leadership Award from SalesRuby in 2020, and the African Women Industrialization Award in 2021.
WordenHCD had her listed among the 30 Leading Women in HR. Dayo-Abatan was also among the Top 100 Career Women in Nigeria listed by 9-5Chick, and the 100 Power Women in Nigeria as listed by Power Women Network in 2021.
