How UPSA graduate quits as a Lecturer & College President to grow a successful online business
Mr. Wisdom Hammond, Leadership expert, and former College President, Pinnacle College.
This post “How a UPSA graduate quits a day job as a lecturer and College President to grow a successful online business” should inspire and provoke you to work hard, dream, and take initiative to change your story and move out of toxic environments when the environment refuses to change for the better.
After two and a half years of uncompromised service as President and Lecturer at a private tertiary institution, Mr. Wisdom Hammond decided to walk. The best thing that has happened to me in the last six months is the decision to resign, he indicated in a post on Facebook.
Up close with Mr. Hammond revealed he had over 20 years of work experience as a teacher, accountant, and administrator among others in addition to IT-related services he performs for clients such as website designing and search engine optimization services.
“Impacting lives right in the lecture halls and outside through the power of leadership/servantship was the norm. He has his education roots in UPSA which mentored and prepared for through the His BA in Admin and MPhil Leadership programme at the University of Professional Studies, Accra.
“Today, Ghanaeducation.org continues to break boundaries and leverages IT for those seeking for online news. This journey really took off with NewsGhana24.com while in Graduate school year one, then Ghanaeducation.org among others. Working, and combining it with this time-consuming online work was unrewarding, but I kept the faith and went on trying out new ideas and paying for training to acquire the needed skills and experience.” He said.
“I decided to fully concentrate on blogging because it gives me the desired satisfaction and was more rewarding than spending 10 to 12 hours in the office plus Sundays and Saturdays without a decent compensation for the full-time work, the least said about the weekend jobs at the office, the better.” He said in a Facebook post.
“It was more of a learning curve and application of experience in that position. The demotivating factors frustrated the will to keep working for the institution.” He stated.
According to him, performing a role that will ordinarily need at least three persons to carry out and not being compensated for even the effort of one person was not good enough to merit his continuous stay at the post. The truth is employers breaching employment contracts cannot keep good talents for long.
He decided to quit and concentrate on working from home, thus converting his writing hobby into a full-time home job.
Today, Ghanaeducation.org and other education, tech, and business portals under his leadership and hard work continue to provide useful solutions to schools, parents, teachers, and the entire online visitors of the various portal.
“This is more rewarding, and fulfilling, as Ghana Education News provides not only online news but also consultancy, home, and school mock materials, and digital education products among others.” He said.
Ghana Education News continues to expand into other areas of education and digital services and products to innovate and transform the digital space for education news portals in Ghana. Its innovative use of the Internet to run BECE mock examinations for candidates through their parents in the comfort of their homes has helped candidates to constantly prepare for their examinations. The results of the mock are fully accessible online on Ghanaeducation.org. The mock results come with a chief examiner’s report on each candidate and subject. This helps parents to know the strength and weaknesses of their learners. It helps to uncover all the challenges a candidate is facing, which the schools never tell you.
“When we started the Home Mock for BECE candidates in May, there were many who doubted the concept. Others called us scammers and all that but since such persons are unable to understand the mindset and how it was going to operate we kept our cool and today, we are excited we never gave up.” Mr. Hammond indicated.
The Ghana Education New portal also provides digital products like BECE Candidates performance monitoring software to schools as well as the school choice predictor software which helps schools to predict the categories from which a candidate’s 1st to 4th school choices must be selected from.
Reacting to the success story of Ghana Education News, Mr. Hammond, who doesn’t like to be called boss, revealed that, the power of the internet, once creativity and dexterity are important but useless if one cannot provide solutions to meet the needs of potential customers.
Hence, the Ghana Education News portal will continue to innovate and leverage IT to the advantage of all who visit the news portal.
This decision to walk was my greatest sacrifice for those who were left behind. It was a risk taken to send a strong signal to owners of private educational institutions to treat their staff very well and to ensure better pay for better work.
There are no regrets as this decision offered him time and energy to concentrate on what pays the bills and not what drains all the energy and time.
He realized that, it was time to take this bold step of quitting an enslaving job that paid GHS1500 for not less than 10 courses a week plus day-to-day administration.
Indeed, the years of dedicating every bit of genius and handwork had to come to an end.
The decision to resign was born out of the poor HR systems, and internal systems which will not allow great minds to stay at work and be motivated.
If less value is placed on human capital development and nothing is being done to safeguard the best human resource at an employer’s disposal the best talents will exit. This is a basic HR knowledge that employers must never lose sight of
Dehumanizing pay structure and poor ethical business practices.
Such things only make it very wrong to give your best when there are signs on the wall that, your hard work is not valued enough to merit your effort and when you are the kind that can not pretend to be working, you quit.
When useful suggestions that can transform organizations are never considered.
Per the post published on his Facebook page, Mr. Wisdom Hammond said, “My leadership training at UPSA Graduate school taught me to be transformational, people-centered, and to drive results through others. Not to be too concerned for work with little or no concern for people.”
“Institutional self-made impediments are the biggest obstacles to leadership. Getting locked up in your beliefs and challenges without concern for people is dangerous to retaining the best staff, and never makes it possible for sacrifices made by workers to yield desired results.”
In his view, today, many exit organizations and are replaceable, but some will never be truly replaced because, at any point in time, God sends change makers who will not last their full stay. They will either leave or be poached by others.
He challenged those employed to be unique in their approach to work, give their best, and ensure that when they leave their absence is felt. If you cannot do this, you are not worth the post, and no one will ever remember you when you leave your current job.
He called on employers to treat their workers as valuable assets and respect these employees for the hard work and sacrifices they make to help the business.
Lastly, equal work for equal pay and honouring your part of contracts of employment and an employer is key to instilling confidence in your employees and locking in or retaining the best talents for business growth and success.
Mr. Hammond has called on students and workers to acquire useful IT skills and training so that they can create side businesses with these skills and grow the businesses into full-time ventures. IT skills to consider are Data Analysts, Mobile App Development, Website Design, Graphic design, Coding, and Digital Marketing among others.
We hope this “How a UPSA graduate quits a day job as a lecturer and College President to grow a successful online business” has provoked in you the desire to excel and change your narrative.
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