?No jobs will be cut?

THE intention of the reorganisation of Telecom Namibia is not to cut jobs.

This was the confirmation by the managing director, Mr Frans Ndoroma, during a press conference this week. “Mandatory redundancies will be the last resort.”

The total new structure will be in place by the second quarter of 2011.

However, according to Mr Ndoroma it is premature at this stage to state clearly how these structures will look like at the end of the day and who or how many people will be deployed there.

“At this stage only the first three layers of the organizational structure have been finalized. Our next step is to finalize consultation with the union on the subsequent levels of the structure,” he said.

Employee placement in the new structure shall be done in sequential order, starting from top to the bottom of the company. “Staff placement for management positions is currently underway whilst staff movements and placements for non-managerial levels shall only commence once the structure development has been finalised to enable newly appointed managers and supervisors to participate in the recruitment process for their subordinates.”

Telecom Namibia’s re-alignment and reorganisation follows a new strategic plan called Blueprint 2010, which was unveiled in 2006 and embarked upon a major process of change and transformation.

“The strategy sought to deploy a new IP-based packet switching backbone network, provide the benefits of IP-enabled applications to our customers and expand Telecom Namibia’s products and services to be able to provide integrated new generation products and communication services to our new customers,” Mr Ndoroma said.

“Thus, the strategy sought to support the company’s evolution towards becoming a Next Generation Network (NGN) based integrated communication services provider.”

By the end of this year, according to Mr Ndoroma, capital expenditure amounting to N$1 billion will have been spent to migrate to a NGN, all of the core traffic will be carried on a pervasive, IP-based national network backbone and a full suite of IP-based products and broadband services will be extended to the majority of the customer base. Good news is that several price reductions will be implemented, “not to optimise profits, but to deliver affordable products and services.”

Mr Ndoroma is pleased that Blueprint 2010 was successfully implemented. But, “as envisaged, with the Blueprint implementation and roll-out of the NGN-based transport and access technologies, it soon became evident that there was a serious disconnection between our business processes, organisational structure and technologies”.

“In a successful business, people, processes and technology are aligned. The changes implemented since 2006 led to misalignment of people, processes and brought about the need for a major internal transformation in the organisation, specifically requiring a realignment of our technical and commercial architectures as well as adjustment and improvement of business processes.”

In this regard, an internal transformation steering committee was instituted, consisting of representatives from the company and the union. The board of directors has approved a revised management structure consisting of a new management executive committee which comprises five executive positions, namely the chief strategy officer, chief commercial officer, chief operations officer, chief financial officer and chief human resources officer. They are chaired by the managing director and is collectively responsible for making executive decisions or recommendations to the board of directors.

In addition, though not part of the management executive committee, the corporate communications and public relations department, internal audit and risk management department and the company secretary, regulatory and legal advisory services department will continue to report to the managing director.

According to Mr Ndoroma, principles, subject to further consultations with NAPWU, shall be followed to place employees into the realigned organisation structures.

“All new positions and existing positions that have substantially changed will be advertised. Where the incumbents are more than the number of positions available, the affected employees will be invited to attend an assessment and selection interview.”

Fixed five-year contracts will become a condition of employment and will be instituted and implemented for all executive positions. The fixed term contract however, shall only be applicable to newly recruited employees.

“It should however be noted that some of the positions are new and/or have substantially changed, thus requiring different skills profiles. Inevitably, there may well be employees without the necessary skills and competencies to be redeployed to the new organisational structure.”

Should there be redundancies, the company’s approach to managing redundancies shall be in compliance with the national labour laws and collective bargaining agreements with recognised unions, according to Mr Ndoroma.