The profits making firm, Safaricom, is planning over looming mass sackings in what is termed as ‘new organisational’.
According to the Chief Executive Officer Peter Ndegwa, the restructuring process currently underway intends to adopt an agile organisational structure, which will kick out the traditional hierarchical one.
In the new arrangement targeted to scale down the workforce by almost half, majority of the employees will be required to re-apply for their jobs afresh thus rendering them redundant.
Under the new plan, many of the current departments and offices will be collapsed in a move which will severally blur traditional boundaries between superiors and their subordinates.
The changes intend to make employees work in groups called squads, where several squads will form a tribe.
However, the Telecoms firm made a formal bid on the Ethiopia telecommunications operating licences which could cost more than Sh107 billion ($1 billion).
As the “deal of the century” the firm will be expected to pay the amounts expected by the Ethiopian government, which expects to raise billions of dollars from the sale of the licences if it wins the bid.
The firms’ chances of winning the bid got boosted after nine other firms that had expressed interest in the auction dropped out at the last stage of the auction that closed on Monday.
Winners will also spend heavily in building their infrastructure, among other costs.
Being the first mover to 5G in the country, Safaricom will drive opportunity to differentiate from its competitors and it can leverage being the only operator offering 5G technology to promote an unmatched 5G value proposition, in mobile at first and potentially in the 5G FWA space in the future.
Most importantly, Safaricom will also benefit from the increasing uptake of smartphones as customers subscribe to bundled smartphone data packages.
The telco aimed to double its 4G sites to almost 5,000, covering every town and 80 per cent of the population in the country, completing this goal in March 2020.
The operator also gains enormously from mobile payments provider M-Pesa which it has become the everyday life of every business with a wide range of products.
Despite the mobile money business competition, Safaricom has maintained its position in the industry holding the largest number of loyal customers.
However, the firm was embroiled in a fresh row with Mpesa agents over what the latter term as newly introduced punitive terms of trade by Ndegwa.
Some of M-Pesa dealers in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and Eldoret and small time agents have had their operating lines suspended or cancelled indefinitely including withholding of the investment capital commonly known as electronic float for up to six months.
The Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU) Kenya Secretary General Francis Atwoli condemned the act by telling the firm that should employ all the M-Pesa agents because they work for them.
He also criticised Ndegwa’s decision on restructuring process targeting to scale down workforce by almost half.
In a statement, Atwoli said the move is inhuman, goes against ILO Conventions on the protection of jobs, and is an affront to workers’ rights.
Terming Ndengwa as the most dangerous CEO Safaricom has ever had, Atwoli threatened to appeal to the Board of Directors at Safaricom PLC to have Ndegwa be relieved of duty if he goes ahead and cuts the telcos’ labour force.
“It has come to our attention that Safaricom PLC is on a mission to restructure its mode of management whilst at the same time doing away with some of its employees. Even though, as COTU (K), we don’t have control over the management style employers adopt from time to time, we are highly concerned about the prospects of job security with the implementation of certain management styles,” said Atwoli.
“As reported in one of the local dailies today, the new CEO of Safaricom PLC Mr. Peter Ndegwa has caused a lot of anxiety among its more than 6,000 employees by asking a majority of them to reapply for their current jobs.”
He added that it’s insensitive and inhuman, for Ndegwa, to bring about drastic changes at Safaricom PLC while infringing on the rights of workers who have built Safaricom to what it is today where it enjoys more than 30 million subscribers.
Further, he accused the Safaricom CEO of causing depression among its employees in a bid to maximize profit.
“…if Ndegwa doesn’t stop this forthwith, we appeal to the Board of Directors at Safaricom PLC, including other shareholders, to make sure that Ndegwa is relieved of his duties because of his poor managerial style that seeks to maximize profits at the expense of its employees,” he stated.
