Top-heavy structure weighs down BotswanaPost-Audit
Pauline Dikuelo | Thursday June 30, 2016 14:44
The findings of the audit will inform the decision making with regard to the business strategy going forward. Experts engaged to carry out the audit presented findings of the scan, which was adopted and approved by the board during this financial year.
The scan, which questioned the post’s organisational culture, revealed that the post is overly resourced at head office and as a result struggling at the customer level at post offices. Findings showed that organisational culture was top-heavy with 44% of the total annual payroll consumed by only 18% of staff based at head office.
According to BotswanaPost board chairman, Polokoetsile Motau the scan has revealed that as the post continued to introduce more services at counters, it meant that they are putting even more strain on their branches without the requisite human capital. In addition, the chairman said the performance scan revealed that as much as the post has requisite skills to deliver, the real problem is also the system.
“The scan revealed that the post doesn’t have the right people in the right places and this then called for re-organisation and re-modelling of the business,” said Motau. He said the scan also found out that the post’s key processes were found to be either deficient such as mail operations and risk framework.
The scan further revealed that the post’s performance management system (PMS) was out of touch with reality as it is more subjective as opposed to being objective. “A subjective PMS does not give employees responsibility and accountability, we have therefore adopted a smart system called system for managing,” he said.
To address the issues, Motau said they have adopted a new business design, VC model that ensured the picture is corrected, and resources are redeployed where most needed at their branches. He added that they also intend to start paying attention to their retail channels, especially branches noting that their 100 temporary and fixed contract staff at their branches would be absorbed into the organisation on a permanent basis.
“Our transformation journey has been faced with challenges as transformation which requires significant financial resources. We needed to diversify in order to sustain our operations as a business while continuing to meet the obligation to provide a traditional mail service,” he added.
BotswanaPost have over the years experienced substantial growth in their revenues recording an increase of 18% to P366 million from the previous year according to their 2014/2015 annual report.
The chairman said their current forecast is that they achieved rather modest revenue of P440 million for the 2015/2016 financial year.