Nestlé Zim retrenches

Source: Nestlé Zim retrenches – DailyNews Live

Eric Chiriga      19 September 2017

HARARE – Multi-national food and drink company, Nestle Zimbabwe has
embarked on a retrenchment exercise, as part of the company’s “business
optimisation activities”.

The exercise, which was voluntary, saw more than 20 workers exiting the
company, which employs more than a 100.

“Despite our initiatives, and largely due to technological and systems
upgrades, we carried out a right-sizing exercise in May 2017,” Ben Ndiaye,
cluster manager for Nestle Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, told the Daily
News.

“To mitigate the impact on affected employees, we offered to those
interested, the opportunity to opt for a voluntary early retirement or a
voluntary separation,” he said, adding that “most employees left
voluntarily, with only one…being affected by redundancy”.

He said the retrenched workers were offered packages in line with
Zimbabwe’s labour laws.

“Nestle Zimbabwe offered the employees an enhanced package going beyond
our statutory obligations. The process was performed in line with our
values and we have, wherever possible, offered support to employees who
elected to leave,” Ndiaye said.

He said he “believes” that the right-sizing exercise, “along with other
business optimisation activities, will ensure Nestle Zimbabwe’s continued
growth in the long term”.

Ndiaye said the multi-billion dollar nutrition focused group remained
committed to Zimbabwe – where they set base more than fifty years ago –
and was compliant with the country’s laws, including the indigenisation
policy, which compels foreigners to cede majority shareholding in
companies to black Zimbabweans.

“Nestle remains a committed investor in Zimbabwe,” he said.

The group has over the past year invested $30 million plus in refurbishing
its factory, among other things.

“As part of a global company, we are committed to sustaining our business
across different countries where we operate,” Ndiaye said.

To prove their commitment to Zimbabwe – a southern African nation which
has gone through an economic crisis over the past years – Ndiaye said the
local unit “invested in capacity increase, product innovation, new
technology and systems to adapt to the local environment and with the
intention of exporting to neighbouring countries”.

“These initiatives have allowed us to increase our impact to society
through business linkage with SMEs,” he said, adding that “today over 200
casual workers, merchandisers, and distributors’ sales force, including
bikes sellers, are indirectly employed by Nestle”.

Ndiaye said despite the right-sizing exercise, the company was offering
employment opportunities to Zimbabweans.

“As the situation improves, we shall continue giving opportunities to
graduate trainees, in line with our global youth initiative and gender
balance commitment.”

“Nestle encourages sharing and transfer of skills and know-how between our
employees from different countries,” he added.

“To date, we have more Zimbabwean colleagues working in other markets,
than expatriates working for Nestle Zimbabwe. We continuously invest in
our local talent pool by nominating them to the Nestle Equatorial African
Region Leadership Academy amongst other programmes,” Ndiaye said.

Ndiaye also said that expatriation of workers was normal at Nestle as it
is “part of the group’s DNA”.

“The top management team is a good mix of locals and expats. It is worth
to note that Nestle has more Zimbabwean (seven) expatriates outside the
country than locally-based foreign expats,” he explained, adding that
“Middle and top management development is being accelerated across the
Equatorial African Region (EAR), through our EAR Leadership Academy. The
highest participation is from Zimbabwe (25 percent), and all our
participants successfully graduated two weeks ago, in presence of the
executive vice president for Africa Oceania Asia”.