IN the past two weeks, a high-powered Government delegation addressed workers at Indeni Petroleum Refinery in Ndola informing them officially of the change of mandate at Indeni.
To be specific, Indeni will no longer process crude oil but will be importing refined fuel for reselling and will also make money from hospitality arrangements with oil companies who wish to keep their fuel in tank farms owned and controlled by Indeni.
With regard to Zesco, expressions of interest have been invited for structural and financial reforms at the power utility firm. These two issues are still trending.
While working for Sasol Limited in Johannesburg, South Africa, I went through first hand experience of what it feels to go through a restructuring process.
This particular restructuring process was code named “Project Phoenix” and it came a few years after an earlier major restructuring project code named “Project Functional Excellence.”
Sasol is a global organisation with presence on all continents producing fuels, chemicals and electricity among hundreds of products.
The board made a decision to run the organisation through a major restructuring process aimed at enhancing operational excellence, profitability and eliminating costly inefficiencies by unbundling some units.
The restructuring was code named “Project Functional Excellence.” Therefore, in a nutshell, “Operation Functional Excellence” is relatively similar to what IDC wants to achieve at Zesco Limited.
“Project Functional Excellence” was concluded successfully and achieved phenomenal results. However, like most major operations, unanticipated major challenges started to emerge and threatened the gains from “Project Functional Excellence.”
Some of the major challenges which emerged included unhealthy rivalry among the unbundled entities. Each unbundled entity was being run by a General Manager. Some unbundled entities appeared not too strong and were over shadowed by other entities.
In a bid to eliminate the challenges which emerged, the board announced another major restructuring project code named “Project Phoenix.” This came a few years after the earlier restructuring.
“Project Phoenix,” like the name suggests was more of an “Operation Arise and Shine.” Some units were re-bundled and realigned among other major deliverables. This project was also a success. Yet, both projects had teething challenges.
Before the implementation phase, all employees including myself underwent mandatory resilience training as part of capacity building to handle the mental, emotional and physical challenges which beset employees whenever a major organisational restructuring is taking place.
All employees working for companies where restructuring is going to happen or where it is actually taking place, go through incredible stress and emotional breakdown because of uncertainty and internal mudslinging and fights which take shape to posture for survival.
Medical costs shoot up. Immediate family members of employees also suffer stress.
Therefore, as part of best practice, Sasol hired mental wellness experts and certified psychologists to conduct mandatory training for all employees from top to bottom.
We attended this training in small groups. It took many months to conclude the training for everyone. The resilience training was a fortification; mental and emotional readiness to handle uncertainty.
The uncertain challenges included positions being merged, transfers to other units, positions being downgraded, positions being abolished and positions being upgraded, while some positions were ring fenced for no change.
Even job titles were changed so there was no claim to a specific job as being yours since the structures were new. And in many instances, employees had to reapply to the new titled positions.
I also noticed that just before the new organisational structures were revealed, all transfers, demotions and promotions were halted.
And I believe that during this transition period, no one could dismiss another employee without signoff from the Transition Team (TT) which was responsible for Workforce Migration (WM) to new structures.
This was aimed at forestalling possible abuse of power and pre-bendalism. The TT had a lot of power and controlled information extremely tightly. The TT was composed mainly of outside consultants.
The WM was another major process. It involved occupying newly created job titles and job descriptions, briefings and stabilisation, building team work with new people in most cases, monitoring and evaluation so on and so forth.
There were different sets of consultants. One consultancy firm had a specialised task of organisation restructuring and systems while the other consultancy firm specialised in transition management and workforce migration.
What struck me most is how the employees were managed by taking us for special intensive resilience training to fortify us and assist us to face a new reality instead of leaving us all by ourselves agonising and traumatised by possible loss of personal employment and loss of colleagues and friends.
To me, this is the most important aspect of any major restructuring – preparing employees for what is lying ahead through resilience training and allocation of mental wellness experts to them.
Because of the resilience training I went through, I am still empowered to face challenges due to uncertainty and loss of privileged positions.
The resilience training is for everyone and is usually implemented before the commencement or implementation of any major restructuring and closure of an organisation.
I am appealing to the Industrial Development Corporation to consider arranging resilience training for employees at Zesco and Indeni. Tazama employees also need to go through similar training.
My experience tells me that everyone from the top to the bottom gets traumatised and emotionally drained whenever major organisation restructuring projects are underway.
Major restructuring projects like the one envisaged at Zesco can take a minimum of two years to conclude unless the process is not well planned and is being rushed.
Even Indeni-Tazama re-modelling is unlikely going to be concluded in one year.
I wish to put it on record that the most important aspect of any major restructuring whether it is “Operation Functional Excellence or “Operation Phoenix” or whatever it is code named, is preparing the workforce for what is coming by arranging resilience training for them, and positioning mental wellness experts at their disposal is critical. This is best practice.
*Johnstone Chikwanda is an energy expert and a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Zambia, a PhD candidate at Johnson University, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, Email: j_chikwanda@yahoo.com
