The impact of the implementation of change management processes on staff turnover at Telkom SA

Abstract

Telkom SA, over the last decade and a half, has undergone major change in terms of the manner in which it does business. From being a state-owned company to becoming a para-statal, to being run by foreigners and, finally, being run by local leaders within the company, Telkom SA has transformed as a company. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of change implementation on staff turnover in Telkom SA by reviewing the following key issues: The implementation of change within Telkom SA, benchmarked against international best practices; the communication of change/re-structuring initiatives by management in Telkom SA; the effect of change implementation on staff turnover; and the effect of change implementation on employee morale and retention. The rationale of this study is to allow Telkom SA management to review their current implementation strategy of change management initiatives in Telkom SA. Thereafter, it will provide guidelines for improvements in change implementation for the management of Telkom SA. Staff turnover and employee morale can negatively impact service delivery and financial performance of a company, so these recommendations are aimed at improving service delivery and financial performance. The study was descriptive, cross sectional and quantitative, involving the application of a questionnaire, via e-mail and personal interviews, with a sample of staff from the core planning section in the Network Infrastructure Provisioning division, where a high staff turnover rate existed. The questionnaire focused on assessing the impact of the implementation of change management processes on staff turnover at Telkom SA and was developed from the literature review. Data was analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), Version 15 for both descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings show that a significant percentage of respondents were v vi dissatisfied with the way management had handled issues related to change implementation, communication, turnover, morale and retention. With this in mind, recommendations on ways to reduce the impact of the key issues on the organisation were made. These included the recommendation of lean methodology in order to deal with the first three key issues, namely, implementation, communication, and turnover. Thereafter the ‘four cores of credibility’ model was recommended to improve employee morale. Finally recommendations were made on ways to improve employee retention. The overarching issue that has come to light is that although management is, to a degree, communicating change implementation, there is a noticeable lack of engagement with employees. The onus, therefore, lies with leadership to lift the levels of engagement with employees, thereby reducing the impact of change implementation on the organisation by increasing the level of transparency in the organisation. Improving communication would lead to improved trust, which would then result in improved employee morale, ultimately leading to a reduction in the staff turnover rate.