Retrenched NHE employees and managers are incensed over a statement by NHE Chief Executive, Vincent Hailulu, published in New Era roughly a month ago, feeling that as a matter of fairness the newspaper should give them an opportunity to respond.
A delegation of both former managers and employees visited New Era to set the record straight, accusing the CEO of misleading the public and the government.
They were highly dissatisfied with the new CEO's explanation of how the corporation adopted its so-called new vision, corporate strategy and organizational structure.
The former employees acknowledge that, after the company appointed the new CEO on September 1, 2005, he held a few strategic planning meetings with staff starting in November that same year.
They, however, feel these exercises were mostly sham and that only a tiny portion of their input was included in the final corporate strategy and organizational structure.
Was it a reputable outside consulting firm, or the new CEO alone? Was it Hailulu together with a former financial manager at the Windhoek Municipality, and now apparently NHE consultant, Deon Gerber?
The former employees emphasize that Hailulu was a complete newcomer to NHE, and the housing industry. They question the soundness of a newcomer to an organization ignoring all the accumulated knowledge and institutional memory of an organization - built up over many years - to draw up radical plans, seemingly in a vacuum.
In his statement, Hailulu says the Board adopted the new vision, corporate strategy and organizational structure in February 2006. It is, however, believed that the board only adopted the final revised structure on June 6, 2006 at a board meeting at which only three other directors, except Hailulu, were present.
The CEO only verbally informed the general managers of the new organizational structure - without actually showing it to them - on June 30, 2006. The former managers say this is when he informed them that the company had decided to make the general manager positions redundant.
On July 21, 2006, he announced salary increases for the general managers, only to summon them individually six days later to give them the devastating news that the company was terminating their services.
They played no part in drafting the final organizational structure or final corporate strategy - which, to this day, they have not even seen. They argue that while Hailulu says in his statement that the restructuring plan "is not a personal programme of the CEO", the board did not draft the plan but only adopted it on his recommendation.
The retrenched NHE employees vehemently contest the argument that the company has changed its core business. They seriously question whether Hailulu has any understanding of what the term "change in core business" means.
The former employees say the NHE's core business will still consist of buying land, putting in services, building houses and selling and financing them. NHE, they add, entered the rental market a long time ago and building flats and renting them out is therefore not something new.
Previous CEO, Mike Kavekotora, initiated the purchase of the NBC flats to rent them out commercially, so this is not an innovation introduced by Hailulu. According to the former employees, the only genuine innovation mentioned by Hailulu is building houses in rural areas.
Even this, however, they say does not constitute a change in core business. Building houses in rural areas is merely expanding the "product line", not a change in core business.
The NHE, they argue, is not suddenly changing into another Fruit & Veg City, for example. The NHE will fundamentally remain a "housing corporation" even after the adoption of the so-called new "corporate strategy", they argue.
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