MTN Nigeria has disengaged 200 full time employees and 80 contract staff as part of a restructuring exercise in line with its IGNITE transformation initiative to reposition the telecommunications into divers segments of the economy including digital payments, financial technology (FinTech) etc.
A source at the company said MTN introduced the voluntary severance scheme (VSS), to provide a window for one week in April, for persons who have served in MTN for five years and above to take up. Those who decided to leave under the VSS were to be paid the equivalent of their three weeks gross salary for every year they worked with MTN.
“What it means is that if one worked in MTN for five years, one would be paid three weeks of their gross salaries times five. 200 permanent staff signified interest. Unfortunately, on Friday, the company decided to add 80 contract staff to the list,” the source said.
Eventually, all 280 staff were disengaged under the VSS and paid their benefits, the source said. The disengagement of the 280 employees affected about 15 per cent of the company’s entire Nigerian workforce. Those affected by the move include staff across various cadres, ranging from new graduates to senior managers.
Many of those sacked spent up to 15 years with the company having joined MTN as it opened its business in Nigeria in 2001. Those were given a severance of 75 per cent of their gross monthly income multiplied by the number of years with the company.
“With the payoff structure, senior managers with 15 years of service were left with about N15 million. Most of the staff got less than N5 million,” according to another source.
When contacted MTN Nigeria spokesperson, Funso Aina, said the company was going to issue a statement on the matter.
The IGNITE initiative was launched in MTN South Africa and MTN Nigeria in 2016 and would be rolled out to all operations in the coming years. IGNITE is about shaping the future of MTN, as a more agile, efficient, innovative and profitable Group.
The initiative would improve the co-ordination between marketing, advanced data analytics and network utilisation as the basis for delivering excellent customer experiences and value propositions. Ultimately, IGNITE is about realising MTN’s vision of leading the delivery of a bold, new digital world to its customers.