Retrenchments - A solution for HR Managers

Redeployment, Restructuring and Lay-offs

One of the challenges facing companies when restructuring or during amalgamations is surplus staff that has to be accommodated, redeployed or given separation packages.    Most companies have strategies in place to assist affected staff members obtaining new employment.  Some of these strategies are to assist them in drafting professional CV’s.  Some are also assisted and given the options to start their own businesses.

These instances can come about through internal restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, affirmative action due to complying with laws like the employment equity act and BEE requirements.  No matter what the reasons are our offering might just be the solution the company might be looking for in those instances.

We have done extensive research into the latter group,  that is starting an own business and have found that they have a major drawback in that the programs we have seen all focuses on giving them some background on how to start a business and some do give them business ideas.   But once they have left  the company they are on their own.    And they invariably become part of the statistic that has been proven over and over again: More than 80% of new businesses fail in the first year.

We have developed a program that turns the probability of success around in that it contains all of the following elements:

1.        A Saqua aligned 10 day course that encompasses the following :

a.       Understanding the Entrepreneurial profile.

b.      Basic financial understanding.

c.       Choosing a business idea and doing viability /feasibility studies.

d.      Marketing.

e.      The Business plan.

f.        Roll out of the program.

2.       As part of the course up to 100 business ideas are discussed and the candidates are assisted in choosing one that he/she feels comfortable with and fit their profile.

3.       They are then assisted in drafting a business plan for the chosen business.

4.       They are matched with a mentor that will be available on an ongoing basis via telephone or email to assist with problems arising in the process.

5.       Part of the course is an accountability process where they have to report back to us on their progress.

6.       Follow up short courses encompassing fields like: cash flow management, management reports, human resource management and discipline, Legal and tax aspects of companies, the new companies act etc.  are presented on an ongoing (monthly) basis.

What makes our program so unique?  Because of steps 4 to 6 which is the core of a successful program like this.

Because there is a real live person available to Mentor and guide the new Entrepreneur.

              The accountability part creates a feeling of urgency in the candidate to start and succeed.

 Part of the Human resources strategist /Manager like you in any company is to manage the process of redeployment as seamlessly as possible. And helping affected staff still feel wanted.   We are offering you a very effective tool  to do this.

We would like to discuss the program with you should it fit anywhere in your plans for the foreseeable future. Give us one hour of your time – It might just be the most important one this year.

John Brandow  082 222 5002   - johnbrandow@mweb.co.za  -  owner Centurion study centre

Serious guide to handling Debt collectors

This is A  Serious guide to the handling of Debt collectors’  phone calls and subsequent actions .

South African perspective 

This is not tongue in cheek - this is totally legal and within all your rights 

Print this guide out and keep it handy. It can save you a lot of grieve.

No one says that you do not have to pay legal debt. We are not debating that point here.

This guide has the purpose of YOU taking  control of the situation and taking the control away from anyone calling you.  It also has the benefit of you determining whether the debt is legally yours and has not prescribed.

YOU MUST CHANGE YOUR ROLE FROM VICTIM TO AGGRESOR – YOU MUST TAKE CONTROL

Follow these instructions diligently and without wavering from the steps in any way.

Always keep paper and pen handy.  It is advisable that you keep a little notebook handy for this purpose.

 THE FOLLOWING IS CRITICAL :

MAKE SURE YOU ASK THE QUESTIONS IN THE ORDER IT IS GIVEN HERE !  THE REASON FOR THIS IS THAT SHOULD THE CALLER BECOME AWARE OF YOUR INTENTION TO TRAP THEM THEY MIGHT PUT THE PHONE DOWN.  IF YOU ASK YOUR QUESTIONS IN THIS ORDER YOU WILL BY THEN HAVE THEIR NAME AND COMPANY DETAILS FOR FURTHER ACTION.  ( SEE BOTTOM FOR ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE*)  Once you get to the email status you will start to find backtracking – they don’t want to go there and might just put the phone down.

Note down the date and exact time...........this comes in handy when you lodge complaints.

THE CALL

1.       You answer the call.

2.       Caller asks you to identify yourself. NEVER DO THIS.  Your answer “  You called me, first identify yourself by giving me the following information. : ( Write all this down diligently)  If during this initial discussion the party on the other  side wants to say or ask anything insist on them giving you the details – if this fails JUST PUT THE PHONE DOWN ! – They will soon get the message. )

a.       Give me your full name – spell it for me.

b.      Give me  your telephone number. Repeat to make sure you have it correct

c.       Give me the full name and location of your firm – spell it for me.

d.      Give me  your email address – spell it for me.

e.      Thank them and say : I will send you an email ( I will give you the full details of how you go about this afterwards)

f.        At this point kill the conversation and put the phone down.  Any future calls you handle it as per point “d”

g.       Do not waver from this in any way – no matter how insistent they are. You now have their details and you can now lodge a complaint with the council for debt collectors  if applicable.(A guide to how to do this a bit later)

THE FOLLOW UP EMAIL

Draft and send the debt collector an email – Again keep diligently to these guidelines. Do not volunteer any information. – NEVER.  Do not imply that you know of any debt quoted and do not admit liability – NEVER ! ( I use this template in all instances- Debt collectors’ systems are call centre driven and it is going to take time for them to answer this properly.  By sending them an email you are creating proof of interaction and you will have a paper trail.

1.        Subject :  “Your telephone call to me today refers”   - NOTHING ELSE

2.       Do not quote account numbers or ID numbers – The person who phoned you should have all those details.  Do not acknowledge the correctness of ID numbers or account numbers. 

3.       Make sure your email contain the following words in the first instance : “Without prejudice and all rights reserved”

4.       “You phoned me regarding something  and I would like you to give me  full details as follows :

a.       Your company’s  registration number with the council for debt collectors

b.      Your personal registration number with the council for debt collectors.

(You can now verify this live on the website of the council)

c.        Details of the alleged debt.

d.      A copy of the latest statement regarding this from the company claiming ownership of the alleged debt.

e.       As far as I am concerned this alleged debt has prescribed. If you claim otherwise please supply proof of this.  ( If it is the bank phoning you about your recent p ayment of your car and you know you are in arrears this will not be applicable) If it is anything that MIGHT  have prescribed use these words. – Remember you should not yet know  what it is if you followed the instruction about the call above – but you might suspect what it is)

You can now send this off or you can ask for the following – or you can do this in a follow up email –( Remember the “Without prejudice and all rights reserved clause in ALL emails)

f.         If you did not already asked them ask them for their Council for debt collectors registration number. ( you should be able to look this up on the website here:   

g.       Ask the addressee of the email for his/her personal debt collectors registration number. At the same link.  Chances are 99.9% that the writer is not registered and you can point this out to him/her stating that they have no right to engage with you and request that all future communication be done by someone WHO is registered.

h.      Ask them for a copy of their mandate to collect on the alleged debt _ this is where you will find out whether they or anyone else has bought the debt.

i.         Ask them for a copy of the original signed instrument of debt of the alleged debt.  Not a copy of such an instrument – a copy of the actual one you allegedly signed,

Chances are that this is the last you will hear from them – Their systems are 99% not geared to handle this type of query.  And just stick to the rules about telephone calls. DO NOT ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS OR RESPOND TO ANYTHING ON THE PHONE .  DO NOT BE DRAWN INTO ANY TYPE OF DISCUSSION ON THE PHONE – You do not have access to the recording and they will try and use it against you.

Complaints against debt collectors:

There is a comprehensive guide on this on the website of the Council for debt collectors here :

http://www.debtcol-council.co.za/

·         Steps to be taken afterwards:

If you followed the steps handling a call from a debt collector diligently you should have at least the name and contact details of the caller and the company.   If you need more details you can just look them up on the internet.

 Now go onto the website and check if the company is registered and if the caller is registered.

Chances are that the company will be registered but not the person. – As a rule of thumb these companies only register the directors and one or two managers.

You now have the upper hand – They have committed a crime by allowing an unregistered employee engage with you.  You can (if you feel that way inclined) lay such a charge with the police.  I would just send them an email and tell them you intend doing that and request them to stay away from them

As I Said before: Change your role from victim to aggressor !

(An open invitation to anyone still having serious problems with a debt collector to email me personally at johnbrandow@mweb.co.za)

Placing Client Service in banks in perspective

There is a classic saying "Facts are nothing - the only thing that count is perception"   And the irony is that banks does not realize this.  Clients are 10 times more inclined to share a bad experience than a good one.
Clients in any business can be classified into categories - for example :  Those that are happy with the service they received from a service provider and those that are not.  Financial institutions have a few different types of clients of which the main groups are Depositors and Lenders or Debtors.  Whatever you do with a bank you either owe them money or they owe you money - all other services are incidental.

There are all sorts of laws regulating the relationship with these clients of which the most important ones are the NCA and FICA. The first one tells the bank what the rights of lenders are and within what parameters they must deal with lending clients.  The second one is popularly known as the"know your client" act.

Permutations are vast if the relationship between banks and clients, service levels expectations and deliverance and the various acts dominating the scene are taken into account. The opportunity for conflict is so serious that it is understandable that if the concept of 'CLIENT SERVICE" is not understood and managed perceptions of "Banks are only focused on making money" and a few other negatives will abound.

The last thing I want to put the spotlight on is that communication between a bank and its client is probably the biggest challenge that is lacking in execution.  Two recent examples need to be looked at :

1. The Absa fail.  Abs failed to communicate timeously  with their clients when they took money from the client's money market fund.  ( The African bank debacle)  This showed clients the banks lack of interest in their clients and their own inwardly focused thinking.

2. The Standard bank Systems fail.  Standard bank's systems failed dramatically this week.  The website did not carry any explanations of what was going on.  No sms's went out whilst this is the easiest of communication mediums that the bank use.

Without going into much detail one of the biggest challenges banks face is recovering the money that they lend out yet their processes are so old and outdated that one cannot imagine how they survive.  They do not know their clients and I have a vast array of personal experiences that any bank can use and study to create a new world in this area.

I am going to explain my suggestions of where a serious re-thought is required.

A good client suddenly starts missing payments on his loan account.  The bank has no system to read a tendency.  It is like a scene from Starwars.  Robots are activated to do certain things: Phone the client a day after non payment is noted. Irritate the hell out of him.  Make sure he makes promises - whether he can keep it is of no concern as the system wants a new date for follow up.  Client pays up to date and for 2 months he pays on time.  He misses again. Same robot, same actions.  The bank has no cooking clue why this "good client" has now changed into a "Problem"   They are not interested at all.

The client stops paying his loan -  Robot is activated.  art 129 notice is dispatched - Client does not pay.  Account is transferred to legal - still the bank does not know why this client is not paying and as they have no system to check the next step is summons and judgment.
This is an over simplification of banks attitude towards clients - Once this has happened he is not longer a client but a problem to be solved.  They still do not know why the client is in the position he is in

You see the problem is one of my pet hates :  Call centers and call center agents -

The system of summons and judgment is so automatic that the bank does not have a clue whether they are going to be able to collect on the loan - By the time the bank writes the loan off (for various reasons) costs have accumulated to such an extend that a whole new economy can be financed with it.

Who is making money from these mishaps of clients ?  The lawyers - and they know it. Like leeches they suck the blood from anything they can attach their suckers to.  One lawyer recently told me "in confidence" when asked why accounts are moved around from lawyer to lawyer is because they have lawyers specializing in collecting as much as possible from clients after first legal action are finished and that they have the mandate to offer clients special discounts for settling. These lawyers are paid a percentage of money collected in this way and the faster they can collect the more money they are paid - which again is a % of the money collected and again a whole new economy has been established.

All this is because the banks do not adhere to the two basic laws that govern their actions.  They are recklessly lending to clients in defiance of the NCA and they do not know their clients in terms of FICA.
Their perception of FICA is a copy of an ID and a confirmation of home address.   Now they "know" their client.

The biggest problem here is " They do not know 90% of their clients in any personal way - and they are not interested in getting to know them as "problem solving" is not in their job descriptions.
See my next post :"Why clients default on their commitments to banks"

The banks and their clients

The following is from a South African perspective. But I think it is probably true in most countries in the world.

The South African banks have a thing they call the "Banking code of conduct"  Why it is there is everyone's guess because that is all it is - a piece of paper.  If you read it it sounds like a marvelous piece of prose but as you go on reading it you get this funny gut feel that it has been written by bankers for bankers. The clients are only there by accident.  It is so biased that it becomes abundantly clear that already here the banks are paving the way for the handling of "distressed" accounts.

I have been vicious with my comments on banks and rightly so. Just a bit of background on that comment :
I worked for a bank for over 30 years and there is such a major difference from the time I started in 1967 to the time I left in 1999 that I could just as well changed from one industry (a client focused one) to another (Totally self centered) It has become worse since................

Without going into detail my own experience is the proof that what I say is reality.

All the nice words and service levels the banks purport to have disappears the moment your account become "distressed"  Your status change from "Client" to problem in seconds flat once you miss a payment. Where the banks came up with this word is a mystery but it so applicable and confirms my point above about the change in bank's focus over time that I have to explain a bit about this.

Distress "a very difficult situation in which you do not have enough money, food, etc."

It has a synonym that is more ominous : misfortune 

It also means "unhappiness" or "desperate need"

The definitions above implies that here is someone in need of empathy - Now that is not in the vocabulary of the banks no matter how hard they try to create that impression.

The recent failure of African bank and the debacle over the R699 car scam is proof of that.

There is no doubt that the banks helped create the situation where thousands of clients are now distressed.  This is very evidently reckless lending. Just the fact that one bank (Wesbank) saw this scheme from the beginning as Ponzi scheme makes one wonder who bribed who and who got money from where 

The composition of the collections process of the bank does not make provision for empathy

Once an account is handed over to "legal" or "collections" there is only one instruction that stands out like a sore eye : Get our money back - by hook or by crook !

Isn't it time that one bank changes all of this and totally restructure their collections methods? What happened to zero base thinking - If they do not know what that means : Here it is:

You take everything you do about collections and you dump it in the garbage bin.  And you start from scratch as if there never was a system . Zero - Get experts not in the banking system to help with this - I am free and retired and I do not want a massive salary - but I have the experience - And by the way I am not looking for a job. 

Some comments on the election a la South Africa

As they say : You can prove anything with statistics. The past election however has some very interesting stats and the most relevant are the following: Agang has gone (hopefully for ever) Cope is a lost case (definitely forever) The EFF still have to prove something -what ever. The IFP will never be a factor again -lost nearly half of their voters from 5 years ago. VF+ is not plussing anymore. ACDP is a total lost case - going back at the rate of around 25% just the last 5 years showing maybe you should decide to either go into politics or preach.The NFP (who the hell they may be) is riding on confusion of the masses. The UDM is just putting along at their own pace. The rest is totally lost for all generations

That is apart from the ANC DA and now the EFF which in all probability play the leading roles for the next 5 years.