Severance deals proving popular with staff

Telkom South Africa’s bid to reduce its workforce by offering generous voluntary redundancy packages has been met with such an overwhelming response that the offer has already been heavily oversubscribed. The telco is offering a package comprising eight month’s salary as well as a one-off payment of between SAR10,000 and SAR20,000 to help the outgoing members of staff find suitable employment elsewhere. Telkom wants to cut its workforce by just over 2,900, but the response has been so huge that the operator’s internal network, which lets employees view details of the offer online, has been constantly crashing.