Parastatals under Deloitte scrunity

Launched in 2011 in Namibia, The Best Company To Work For Survey returns, aiming to identify and celebrate the best companies to work for across the southern African region as rated by their most important stakeholder group, the employees. The survey captures responses over 10 dimensions.
Ramsey McDonald, a Partner at the auditing firm gave an overview of the yet to be developed State Owned Enterprise (SoE) benchmark.
Said McDonald, “We are considering establishing an industry benchmark or index for SoE participants. We are not considering introducing a separate SoE award or competition. SoE’s will officially participate in their size categories determined by the number of employees but would be provided with information in their feedback sessions that will enable them to compare their performance against a basket of participants with similar characteristics.”

According to McDonald, given that SoE ‘s were subject to governance requirements, there was merit to develop an index for SoE’s. He did however point out that individually, because SoE’s operate in different industries, it would be more appropriate for the SoE’s to compare with the relevant industry than only with an SoE index. “Our experience is that an industry index would be a more appropriate comparison,” he said.
“An index of this nature may well assist SoE’s to improve their employment experiences where the results are below the benchmark and where the SoE’s performance is above the benchmark, it may provide them with the comfort of knowing that they are contributing in improving the performance of other SoE’s. It is our experience that the top performing SoE’s would compare themselves to their own industry benchmark,” McDonald added.
According to McDonald, plans are in place to develop an index in 2014. In addition, an SoE index will be recreated using data collected in 2012 and 2013. Added McDonald, “It is our aim to grow the number of participants to be able to develop a meaningful industry and other benchmarks and indices.” NamPower, NORED, The Namibia Standards Institute, The Motor Vehicle Accident Fund, NamPost and Telecom Namibia are among the SoE’s that have participated in the survey in the past and NamPower and The Motor Vehicle Accident Fund have achieved the Deloitte Standard of Excellence consecutively according to McDonald. The survey was officially launched at a local hotel in Windhoek on Wednesday, 9 April 2014 with the closing date for entries to participate in the survey for 2014 being end of May 2014. The winning companies will be announced at an Awards Ceremony in September this year.