2015 A YEAR OF ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGES IN ZIM

The year 2015 is being marked by various administrative changes in the economy. There is an interesting change in the human resources sector as a High Court ruling was made that National Employment Councils are voluntary organisations as such they cannot compel companies in their particular sectors to be their members. This is something which would happen at some point as the determination of salaries by NECs became difficult since 2009 when the multicurrency regime was adopted in the economy.

Organisations' capacities to pay workers became very differentiated in the multicurrency era than the ZIM$ era. The relevancy of NECs as the parents of different industries and sectors became very much challenged. Some gurus in salary structuring like Mr Memory Nguwi have always put forward other factors like productivity as more effective methods of formulating salary structures than NEC bases which may not be meaningful to companies of different sizes, resources and capacities.

Another watershed development is the launching of the Zimbabwe National Code of Good Corporate Governance. The year 2014 was marked by what was termed as 'The Salary Gate Scandal' as heads of the various parastatals and other Quasi-government institutions were accused of awarding themselves huge salary perks at the expense of their organisations and employees. Be that as it may, it is a fact that generally the average life span of a CEO anywhere in the world is five years. CEOs get huge remuneration perks whilst their performance is difficult to measure in the short term. However, the Zimbabwe case was a bit different in the sense that the economy was at the lowest levels of performance. I am convinced that the national code of good corporate governance was adopted to address such cases. The national code of good corporate governance gives provisions for the right approaches to determining the salaries of directors and senior managers which ensures transparency in the processes. This will also help to curb the high levels of corruption in the public sector and ensure an efficient government machine.

We are just after the first quarter of the year and macro changes are being initiated in the economy. I hope that the momentum is maintained so that Zimbabwe is reestablished as a jewel of Africa. I will not talk of other changes happening in the economy for now just to save for other updates. Please lets share how we see the future of Zimbabwe and how we can join hands to make it a better country.