Economy

Why We Sack Workers Every Six Months- Konga

Published

8 years ago

August 2, 2016

Nigeria’s online marketplace, Konga has said its business development strategy remains the underlying cause of reducing its workforce every six months.

Konga stated this after disengaging another set of employees penultimate week.

Recall that in January this year, Konga sacked 80 employees, about 10 per cent of its workforce. At the time, the company blamed it on the prevailing tough economic situation. It stated that the decision to let some employees go was not ‘taken lightly.’

“The decision to restructure and realign our company’s focus to be more agile in the prevailing local economic conditions is not one that was taken lightly,” Konga had said. It added: “With this restructuring and by taking advantage of new innovations and upcoming retail opportunities in the market space, we are optimistic that we are on the path to grow an even healthier and more sustainable business, whilst delivering best-in-class service to our customers.”

However, six months down the lane, Konga disengaged another undisclosed number of employees, but this time, it did not blame the economy but instead said it had been the marketplace’s business strategy over the past two years. According to the company, this strategy had worked very well for the company over the past two years. It added that “even the sacked workers usually move to other companies to accomplish great things.”

“Nigeria’s largest online mall, Konga.com, will lay off some of its employees, as part of its business development strategy whereby it reviews staff strength every six months. Konga has been doing this consistently over the last two years and usually let go of staff that still go on and do great things elsewhere.”

In the statement, Konga’s Chief Executive Officer, Shola Adekoya stated that, “The restructuring which also entails workforce reduction is a prudent and necessary step for the long term success of the company. The reorganizing will also impact the business model as we continue to do retail but only focus on the products that customers really like with high throughput in the warehouse and that will leave other products to strategic merchants that will take over some of the products in a marketplace fashion.”