Talk to Telkom Employees

I suggest that ever person who reads this has a word with a Telkom employee the next time they can. And I'm not talking about speaking to Telkom employees at their call centres. I'm talking about having a good friendly word with an employee who does not fear talking to you. This is how you do it:

Step 1: Approach said employee. Make comment such as "Eiiiish, Telkom".
Step 2: Observe reaction of said employee, who will most likely be giggling or shaking his head in bemusement.
Step 3: Ask politely what problem said employee is working on. Be interested in the equipment. Find something to sympathise with him about ("Shame, why are you working on a public holiday?" "Oh no, it's really hot in the sun, can I get you a glass of juice?"
Step 4: Get juice, return to the scene. Repeat fascination in the equipment. Ask what each device does. Note the readings of earth etc on the lines if he is testing them.
Step 5: Ask employee if he enjoys his job. Throw in a question about Telkom ("Wow, Telkom made R6,8 Billion this year. I hear they share the profits with their employees. That's nice of them, isn't it?")
Step 6: By now you have either gained the trust of said employee or you have not. If said employee responds with "Yes" or a closed answer to the above question, you have not gained his trust. But chances are that by now he will be willing to talk to you about Telkom, giving a few nuggets of information about his perspective of the situation. Sometime the info is very useful and worthy of following up. Like the time a Telkom employee told me that Telkom threatens to sue employees who talk about Telkom to the press or to outsiders.

You can hear a lot of interesting things from these employees. I approach them everywhere - around my suburb, in shopping centres, at my university. Sooner or later they will understand that the public is on their side.

Lets see what kind of stuff we can come up with, and see if we hear the same things over and over again from Telkom employees.

(By the way, very occasionally you can get some information out of the Telkom employees at the call centres. I have spent at least four or five hours on the phone in the past few months just listening to some call centre employees complain about Telkom. Sometimes they are outright critical, "You think YOU have trouble getting to the people in charge at Telkom??? I work for them and even I have trouble!" "Telkom managmetn refuses to listen to what the call centre operators are saying. They have NO idea what our customers want." Most of the time they are more passive - "So, while I'm waiting for your system, tell me, hows life at Telkom?" "It's WONDERFUL ma'am, if you know what I mean" "Haha, yes, I know exactly what you mean and I'm sorry".)

It doesn't matter whether Telkom employees have extensive knowledge about Telkom or not, what really matters here is their opinion. Whether their opinions are right or not makes no difference - the point is that the more we can understand about Telkom employee's persepctives, then the more tools we have at our disposal.

And occasionally you do get a good, correct piece of information!

Debbie2, I had exactly the same perspective and approach you currently have about Telkrap employees, until about the beginning of this year. My attitude then changed to one of open hostility for various reasons which I will not go into, except to say that I now believe many of the problems currently faced by Telkrap employees to be self-inflicted, the disastrous actions of their management decision-makers notwithstanding. Very simply, they could have utilised the bargaining power of their union(s) to better effect, in my opinion. This did not happen, so retrenchments and monopolistic actions continue apace. Too late to do anything about it now, and their only future hope is the realisation of the SNO, which may result in Telkrap being faced with the likelihood of employees jumping ship for better working conditions...

Techies and Telkom employees are great to chat with, its quite admirable that they continue to work for a company like Telkom. Ive always had good conversations with Telkom people.. although I don't think we should see them as 'something we can get information out of for our benefit'.

Most Telkom employees are scared about speaking out as there are many ways to make their life hell back at the office, and no one wants that. The majority of telkom empoyees think the same about telkom as a lot of us, unfortunately for telkom.

The place i regularly shop at is a gathering spot for many Telkom workers. The only1 that i approached said he would go work for Sentech tomorrow if they offered him more money?

WretchedToad

he got R3000 out of this equity share thing or whatever it is called...

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And it gets taxed at a higher rate than normal pay. The wonders of Telkom's payroll!

Just check my signature...*ggg*

Actually, that would be SARS regulations - I recommend reading EMP10 - how employees must be taxed is all in there...

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Of course it is, I was TRYING to say that you end up paying even more than you would if you worked elsewhere.

If you fail in profession and life and you are a total looser....join TELKOM....

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I find this statement mildly offensive. Unlike you, I didn't have the luxury of being born in a foreign country or with the silver spoon in my mouth. I was poor and had to take whatever offer I could get to have an opportunity to study engineering, even if it meant working for TELKOM for a few years afterwards!