Employees

Following partial deregulation of the Sri Lanka telecommunications market and SLT's privatisation in 1996, the Company was obliged to function in a new context. Shareholders demanded profits, while competition threatened business margins and market share. To succeed, SLT's working culture had to change. Effecting this change meant motivating the Company's employees to be more efficient, effective, market-sensitive and customer-focused. This was the primary challenge facing SLT's Human Resources Group in the years following privatisation. Overstaffing was addressed by means of a voluntary retirement scheme, successfully completed in 2003. Efficiency was promoted through the adoption of 5S and Kaizen techniques organisation-wide in addition to the extensive use of IT and other new technologies. Customer focus was promoted through consciousness-raising and training. These efforts continued in the coming years, in line with the Company's policy of continuous improvement, but the challenge, it is now clear, has been successfully met and mastered.

A further impetus in this direction was the introduction of the 'breakthrough thinking' concept at SLT in 2006. Breakthrough thinking is a new problem-solving paradigm geared to help users deal with a rapidly changing professional, technical or social environment. It is a concept of Japanese origin, composed of seven basic mental assumptions, that provides a holistic approach to problem-solving. Breakthrough thinking has been introduced to many leading corporations in Japan, USA, Korea, China, among them Canon, Fuji, NEC, Toyota and Xerox.

Employees are the brain and brawn of the Company; they are the nerve centre of the company; the people who give life to vision and planning; who take enterprise from the drawing board to the customer and beyond. Increasingly more so than ever before, our employees are the “face” of the Company; the image that is imprinted and remains in the “minds eye” of the customer. Our people constitute the Company’s single most important resource in its development and success. It is therefore an honour for the Company to ensure that they are well cared for, in every way possible. We begin by ensuring that SLT is always an attractive career option, providing a work life that is rewarding and satisfying, where skill and knowledge enhancement is encouraged as are personal development and initiative. In achieving these objectives, SLT has put in place a whole range of activities and systems such as training opportunities, motivational programmes, productivity development and employee empowerment initiatives, welfare and recreational facilities and a whole lot more. SLT is committed to providing a work life that is rewarding and satisfying, not just in the short term but in the medium and long term too. We realise that employee motivation is the key to corporate success and the key to motivation is employee satisfaction at the workplace.