By Luke Anami

AAR has come up with a marketing strategy to manage retirement plans for former employees.

Known as a franchise, the strategy is designed and developed to manage separation of employees from the company.

To qualify for a franchise, sales executives must have a client base that could finance the start of a business.

He or she must have a well-developed track record in their previous employment.

In organisational development, succession planning is the process of identifying and preparing suitable employees through mentoring, training and job rotation, to replace key players, such as the chief executive officers. However, not all end up as CEOs thereby necessitating a franchise model.

The 20th Century Model for most organisations was to recruit employees, then train and develop them as best as possible across a wide range of skill deficiencies.

After years of toiling, the individual would leave the organisation.

No longer applicable

Workers on average had one or two careers and three or four jobs during the course of their employment.

But this model is no longer applicable in the 21st century as AAR’s General Manager, Elijah Wachira observes.

"At some point, talented individuals will leave the organisation. The key is to manage the process as much as possible," Elijah Wachira, the General Manager of AAR said in an interview with the Financial Journal.

AAR is one of the organisations that are implementing a policy that links separation to talent and reward management. This process has been streamlined to a simple two-step process: recruitment and separation.

It involves outsourcing staff that have been working for you over the years in the same positions, but under different terms and conditions of operations.

"Under the franchise, AAR’s best and most hardworking sales executives are identified and elevated to managing their own franchise, but with the company’s support," says Mr Wachira.

One of the reasons that led to setting up of a franchise system by AAR is the fact that the individual plateau for a salesperson is a lack of clear career path.

move up

After working and toiling very hard to increase sales volume for their employers, few are left with a burning desire to move up the ladder.

But with few options left at the top, most sales persons have no options but retire miserably to begin tasks that more often than not are not rewarding.

However, those who are ready to retire have their services outsourced by AAR. They continue to handle the sales of AAR but under contracted terms.

Under the AAR franchise model, such employees are identified and allowed to move on, but with support from the company.

"The model has been designed for staff who have given it all in terms of their size and mix of portfolios," he said.

Mr Peter Munyoroku, one of the beneficiaries of the AAR franchise model is running his own organisation dubbed "Funfare" in Nakuru town, thanks to Wachira’s foresight.

Run franchise

"I joined AAR in 2005 as a Business Development Manager, but quit after five years to run my own franchise," Munyoroku said in an interview at our Standard offices.

He said he had been in the sales market for more than 13 years, previously selling insurance before joining AAR in the same line.

As he rightly feels, moving up the ladder is a premise that no longer exists in many organisations.

It’s either growth through an expanded role or lateral position, or more likely, talent in and talent out.

For Munyoroku, after saturation in the market, he sought change.

Under the franchise design, the 40-year-old Munyoroku employs his own staff, has his own office and sets own sales targets.

He says the sky is the only limit as he feels a satisfying sense of employing himself.

Becomes caged

Wachira, his former boss but now his mentor observes that when one works for an organisation, he or she becomes caged.

"Most of the individual’s brilliant ideas are not welcome by the organisation and therefore ignored. But once one has the breathing space, the potential for performance is huge," he says.

As Wachira observes, in an effective talent culture, the separation of an employee should be for all the right reasons.

Both the individual and the organisation, he says, should have gained from the experience, and that both the employee and the organisation, have not burned any bridges to allow those talented workers to return in the future.

The strategy is also designed to meet the "pace of business."

Given today’s regulatory and compliance pressures, organisations too often fill a vacancy because they need a specific technical specialty or talent to meet a short-term goal.

The justification is to stay lean, stay within budget, and focus on the next quarter’s growth.

Wachira says businesses must face consolidations, threats and opportunities from a global economy. "Outsourcing or contracting with outside consultants for services is the way to go. Organisations with the best thinkers will compete and those that create a "talent culture" will win," he says.