Opportunities and risks associated with housing property investment in EXXARO.

Abstract

Abstract Globally, a property investment has, and continues to be perceived as one of the best investment platforms. Some companies have opted to have a housing benefit linked to their organisational vacancies as a mode to attract the rare and best skilled individuals. Exxaro has a similar housing scheme, where it develops residential suburbs closer to its mining areas. This study investigated the employees’ perspectives on housing property investment employed by Exxaro within its mining environments. This was a cross sectional study conducted among Exxaro employees using a self-administered questionnaire. Employee expectation towards the housing scheme was more on aligning the appropriate housing benefit to their vacancy within the organisation, which is what Exxaro did. This employee recruitment and retention strategy has enabled Exxaro to add its organisational value and attract, as well as retain the best scarce skill employees. This form of employee retention strategy requires large investment, so it is imperative to evaluate value output to value expected by Exxaro. Thus, similar strategies can be employed by other mining organisations as a form of scarce skill employee attraction methods. This study thus offers an opportunity to those organisations that are currently, or are planning on embarking upon this form of employee retention strategy. This retention strategy has been found to be value adding to organisations that have used it. Key words: property investment employee retention Exxaro.