The Challenges of Call Centre Restructuring - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... Tengo Ltd., an online supplier of notebook computers, established a customer contact centre to deal with customer complaints and inquiries about the company’s products. Recently, the company decided to restructure because the HR director discovered that there is an overstaffing problem at the call centre. This decision has resulted in job losses. This essay analyses the wisdom of the restructuring of the call centre, taking into account the external factor of the labour market and job competition, as well as the components of change management, performance management, effective leadership, and employee motivation. Restructuring the Call Centre Companies are restructuring and job designs are being streamlined. The labour force and production processes have been restructured to cut down expenses, helping companies successfully reduce expenses in reaction to growing competition. The external labour market of call centres is in fact large, composed of a large pool of white-collar workers. The external labour market of call centres is global, national, and local (Butler, 2004, p. 168). Hence, restructuring of the call centre harms many employees. It is essential to be knowledgeable of the external labour market because of the differences in employee characteristics. Different work groups express different beliefs on career growth and motivation. For instance, white-collar employees have a tendency to expand their career outside the limits of a particular company (Liao, Martocchio, & Joshi, 2010, p. 94). This is what happened to Tengo Ltd. It suffered a high rate of turnover because its professionals in the customer department were not satisfied with their jobs anymore. The turnover is primarily caused by the restructuring. Corporate decisions to restructure or initiate change in its internal labour markets are strongly influenced by external labour markets. The external labour markets decide what arrangements of retention, expertise, and wage rate are appropriate for an organisation (Sharma, 2006, p. 59). Companies, like Tengo Ltd., choose to restructure because they confronted new circumstances or external pressures. The HR director who found out the problem in retaining call centre workers with a profitable nearby call centre was certainly dealing with the new situations of the external labour market. Therefore, organisational processes are mainly determined by the relationship between managerial approach and external labour markets. External labour markets significantly restrict the capacity of strategy. As stated by a manager, “If you’re not going to be the highest-paying wage base in the area, you will have high turnover” (Kumar, 2010, p. 292). For example, Tengo Ltd, after restructuring, gives the best reward package to Level 3 employees. Hence, it experienced increase in labour turnover among Level 1 and Level 2 employees who handle customer complaints. In terms of job competition, call centres have replaced human labour with automated processes. Technology carries with it the possibility of new and easier ways of doing things, while carrying as well the ability to eliminate human labour and separate the worker from his/her fruits of labour. Tengo Ltd., through rationalisation, invested more in new automated computer system to improve response time and quality of customer service. However, along with this investment is an increase in labour turnover because the company tried to reduce its expenses in the training and development of new employees. However, the poor outcomes of the restructuring attempt of Tengo Ltd. cannot be entirely attributed to the external labour markets and job competition. Other factors are involved such as the psychological and sociological responses of employees to ...Download file to see next pagesRead More