The Work and Skills Involved in Front-Line Jobs - Essay Example

?zIntroduction: Skills can be described from two perspectives; i.e. the closed systems perspective and the open systems perspective. Under the closedsystems perspective skills are considered to be the abilities and aspects of behavior that need to be practiced at work. In this perspective, individuals are expected to perform at an acceptable level to do the job satisfactorily. The open systems perspective looks at skills as in skills in the person, the skills in the job or in the skills in the economy. Front line workers in general vary depending on the industry in which they are operating. They are associated with the daily operations of a company and have direct contact with the money making process of the company. Some examples of front line workers include the assembly worker, bank tellers, and workers servicing in the service industry. Skills of frontline workers are crucial to the success of an organization. Skills in people can be improved upon by imparting training to them. The key concept of skill has been explained in the human capital theory by Schultz. According to the human capital theory, the productivity of workers can increase manifold if they are imparted useful knowledge and skills. This will inevitably lead to increase in their future earnings and future income. This theory rests on the importance of firm-specific training. The paper will focus on skills needed at work in lieu of front line workers. The paper will discuss the work and skills involved in front-line jobs and the extent to which these skills are controlled. Various theories and counter theories and evidence will be presented from literature to support the argument. The crux of the argument would revolve around the importance of training and using measures like performance appraisals to build on skills needed for front line workers. Skills Skills have been increasingly debated world over. According to many critics this term is very popular amongst most managers, policy makers and academic circles in precarious and amorphous ways to the point that today it comes close to meaning everything yet nothing. Spenners study on skills shows that there used to be a unanimous consensus that skills comprise of two main elements. These are job complexity and job discretion. Job complexity implies the simplicity and difficulty associated with doing a particular job. Task discretion refers to the extent to which decision making power is given to the job holder. Does the worker have enough latitude to choose from a wide range of techniques in solving a problem or does he have to pass on the problem to an expert worker or does he have to ask a supervisor?. It is said the greater the latitude the job holder has, the higher skilled is the job. (Tett , 1991) An important aspect of skilled jobs that has been debated over and over again is the proxies which are used to measure skills and the kind of competencies that they measures. The most popular modes of skill assessment have been requirement qualifications and the level of training needed to inculcate those skills. These are partial measures of skill assessment. Skills and their control has often been a crucial aspect of debates in policy circles and academia. These debates have varied from skills related to people working in the manufacturing sector to people associated with the service sector. These could be home care assistants, the nurses, the retail store workers, the call center workers and the job centre work. However work on service sector related skills and has often raised eyebrows by analysts. Some analysts feel that the neglect should not be treated as astonishing and shocking as the same principles apply equally from manufacturing related workers to services related workers and from knowledge work to services. (Salgado, 1999) Recently conducted surveys by the Institute of Employment studies and MoRI denote that the major areas of deficiencies in the skills of front line workers are in communication skills. According to the survey, this skill deficiency leaps across the board and effects customer handling, employees and team work and is most evident in personal service skills. The UK’s low skilled workforce has been found to be low on these skills in particular. Globally speaking, in the last 3 decades, changes in the labor market have created new demands for skills. First critical observation has been the decreasing number of skilled manual workers in the manufacturing sector. On the other hand there has been a rise in the management and professionals have risen from quarter to third in the same time period. Another interesting revelation is the increase in the group of workers classified as ‘personal and protective’. These are jobs which are extremely evident in new shops, the restaurants, in personal service occupations for instance child care. Even their share in total employment has risen from 6 to 11%. The rising trend of employment in the service sector in particular has brought in new characteristics which are beyond the skills that most employers might need. With the growth in service sector, the demand for skills and personal attributes has also risen and with that the need to address these skills. (Bach, 2005) Thus proficiency is very important for all front line jobs. Proficiency is having expertise in a certain skill, knowledge or domain. It allows a degree or master y in a specific field, and allows one to function independently in a specific field. An individual’s training proficiency can also be affected by the attitude one possesses. Individuals, who have a tendency to experience aversive emotional states, tend to be distressed, agitated, pessimistic, and dissatisfied. Whereas people who are low on negativity, tend to feel more secured and satisfied with their environments. On the other hand people who show positive affectivity are seen to have higher levels of energy, enthusiastic, excited, and view their environment as a secure place. Wars (1996) believed that people who get high scores in negative dispositions are highly expected to experience negativity and low job satisfaction in working environments. Whereas people who gets a low score are expected to excel and learn better techniques and feel secure in the working environment.(Bach, 2005) According to Nowak.K.M (1991) in the training assessment, a training need should be differentiated from a training want. A training need may exist when a specific job knowledge, skills and abilities are important in a position, and the employee’s competence or proficiency level is mod irately low. A training want on the other hand may arise when the knowledge, skills and abilities are of lower importance to the job, and so is the employee’s proficiency level. Importance and Proficiency are two main domains on the assessment of training. Importance refers to the knowledge, skills and abilities in a job to ensure effective performance. Proficiency on the other hand refers to the employee’s current level of skills and abilities at each of the competencies identified as being at all relevant to the position. Buss and his colleagues (Buss, 1992; Buss.et.al, 1987) studied that the individual strategies is related to individual differences in a personality. They studied that the personality scores can relate to and influence certain strategies over other. In addition to this, social behavior can manipulate a personality. However they carried out a research in which they used the influence of social strategies among coworkers in a business setting. They examined the relation between personality and reported use of influence strategies provides additional insights about the specific personality variables. Their second research was about identifying the kind of influence strategies used with coworkers and their relation with personality and other variables. Front line workers and skill control With the aforementioned points established, it is only reasonable to discuss skills required of front line workers in terms of job complexity and while relating them to tangible and intangible elements and also in terms of task discretion. Tangible elements of jobs related to front line workers include job complexity related to work on information and material. This area of work resembles with the jobs of the rest of the economy. For instance, let’s look at the call center jobs. There has been a unanimous consensus of research that explains how call center work workers tend to be information receivers than knowledge creators. These workers need to concentrate more on the assimilation of information and information systems instead of the task analysis of information. Because of the complexity associated with information system assimilation, it has been observed that the call center jobs have raised dramatically compared to other conventional customer facing jobs such as bank clerks. Many observers believe that this is because of the current research going on in flexibility and variation of products offered to customers and also because of the growing information available on the IT systems. (Felstead, 2004) What is now the relation of job complexity with the intangible element of front line worker jobs? Emotional and aesthetic labor is it? The matter is complex and intricate and there has been a lot of confusion in this regard even in the research associated with these jobs. On one hand, people have belittle personal attributes and on the other people have argued over the importance of emotional labor and claimed that it is essentially a skilled form of labor because it involves the reflexive use of complex social skills. (Felstead, 2004) . Let’s throw some light on task discretion now. Task discretion in the front line jobs sector is confronted with two important arguments in lieu of the company. Felstead, in his empirical analysis did a longitudinal statistical analysis of a large number of data sets. His results proved that in the past 15 years, task discretion in the UK job market has fallen considerably. (Felstead, 2004) While, on the other hand, there have been numerous studies undertaken, by HRM oriented management that claim that levels of discretion has increased dramatically in jobs. While these two empirical sets of evidences differ on the direction of trend in discretion level, there are some points at which they agree. For instance they both are unanimous in claiming that most employees working in low trust settings tend to demonstrate relatively low levels of discretion in their jobs. It would be now useful to throw some light of the specifics of discretion associated with service work. The issue can be thought over in terms of customer oriented bureaucracy ideal type or theoretical model of work organization in service work. Despite insistence from various grounds that front line service work is strictly McDonaldised and Taylorised, if one looks at it from another perspective, it would be interesting to see that service work is governed with the logic of bureaucratization, cost minimization and efficiency and customer orientation; this means work structure should be appealing to customers through price and quality both. The dual presence of both has a direct impact on every aspect of work organization. According to Lashley, “ This approach suggests an organisation of frontline service work in which the nature of task discretion is structured by the rationalising imperative of imposing rigid, repeatable procedures and the customer-orientation imperative of allowing scope for worker discretion to alter tasks in accordance with variable customer behaviour and perceptions.” (Lashley, 1997) The above go with most other recent studies that claim front line service workers have more task discretion than most other jobs in the recent past. Factors that influence skills and their control: It is important to look at what drives and influences skills. This is a very important issue for most practitioners, policy makers and researchers. If skills are under recognized and under-rewarded in the service work sector, then what should be done? What is expected to be done? How to pave way for a high skills economy and how can skills in front line jobs be raised? Product market, labor market and HRM policies have a huge impact on the nature and level of skills. We will look into each of these. (Cabrera, 2006) With growing competition and in service industries and most other front line jobs, it is expected that there will be increase in competition over the years not just on price but also in terms of quality. This means that management will not just need highly skilled labor but will also have to cut down costs required to induce those skills. This scenario resonates with the growing presence of women in low cost skills service sector front line job. However product competition is unlikely to produce a profound effect in the overall increase in work skills. While the product market relies on demand for skills, labor market is governed with the supply of skills. Over the course of last couple of years there has been a growing influx of low cost supply of skilled labor. A lot of part time students have relented into front line work and so have a lot of women. This has helped labor market be in line with the status quo. Why spend so much in skill development when it is available at such a cheap cost. (Cabrera, 2005) Last but not the least, human resource management and policies have a great impact on the level and nature of skills needed in front line jobs. Skill development of front line workers is dependent on the human resource sector of the organization. How the channelize their employees and work to build on their skills is crucial to what follows later on. Strategic human resource management is very important within organizations. The primary objective of Human resource management should be to develop an HRM management system for the organization that will enhance the organization’s effectiveness, efficiency, quality, innovation and responsiveness to customers. It is an important and a rigorous process and each of the following six components are just as important: (Jones, 1995) Recruitment and selection Training and development Performance appraisals and feedback Pay and benefits Labor relations The first and most major component of HRM is recruitment and selection. Under this component, only those employees who have the required and relevant set of skills, experience and expertise are hired to work within the organization. There is a critical selection process in which the best employee is selected. Various factors are concerned and kept into perspective before recruitment. Some of the factors are: (Burgeois, 1985) work experience (2 months) Level of commitment that they are willing to offer. Intrinsic and extrinsic rewards that they want from the company Relevant background: what’s their level of education? What degrees do they possess and do they possess the required skills. A structured interview in which some basic questions need to be asked like how important is the job for them, some informative questions and their unique qualifications. All the aforementioned measures are very important because they will help the organization take in only those employees who come with the exact qualifications and expertise we need. Jones is of the view that Some of the job expectations will be clear and the pay/reward system will be modified accordingly for future. (Jones G. , 1995) Duncan believes that Once the employees have been inducted, they mostly undergo proper training from the basics to the advanced details of the job. In this training they are explained the nuances of the job. They are briefed about the work and employee commitment towards the organization would be cultivated. Following this on-job training can also take place. (R.Duncan, 1979). Duncan’s theory has been further substantiated with human capital theory of Schultz as mentioned earlier on. According to this theory, there is a marked difference between general education and firm specific training. In the last 3 decades, 100 hunderds of studies have been conducted asserting the importance of training firm specific skills. Empirical evidence Skill development in front line jobs is critical to customer satisfaction. Various studies have been conducted in this regard. Let’s throw light on some front line jobs for instance health related front line jobs, assembly workers etc. These are crucial to the money making process of an organization. In a study by Apple Baum, it was proven that that team work, employee participation, sophisticated systems are crucial to achieving good organizational performance in service sector. It was proven that in high performance work systems, there was more discretionary effort, greater employee satisfaction instead of the tradition command and control regimes. (Bach, 2005) In another study by West, the resemblance between high commitment HR practices and reduction of total number of deaths at the NHS hospital by 61 was very striking. Health sector jobs especially those of nurses; doctors etc are also a type of front line job. While there have been a lot of US based studies, there have been a lot of UK based studies too. In a study by Guest of 366 organizations it was concluded that there is a high dependency between HR commitment and higher levels of work performance. The study concluded that higher commitment by HR led to lower reported labor turn over’s especially in the front line jobs associated with the service sector. (Bach, 2005) Conclusion: Thus, as presented and explained by the arguments in the paper skill development in front line job sector is very important. This is because they are in direct contact with the money making process of the company.There is a growing trend in greater job discretion in most service sector related front line jobs but some resarchers and analysts argue otherwise too. Moreover, the paper also throws light on ways in which skills can be controled and also on how the need of the time is to provide high skilled labor at low costs and the challenges confronted to the management because of this. A lot of skills are not innate and have to be built on by proper training. The onus is on the HR team and their strategic policy to decide how to screen out employees for training and the level of training that they need. An important aspect of skilled jobs that has been debated over and over again is the proxies which are used to measure skills and the kind of competencies that they measures. The most popular modes of skill assessment have been requirement qualifications and the level of training needed to inculcate those skills. These are partial measures of skill assessment. The paper also dwelled into various skill control methods and on the kind of qualifications need which spur the need for training. In the end the paper throws light on skill development in lieu of empirical evidence in the literature written on this topic. Bibliography Bach. (2005). Managing Human Resources. Felstead, A. G. (2004). Job complexity and task discretion. Skills that matter , Palgrave/Macmillan,. Lashley. (1997). Empowering Service Excellence. London: Cassell. Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The big five personality dimensions and job performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44, 1-26.  Buss, D. M. and Shackelford, T. K. (1997). Personality and mate preferences: Five factors in mate selection and marital satisfaction. Journal of Personality, 65: 107-136 Cabrera, A., Collins, W., & Salgado, J. (2006). Determinants of individual engagement in knowledge sharing. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 17(2), 245-264. Hurtz, G. M., & Donovan, J. J. (2000). Personality and job performance: The Big Five revisited. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 869—879. Judge, T. A., & Bono, J. E. (2001). Relationship of core self-evaluations traits— self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability—with job satisfaction and job performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 80—92. McCrae, R. R. (1996). Social consequences of experiential openness. Psychological Bulletin, 120, 323-337 Salgado, J. F. (1999, May). Predicting job performance using personality measures based explicitly on the five-factor model. Paper presented at the fourteenth annual meeting of the Society for Industrial— Organizational Psychology, Inc., Atlanta, GA Tett, R. P., Jackson, D. N., & Rothstein, M. (1991). Personality measures as predictors of job performance: A meta-analytic review. Personnel Psychology, 44, 703—742. Burgeois, L. (1985). Strategy and Environment: A conceptual study. Jones, G. (1995). Organizational Theory . M.A Addison Wesley. Jones, G. R. (2003). Contemporary Management. Mc Graw Hill. Read More