Analysis of Yakka Tech Inc - Case Study Example

Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Introduction 2 The Issues 2 Diagnosis of the Problem Areas 3 Alternative Solutions and Their Outcomes 5 Recommendations 8 Conclusion 8 Reference 10 Introduction This report aims to offer an insight into the people and their jobs in YakkaTech Ltd. The report is based on the case itself; however, references have been provided to support the theories and support documents, included. Certain issues have been raised in the case regarding the employees, their job satisfaction and the effect of same on the productivity and customer satisfaction level. The organization is an information technology services firm with around 1500 employees across Australia and New Zealand. The firm has a consulting division, dealing in installation and up gradation of enterprise software systems and related hardware on the client’s site. The firm also holds a customer service division, consisting of four customer contact centers which are responsible to serve the clients within each region. The Issues Since last five years, the customer service division of YakkaTech experienced a rapid growth. However, at the same time the firm experienced an increasing number of customer complaints regarding the declining service quality. Several clients have also complained that the customer service employees of YakkaTech are not aware of the infrastructural details of their IT systems. That was surely a concern for the company as customers were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the firm’s service. Another concern was raised as the employee turnover was increasing rapidly. This increased the labor costs for the company, as the company was incurring higher cost to recruit new employees. Apart from that, the company also had to experience lower productivity at the initial stages, which raised concerns for the management. The company introduced higher pay package and profit sharing schemes for the employees. However, this could not improve the situation; rather, employee turnover rates dropped dramatically with poor service quality and declining productivity. Diagnosis of the Problem Areas In this segment, an effort has been taken to diagnose the issues in the light of relevant theories and supporting references. Undoubtedly, lower customer satisfaction has been the outcome of declining job satisfaction of the employees. Few theories have been referred to analyze the situation. It cannot be denied that there was not enough motivation for the employees to perform well. As a consequence, the productivity of the employees was going down with high turnover rates. The foremost reason was the type of work they were handling. Undoubtedly, it became monotonous after a certain period. As per Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, significance of ‘esteem needs’ is quite large (Radford, n.d.). Esteem needs can emerge in two ways: first is being the self esteem emerging from competence or mastery of a task; secondly, the attention and rewards coming from others (Kerstens, n.d.; Huitt, 2004). However, it seems that the YakkaTech employees in the customer service division were unable to achieve either of them in this job structure. The employees were being employed in one department. However, it has been noticed several times that the solution of any IT infrastructural issue may demand coordination among different departments within the organization. However, as the employees were not trained in other departments, it was not possible for them to gain knowledge in every prospect of customer service and maintenance of IT systems. As a consequence, they could not gain any mastery in the jobs of information technology customer service. As the employees were not trained on the various parts of IT systems, the customers were not so happy with the jobs, the firm has been offering. It cannot be denied that with the increasing number of customer complaints, the morale of the employees was going down. It has been noticed that every time the complaints of any single customer was attained by different employees, even that too in a single department. So the employees were unaware about the output, they were offering. As a consequence, they were not getting any kind of recognition from the employers as well as from the customers. The above situation can also be explained by the expectancy theory. According to the theory, “if the people expect a positive and desirable outcome, they will usually work hard to perform at the level expected to them” (LACPA, n.d., p.49). There have been certain components in the theory: effort, performance and outcome. At the first stage, employees were putting in their effort; however, were not sure about their performance and outcome as they were disconnected from the consequences of their work. As a consequence, the motivation expected among the employees had been quite low leading to low productivity and high turnover rates. According to the same theory, there have been a number of factors contributing to the employees’ expectancy perceptions: confidence, support, quality of materials and equipments and available of the pertinent information (Baskerville, 2005). As the employees were not aware of their performance, the confidence among them can be assumed to be quite low. Moreover, in most of the cases, the employees are expected to work single-handedly, which means there would be no support from the superiors and subordinates. Lack in the pertinent information regarding the consequences of their effort can be a significant factor leading to employee dissatisfaction. Another issue was difficulties in the interdepartmental relationship. There was enough conflict among the departments, jeopardizing the coordination among them. This also led to the lower customer satisfaction as many issues were required to be solved with the contribution taken from several departments. As a consequence, the employees were very much dissatisfied with their jobs in the customer service division. From the above discussion, it is very much visible that the problem was the inherent process starting from taking the client complaints, attending the same to offering of an appropriate solution for the respective issues. As employees felt disconnected from the consequences of their efforts, in the later stages they did not feel enough motivation to put in efforts to further enhance their performance, leading to lower productivity, reduced employee motivation, declining job satisfaction and decreasing customer satisfaction level. Despite of higher package, the employees were dissatisfied with the jobs. Surely, money alone is a less effective motivator for the employees (Houran & Kefgan, n.d.) Alternative Solutions and Their Outcomes The main issues are seemed to be concealed in the process itself. There were several issues including the jobs getting monotonous, infrastructural issues were mishandled as those demanded the contribution of several departments, the employees feeling disconnected with the consequences of their jobs. Alternative 1 YakkaTech can introduce several cross departmental teams handling the issues raised by the clients. They would investigate into the issues and would offer consultancy which all departments can be assigned to resolve the raised issues. The cross departmental teams would be responsible for their own department’s performance which means now they would be working together to the common goal, towards fulfillment of the clients’ requirements. In the earlier process, the employees felt disconnected from the outcome of their performance. Every time, any single client can be expected to be catered by difference people. This reduced productivity as the person would be required to study the whole case from the beginning, which could have been avoided if the job was reassigned to the previous employee, who took care of the clients’ complaints earlier. Even this would increase customer satisfaction, as the person would be more aware of the issues, the client had been experiencing. The outcome of this alternative is expected to be majorly positive. The employees are expected to be able to get the knowledge of the consequences of their efforts. They would feel connected to the consequences and would try their level best to make them into positive outcomes. As the departments would be working towards the fulfillment of common goals, the conflicts are expected to be removed by a greater extent. However, major problem can arise in this case if a large number of complaints arise at a single time. As the company would have few cross departmental teams, this can result in a troubled situation with the teams getting failed to attend each of the issues at the stipulated time period. To resolve the issues, a second alternative has been introduced. Alternative 2 YakkaTech is required to train its employees in every aspect of IT infrastructural maintenance and support services. At the same time, the company is required to introduce job rotation among the departments to gain practical experience on the related issues. This would not only reduce the monotonousness of their jobs, but at the same time would make them work with more efficiency. The process would start with the acceptance of complaints, placed by the clients. The next step is the assignment of job to a certain employee in some specific department. If the employees feel uncomfortable with the jobs and feel the requirement of seeking contribution of the other departments, the order would be evaluated by one of the few cross departmental teams in each of the regions. The cross departmental team would define the involvement of other departments, if needed. The person, involved in finding the infrastructural solution, would be contacted and connected until an appropriate solution is being found. On the successful work, the managers may praise the person to keep his or her motivation up. In this way, the employee will feel all his expectations to be fulfilled. To remove conflicts, a cross departmental team would be responsible for all the departments. If any conflict arise, they will also be responsible to offer a fair solution to the involved parties. The communication between employees from different departments is encouraged to keep a good interpersonal relationship. Even the management of YakkaTech must communicate all the good and few bad things with the employees, so that they feel connected to the business and operation. This will bring in more transparency in the system. One of the significant goals of internal communication is to create the sense that employees are a valuable asset to the company (Sinčić & Vokić, 2007). In the initial stages, the above solution is supposed to cost them bit high due to the training cost of the employees as they would be trained on various skill sets. However, this is expected to bring in more efficiency within the system. The productivity is expected to rise as employees would be much more enabled to analyze a particular issue and solve the same. Their self esteem would be high as after completion of successful work, they would be appreciated by both the managers and the customers. This is expected to motivate the YakkaTech employees (Tikkanen, 2007). The monotonousness would be removed up to a certain extent as the employees would be rotated with the departments. Adding to it, the management must build up a customer centric mindset among the employees to motivate the customers stay with this organization (Lee, 2007). Recommendations After analyzing all the pros and cons of the alternatives it seems that alternative two would be most appropriate. Initially, the solution will incur more cost for the company. However, as the days would be moving on, each of the employees would be able to analyze the issues and they would be able to decide whether this would demand the contribution of another specific department. This would remove the requirement of cross cultural teams analyzing the clients’ complaints which would reduce the cost. The employee would be whole responsible for the solution and seeking support from the other departments. However, the supervisor may come for support and consultation, if needed. The supervisors must act as coach and facilitator to enhance the motivation of his or her employees (Cook & Macaulay, 1997). Conclusion Human resource is one of the most significant elements within an organization, specifically dealing with customer service operations. It is pretty significant to keep them motivated towards work; so that, they can offer better service to the customers. However, it is a major responsibility of the organization management to fulfill the needs of the employees and offer them a good work environment. At the same time, the employees are required to be made responsible for their own deeds. It is required to be kept in mind that a higher package cannot bring in more job satisfaction every time; rather it demands something more, the fulfillment of the needs and expectations. Reference Baskerville, F. R. 2005. The Role of Expectancy Theory and Observed Constituency Response Levels to Exposure Drafts in Accounting Standard Setting in New Zealand. [Pdf]. Available at: http://www.victoria.ac.nz/sacl/cagtr/working-papers/WP33.pdf [Accessed on December 28, 2010]. Cook, S. & Macaulay, S. 1997. Empowered customer service. Empowerment in organizations. [e-journal]. 5(1). Available through: Emerald [Accessed on December 28, 2010]. Houran, J. & Kefgan, K. No Date. Money and Employee Motivation. [Pdf]. Available at: http://www.2020skills.com/asts/Money%20and%20Employee%20Motivation.pdf [Accessed on December 28, 2010]. Huitt, G. W. February, 2004. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. [Pdf]. Available at: http://ways-ahead.net/meditation/037-2-Maslow.pdf [Accessed on December 28, 2010]. Kerstens. No Date. Maslow Hierarchy of Needs. [Pdf]. Available at: http://kerstens.org/alicia/planning10/Maslow%20Hierarchy%20of%20Needs.pdf [Accessed on December 28, 2010]. LACPA. No Date. Expectancy Theory. [Pdf]. Available at: http://www.lacpa.org.lb/Includes/Images/Docs/TC/TC341.pdf [Accessed on December 28, 2010]. Lee, S. 2007. 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