Human Resource Strategic Management in Thuraya - Case Study Example

REPORT ON HUMAN RESOURCE STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT IN THURAYA Name Course Institution Introduction About Thuraya Thuraya Telecommunication Company is a Satellite Network Operations Company founded in 1997; the company is based in United Arab Emirates (Penttinen, 2015). The company was started by a group of eight founders who raised a total of the amount of US$ 500 million which paved the way to the signing of the agreement with Boeing to manufacture Thuraya’s first satellite. The company provides satellite coverage to more than 110 counties in Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, Central and East Africa. Thuraya is a leading mobile satellite communications company that empowers people with tools to bring companies and societies closer together. The company offers innovative, flexible and dependable technology that helps clients comfortably communicate with their relations. The company offers solutions that help overcome toughest challenges and it helps achieve the highest communications aspirations; this facilitates reliable communications where and when it is required most. The organization serves clients from different sectors ranging from energy, media, marine, governments and private organizations including NGOs. The communication infrastructure enables clear communication pathways through uninterrupted coverage across two-thirds of the world via satellite and across the globe though the use of GSM roaming freedom. Vision and Mission Vision To expand the scope and reach of our company by continuing to drive innovation in our industry and to offer state-of-the-art satellite connectivity solutions that save and improve lives (Wessel, 2012). Mission We believe the right to communicate from anywhere and at any time is a basic human right. Our mission is to align and hold ourselves accountable to the needs of our customers, partners, shareholders, and employees, driving innovation and excellence in all that we do. We are committed to being responsive, agile, and flexible, and strive for the highest quality standards to pioneer and offer world-class innovative and reliable products and solutions that are adaptable and address our customers’ requirements (Wessel, 2012). Values of the Organization Customer Service: We place our customers at the heart of everything we do, with a clear focus on building long-term relationships through trust and loyalty. We value communications and serve our customers by being attentive to their needs, and treating their business aspirations as our own. Quality and Innovation: We strive to exceed expectations in all that we do, through sharing the same commitment to excellence and working together as a team to realize our objectives. We pride ourselves on having achieved some ‘firsts’ in the industry. Thriving on creativity and ingenuity, we will continue to foster innovation as the driving force of our corporate spirit and create ideas and solutions that differentiate us from the rest. Passion: We bring passion to the work we do. Wherever they are around the world, our employees treat Thuraya as their own and work towards offering world-class solutions to achieve high levels of success and customer satisfaction. We inspire our people to be ambitious in their contributions, supporting and trusting them to make the right decisions to achieve their goals. Commitment: To succeed in a competitive market environment, we are focused on working towards our end goals in the most efficient manner. Our people are committed and accountable to a common vision and set of values. And it is their knowledge, dedication, and belief in Thuraya that are the cornerstones of our success. Social Contribution: Our industry places us in a unique position to contribute to the welfare of mankind, for the benefit of societies, and to saving lives. We cherish this responsibility and endeavor to give our best and to serve humanity - by providing satellite communications that make a difference to the world. Corporate Strategy The company plans to increase its connectivity to millions of customers all over the world; this will be achieved through expanding connectivity to new markets and new users. Thuraya's transformational program plans to change the game though encouraging customers on the advantages of satellite communications; reliability is more important in communications other hand anything else. Thuraya’s growth plan is to be reinforced by innovative product launches, new partnerships, and industry recognition. The company launched SatSleeve Android, the Thuraya XT-LITE and introduced four new broadband terminal for marine and comms-on-the-move connectivity (Burke, & Noumair, 2015). HR-Strategies Employed by Thuraya Works Analysis and Design Work analysis and job design is a functional part of human resource management, this part of personnel management deals with subjects like, personnel planning, recruitment, employee selection, performance appraisal, training, compensations, discipline, health and safety programs for employees and finally labor-management relations (Robertson & Cooper, 2015). Job analysis and design employees different methods and we are going to highlight the strengths and weakness of each method. Firstly we are going to handle Job analysis; work analysis is a systematic process of gathering information about work and the relationships among jobs. Job analysis follows the following chronological steps: (1) what are the expected outcomes/measures in assessing strategy execution. (2) What are the critical, necessary and essential activities and tasks, the behavior that one is required to meet or even exceed? The catch is in knowing the relative importance, the frequency and the importance of these tasks in achieving the measures of step 1 above. (3) What is the necessary skills, knowledge and talents required and other necessary competencies in perfuming given activities in step 2. (4) How should the jobs be defined, are individuals or works teams be used to maximize efficiency? And can the job be outsourced to other companies? Works analysis should achieve the description of observables, the descriptions of work characteristics and getting reliable and verifiable data. Out of a proper works analysis involves job description, job classification, job evaluation and job specification. The human resource department uses work analysis during the initializations of the company or a startup, for ongoing companies, there are already in place human resource management practices and are reviewed sometimes when a new department or new job is being created. There are modern work analysis methods that are practiced by human resource managers; the following methods are used currently; Position Analysis Questionnaire, Management position description Questionnaire, competency modeling. O*Net, Critical Incident Technique, Job Compatibility Questionnaire, Job Diagnostic Survey and Multimethod Job Design Questionnaire. Through inquiry done during my research of the works analysis technique employed by Thuraya, we found out that the Human Resource department employs the use of O*NET- Occupational Information Network. This is a tool used for job analysis and career exploration, O*NET has a six domain content model that includes the following: Worker requirements, Experience requirements, Worker characteristics, Occupational requirements, Occupational Specific requirements and Occupational characteristics. All the above methods are employed in analysis of any new job openings at the firm, defining a given job post is made a lot easier through the use of work analysis methods (Burke & Noumair, 2015). HR Planning Human resource plays a very critical role in the functioning of organizations, proper planning of human resource is very vital to the organization of the human resource infrastructure. Human resource planning is a very systematic process of forecasting the future trends of demand and supply of employees and also the deployment of employee skills in line with the strategic goals of the organization. This process identifies the current and future manpower needs of the company; this analysis is done through crosschecking with the set goals and objectives of the organization. Human resource planning is an important link between human resource management and the overall strategic plan of the organization. The planning process involves the determination of what can be achieved within a given timeline; this is done along with the number of employees and the skills needed to achieve the stated goals. This can be done first through outlining of competencies s that is required of the employees and through a continuous observation of the progress and the improvement of employees. Human resource managers should have a clear and crystal understanding of the tasks to be undertaken in the organization and the skills required of the people to handle these responsibilities. Planning to develop competencies through developments of a competency based management will help in the development of proper human resource planning. A competency-based human resource planning allows the assessment of employees based on their current skills and abilities. These skills and qualities are measured against the ones required to attain the vision, mission and business goals of the organization. Training of employees can be conducted just in case they lack the knowledge that is expected of them. Human resource planning involves the use of targeted human resourcing, through the use of strategies that plans to solve the organizations work gaps through Target Staffing, Employee learning and education, Career development, Success Management and Succession managers. The next action in human resource planning is Evaluation and improvement. Human resources strategies are assessed and evaluated on a regular basis to ensure that the strategies put in place are moving in the desired direction. I need be alterations are made in the human resource planning process. Human resource planning is a constantly changing and dynamic exercise that involves assessments and evaluations on a monthly basis or at any desired timelines. Constant assessment and evaluations will help generate proper human resource planning strategies. At Thuraya the organization checks for clients the competencies of their employees in accordance with their plan of adoption and use of advanced LTE network infrastructure in their networks, the organization checks for the competencies of the current employees to handle the future trends of the outlined future strategies. The organization plans to train and educate their employees on the current and future trends of the technology in satellite communication. Recruitment Recruitment is the rigorous and important process of acquiring and retaining quality and skilled pool of employees. Currently the job market is becoming flooded with skilled people all looking for employment opportunities, it is necessary to be very careful when recruiting new employees to fill up vacancies in an organization, this is to help avoid getting underperforming performing employees (Snell et al., 2015). A company incurs a lot of training expenses on untrained staff in trying to solve poor performance of employees. The recruitment process involves systematic steps; it is recommended that these steps are followed to the later so as to avoid missing out on the right employee. The first process of recruiting is; (1) Identification of Vacancy and Evaluation of Need. The human resource team at Thuraya use recruitment processes to provide opportunities to departments to get the right employees to fill up new positions or replace sucked employees. Proper planning and evaluation of the need will lead to hiring the right person for the role. It is recommended to understand the need that has to be filled by the recruit and its relationship to the strategic goals of the organization. It is important to know the level of education required to fill up this position, tasks conducted by the previous employee, tasks to be added or removed from the employees, supervisory responsibilities, budget responsibilities and the work hours of the job. (2) Developing Position Description. This is the main part of the recruitment process; this part is used to develop the interview questions, interview evaluations, and the reference check questions. The duties and responsibilities are defined through developing of functions of the position, minimum requirements getting general information the purpose of the job and finally getting the preferred qualifications. (3) Developing a Recruitment plan. A well-developed recruitment plan will have a proper strategy to attract and hire the best-qualified staff and one that cuts across all genders and groups like the disabled. The plan contains advertising channels to be used to attract the best employees. The elements of a proper recruitment plan includes the following, Posting Period- temporary or fulltime job, Placement goals- the roles of the new employee, Advertising resources- the resources that are going to be used to advertise the jobs on, print, the internet and social media, Diversity Agencies- racial and disability group responsibilities and Resume banks- these are resumes handling companies that are often outsourced to recruiting firms. Selection Selection of employees is a very critical process that is undertaken a hand in hand with recruiting. This process involves putting people in their respective jobs (Dai et al., 2015). It involves matching organizational requirements with the skills and qualification of people, effective selection of the right people can be successful if there is effective matching. Quality performance of employees can only be received upon choosing of qualified staff that intern save money and time involved in handling tasks. Perfect screening of candidates takes place in the interviewing room; this is where all the potential employees are tested. Selection is always considered a negative process this is because the unqualified candidates are rejected here and are removed from the listing. Selection aims at getting the best-qualified staff with the required skills and knowledge for the job available. Here is an order of the employee selection process that is mad for a position of a Telecommunication Engineer and Network Operations Manager. Step 1. Preliminary Reviews- this stage is used to eliminate individuals who do not meet the minimum eligibility criteria. These interviews are much less rigorous than the final interviews. They are just referred to as screening interviews because they find out how much the candidate knows about the company. Step 2. Application Banks. Those who pass through the preliminary interviews are given blank applications where they fill, their age, qualifications, reasons why they left their previous jobs and their experiences, etc. Step 3. Written Tests. A various number of tests are conducted on candidates, they include, aptitude tests, intelligence tests, reasoning tests and personality tests. These tests are then assessed to determine the most qualified candidate. Step 4.Employment Interviews- this is the face to face one on one interaction between interviewer and the potential candidate. It is used to check whether a certain candidate is well suited for this job. These interviews are time-consuming and they can be biased, there should not be disturbances in the rooms. Step 4. Medical Examination- medical tests are conducted on clients to test for physical fitness this will help in eliminating the doubt of employee absenteeism. Finally Step 5. Appointment Letter- This is a reference check that is made on the selected employee, here a potential candidate is awarded an appointment letter to state that he/she has been awarded the job initially advertised. Training and Development Employee training and development is a vital part of the employee empowerment program in an organization. Training of employees is solely the responsibility of the organization. Here the management is responsible for providing the necessary material to help employees to improve their skill level and their expertise in their fields of specialization. For a successful training and development program, the management at Thuraya implement the following functions: The management ensures that there is a proper well-crafted job description that is actually the main foundation upon which employee training and development is built upon. The company offers employees the opportunity to train upon any new developments in the market through looking for learning opportunities in everyday activity. The firm encourages its employees to develop a development process in which they build themselves through daily improvement and assessment. The firm also encourages its employees when they identify learning opportunities that can be an asset to the organization. Thuraya employs several strategies for employee improvement and development; it is the belief of the company that is training their employees to be the best at what they do will help them achieve quality and reliable service from them. The organization uses conventions like committees, committees are part of everyday employee’s activities, and they are mostly used as learning opportunities for employees (Dessler, 2014). The committees consists of employees from different departments; the employees learn about each other. The other training portal available is the use of organized forums and conferences. Employees are urged to attend the conferences; these are avenues where employees can a lot of specific topics ad get to share information with employees from other organizations. The head managers of given departments in Thuraya, always find time to wrote down a few critical incident-notes that employees are urged to learn from, these can be abrupt notes from developing trends in the market, they help in everyday development and training of employees. The organization many a times organizes field trips for its members, these field trips are usually for the purposes of making employees visit other sites of the same organization. There are other methods that are used for training in Thuraya; Job expanding. Job rotation, Job shadowing, learning alerts, Peer-assisted learning and special projects. All the above methodologies are implemented by Thuraya as an organization all in a bid to develop and train their employees to build and improve themselves. Compensation Compensation of employees on the basis of their performance is important in the development of the organization. The compensation structure of the organization should be fair, and it should be open for employees to critic and recommend upon, this will improve the employee’s sense of commitment to the service of the company. Thuraya has a very comprehensive compensations and benefits structure for its employees; these benefits vary from promotions all the way to pension plans. Employee benefits at Thuraya are optional, a non-wage compensation that is provided to employees also to the daily wages they receive. The organizations offer t employees, group insurance that consists of dental, health, vision and life. Next is disability income protections and the retirement benefits. The company also offer the employees family, daycare, tuition reimbursement, vacations (paid and nonpaid), funding for education and many other work arrangements that make the life of an employee comfortable and easy to operate. There quit a number of benefit of these employee benefit plans, they are expensive to the company but the good thing is that they help foster a strong sense of employee obligation and commitment to the operations of the organization. Employers benefit from retaining a team of qualified employees; the company manages high-risk coverage through low-cost operations, employee tends to be more productive which is for the good of the company. Employees can be treated exclusively to these range of benefits, it makes their life manageable and easier to operate. The company also offers indirect non-financial compensation for employees in the form of: Allowing employees to be able to start getting their benefits right from the day of hiring, allowing them to accumulate their sick day to bridge disability coverage. Such non-financial benefits will help employees prove to their employers that they are the best at what they are doing and will always seek to improve themselves for the good of the organization (Mello, 2014). Performance Management Performance management is all about keeping the right people in your organization, here managers and employees work together to plan, monitor and review an employee’s work objectives and the overall contribution the employee is making to the company. Performance management is a continuous process whereby objectives are set; assessments are done through providing an on-going coaching and feedback to ensure that employees work in line with their work objectives. Thuraya has a very exclusive performance management system for monitoring of their employee work in relationship with the company objectives. The system is more job specific hence it covers a wide range of jobs within the organization, it capture the specific state of an employee’s performance, it also measure employee results and behavior. Finally, the system should be able to give positive feedback to good work and lastly give recommendations where necessary. Performance management systems help in identifying the area of poor performance which will help necessitate areas for training and development. The performance management cycle involves planning, monitoring and reviewing and evaluation of performance plans. Planning involves identifying, clarifying and agreement over the expectations required of an employee, here it is agreed how results will be measured and calculated, a monitoring process is developed and finally the documentation of the complete plan is made. The next part of the performance management plan is on the Monitoring bit, here there is progressive monitoring and evaluation of the performance and the work of a given employ and cross checking it out with the companies set responsibilities and expectations of behavior of an employ in that position. Finally there is a review and evaluation session; this bit ensures that an annual performance and evaluation of employees work is assessed, from this point analyzes of employee performances are made and decisions are made. Finally, the parlance management system is signed off and considered successful, and a new cycle is initiated for the next session. Thuraya employees these management systems to help them monitor and get the scope of performance of their employees, it helps in understanding the best performance of their employees, it helps them project their performance on a poor, mid-average and excellent. Employee Relations This the aspect of management that give direction and the necessary oversight for a variety of employment matters, these matters include; staff performance, leave of absence, disciplinary issues in the workplace, employee grievances, work place misconduct allegations and investigation of harassment complaints., retrenchment compensations claims and anticipated terminations in the near future (Rao, 2014). It is through a study of employee relations that that the employee and the supervisor can get a clear interpretation and even the implantation of the employee relations policies, procedures, and the staff handbook. Thuraya has very strict and comprehensive employee relations policy that guides the behavior of employees in the office and also the policies to be undertaken in case of any misconduct by employees within the jurisdictions of the office. Thuraya has policies against Employment discriminations, and there are legal actions to be undertaken against such actions from employees. Sexual harassment prevention measures are at the heart of the organizations employee protection structure. Legal measure are taken against individuals who assault a fellow employee, the rights of an employee are paramount and should be a priority at all times. Thuraya as a company has these policies in place mainly for the protection of its workers at all times. Reference Burke, W. W., & Noumair, D. A. (2015). Organization development: A process of learning and changing. FT Press. Burke, W. W., & Noumair, D. A. (2015). Organization development: A process of learning and changing. FT Press. 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