Sustaining New Work Culture - Case Study Example

? CASE STUDY MANAGEMENT People Issues There are different issues when it comes to those who work at help desks and call centers. Thefirst issue basically involves the power play that incidental to the management of such teams. This does not necessarily affect the client in a major way but it plays a huge role in the personal management of staff, as well as resources in the office. In simple terms this can be chocked down to the political influence that is involved in the decision making that goes on inside the office (Noel 2002, p. 144). In the case of Sara this can be presented in two ways. To begin with is the pressure that she is getting from her superiors to turn around the performance of the help desk. This is in terms of making the help desk more efficient and able to portray a good image of the company. The second front is with Mick who believes that the position was meant to be his. This requires that she finds a way in which she is able to reach out to him so as to try and improve that relationship for better work coordination. The second issue that is raised is that of churnovers. In the simplest sense this is the rate at which employees leave the job forcing the hiring of new employees. In the help desk or call center sphere, there has been a high churnover (also known as turnover) rate (Sharp 2003, p. 114). Usually when this rate is high it ends up costing the company a great deal on two fronts. The first one is by the fact that the company has to spend more money on labor costs. This is through the retraining of new staff, who may not be well aware of the company’s culture or operational procedures. The second point at which this greatly costs the company is by the lagging of standards when new hires come on. This is through the fact that with every new hire they need some time to get used to performing the tasks required of them in the most efficient way. One other people issue that Sara had to contend with is the problem solving skills that her helpdesk staff had. This is an important skill that all help desk personnel need to have (HILES & GUNN 200, p. 91). The main reason for this is that they are mainly dealing with issues that other users of the company products or services are having. Most often than not, they will find themselves in situations where the solutions to these issues may not really be covered in their day to day dealings. On the other hand they may be unaware of the existence of the issue and hence need a way in which they can come up with solutions before they can seek further consultation on the problem. The other people issue that Sara has to contend is the ability of her work force to coordinate and work as a team. This is evident from the fact that each of those in the team had their own roles and they did not coordinating with one another before Sara’s intervention. In any helpdesk, there is need for teamwork and coordination of efforts to ensure that the client’s needs are met satisfactorily. This should also be in a manner that is customer friendly. Sustaining New Work Culture The first step in ensuring effective functioning of the helpdesk may be in the sustaining of the culture that she has already created. Sara has so far done a good job in ensuring that everyone at the helpdesk is working. Also that everybody is working with one another. That is, the effort is coordinated and not a single employee feels that they are overly burdened. This can be evident by the fact that at the moment the inquiries are first handled by Mick before they are then passed onto Tim and Jean for solving. This way the work is being done much faster and much more effectively. One of the ways in which Sara may ensure that this culture continues is by ensuring that she encourages the team work that she has now developed. This may be done by giving team assigned tasks, by scheduling team building activities and encouraging non-official office communication that will build the teams togetherness (Boller 2005, p. 3). The second thing may be by the encouragement of the helpdesk worker’s input in any future decisions that are to be made. This is similar as to what she has done where most of the changes that she had implemented have been largely from the input she received from the workers. This makes the workers feel included in the management process which in turn has a positive effect on their input to the helpdesk. This will be translated to better productivity and better performance. This will also ensure that the previously stated work ethics and culture is upheld. The third recommendation for sustaining the change that she has created may be achieved by continued training and coaching. This will ensure that the new culture that has been inculcated in team is sustained for the long term. This is because the current employees are continuously being reminded of what it is that the help desk now stands for. There is also the fact that at the end of the day any new recruits into the team at the help desk will be seamlessly inducted into this culture through the continued training (Holcomb 2001, p. 113). Effective Call Centre Staff In considering the effectiveness and the skill set of those who work at help desks there is need to carefully consider the tasks that are at hand. The first skill that is of great importance is the interpersonal skills of all help desk employees. These skills include soft skills such as the ability to relate and better understand the clients and the customer’s needs. These soft skills are usually important due to the fact that there are different categories of clients that those who work at the help desk will be exposed to on a daily basis. This would require being able to handle the concerns of each group of client with the at most professionalism. This skill will also enable them to effectively deal with these concerns (BEISSE 2012, p. 41). The next skill that these employees should have is a higher technological awareness. This is because this technological awareness will enable them, again, to effectively deal with the concerns of the client. The first area where these skills are important is with the fact that most help desk professionals will be working with computers and such technologically related devices. The staffs’ ability to use these systems will be of importance. There is also need for some prerequisite knowledge in the use of some of the basic forms of these technologies. The second point as to why this knowledge is important is by the fact that the staff will majorly be dealing with technological issues. That is the concerns that are raised by clients in most instances will be of a technological nature. Prerequisite expertise and skill will enhance the ability of staff in these positions to handle client issues. This is both from their ability to understand what the issues are and their ability to understand the solutions to these issues (HILES & GUNN 2000, p. 94). Finally the personnel may need to posses good service focus skills. This will is in addition to their interpersonal skills. This skill will give them the ability to be well acquainted with how to handle clients. As stated clients are of a different nature and no one size may fit all in terms of service delivery. Understanding how the service offered to one client may be differentiated from the service that is to be offered to another client may improve overall service delivery. This positivity in the service delivery will lead to an improvement in the help desks productivity in meeting its goals. Evaluation of Employees In the management of the team, Sara may be required to access the effectiveness and efficiency of the team at the help desk to find out how effective the operations of the help desk are. This can be done with the employment of two modes of assessment. These are qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative modes of assessment basically deal with the having data that is discreet. That can be counted and hence easily quantifiable and useable in the statistical analysis. Qualitative on the other hand basically looks at data that is descriptive (Patton 1987, p. 7). One of the quantitative methods of appraising staff at the help desk may be by the implementation of piece work targets. This basically works by looking at how much an employee has done within a specific time frame. This will majorly depend on the task that the employee has been assigned. In certain cases it is usually difficult to actually assign this number as the work that is being tackled may not fit into any timely parameters. In the case of Sara it may include looking at how long one spends on a call of inquiry at the help desk. There are certain issues that may need extra assistance and therefore more time to handle them and these need to be taken into consideration. In the case of those who are handling email inquiries one may decide to look at how many of these inquiries are being handled by the end of the day. This data can be well relied on depending on how true a reflection it is of the employee’s work (Solomon 2008, p. 129). The qualitative factors will be largely dependent on customer feedback. This is the best and easiest way in which one may be able to know how well or bad a help desk employee has acted. One of the ways in which Sara may utilize in finding this out is by encouraging client feedback. This may be done in a variety of ways. The program that is to be put in place may ensure that a customer provides some feedback after every time that they are served. This will ensure that the feedback of each of the employees, irrespective of the type of assistance that the employee is giving, is documented. This feedback may then be analyzed depending on the number of positives or negatives in the comments that have been made. This method is also effective as it provides Sara with a good opportunity to know where the system needs improvements. In employee evaluations there are no best methods that would work to come up with an effective form of evaluation. The best way in which one can proceed with these is by employing the use of both qualitative and quantitative methods. This will be a little bit more involving for Sara in terms of how the evaluations will be carried out for best results, but it presents her with the best opportunity to actually conduct a more productive evaluation. Reference list BEISSE, F. (2012). A guide to computer user support for help desk & support specialists. Boston, MA, Course Technology, Cengage Learning. BOLLER, S. (2005). Teamwork training. Alexandria, Va, ASTD Press. Available at: http://www.lib.sfu.ca/cgi-bin/validate/books24x7.cgi?bookid=12731 [Accessed on 09 May, 2013] Rumburg, J., 1998. Good help. CIO. 15 May pp. 76-79 HILES, A., & GUNN, Y. (2000). Creating a customer-focused help desk: how to win and keep your customers. Brookfield, Conn, Rothstein Catalog on Disaster Recovery. HOLCOMB, E. L. (2001). Asking the right questions: techniques for collaboration and school change. Thousand Oaks, Calif, Corwin Press. PATTON, M. Q. (1987). How to use qualitative methods in evaluation. Newbury Park, Calif, Sage Publications. Noel, B., 2002. How to Manage the IT Help Desk. Oxford: Routledge 145 SHARP, D. E. (2003). Call Center operation design, operation, and maintenance. Amsterdam, Digital Press. Available at: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=195187 [Accessed on 09 May, 2013]. SOLOMON, R. J. (2008). The physician manager's handbook: essential business skills for succeeding in health care. Sudbury, Mass, Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Read More