Cricket Wireless - Knowledge, Skills and Abilities of Employees, Changes for the Company to be Most Successful - Research Paper Example

The paper “Cricket Wireless - Knowledge, Skills and Abilities of Employees, Changes for the Company to be Most Successful" is a  delightful example of an assignment on human resources. The author discusses if there is the way the company manages its people a competitive advantage. If yes, Why? Or if No, Why? 

One of the major ways in which a company can gain competitive advantage is the creation of such employees which can lead the company on the road to success by beating the competitors. The KSAs (Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities) of the employees are those characteristics that make an employee unmatchable with any other employee (Taylor et al, 2008). Since the KSAs of the employees cannot be exactly imitated by any other organization, therefore, it provides an organization the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage as the competitors cannot copy the KSAs of any employee in exactly similar manner.

What is your long-term prognosis for this company? 

By interviewing the HR manager of Cricket Wireless, there is a likelihood of coming in a position where it would be much convenient to predict the future outlook of the company. By asking and discussing the future prospects of the company from the HR manager, it would assist in identifying the existing position of the company as well as estimating and analyzing the future strategies through which the company is likely to reach at a certain position (Gary, 2011). At the end of the interview, when analyzing the responses made by the HR manager, the particular response for this question would be compared with the overall forecast that we would have inferred in order to judge whether the HR manager is optimistic or pessimistic in his approach regarding the future outlook of the company.

What must change for the company to be the most successful? 

Mainly this question would be asked from the HR manager with a specific view regarding the change in the HR practices of the company leading the company to be more successful in future time. The opinion of the HR manager would be sought out about the existing and proposed hierarchical chain of the company. By removing or adding some managerial layers in the scalar chain of the company can be quite beneficial for the company depending upon the existing and desired state of the hierarchical chain of the company (David, 2009). The other areas of change are also going to be asked in general regarding the overall need for change elsewhere in the company however specific emphasis will be put towards the opinion of HR manager on the hierarchical chain.

What other critical questions must you ask and explore to determine the overall effectiveness of the HR function? 

The other critical questions that can be asked from the HR manager to assess the overall effectiveness of the HR function mainly include the following:

1. In the event of downsizing, what are your strategies to uplift the morale of the surviving employees? How a survivor’s mentality is managed?
2. What is the likelihood of attracting the best possible employees especially after implementing even tougher screening tools?
3. What new compensation and benefits schemes do you think can motivate the employees in order to achieve higher productivity?