The Banco Call Center - Essay Example

The Banco Call Center Table of Contents Context 3 HRM Roles & Activities 4 Employee Resourcing 5 Learning and Development 7 Reward Management 8 Employee Relations 9 Conclusions and Recommendations 10 References 12 Bibliography 13 Context The Banco has been a medium sized bank with approximately 300 branches. The increasing competition has drained much of the profitability of this nationwide bank. To successfully face the competition and to ensure sustainable growth and development, the bank introduced the idea of call center. The call center, at the first place would induce the telephone banking. It was planned that the call center would operate twenty four hours a day and seven days a week and would help the bank to regain the expected share of the market. But the idea of the call center for the bank was associated with many of the issues that hindered the expected functioning of the call center. The issues included that of the procedures of recruitment and the pays offered. It also included the timing of the job and had learning and resourcing problems along with employee relations. HRM Roles & Activities The Banco Call Center struggled from the very first day. The bank actually had transferred many of the banking executives to the call center operation which at all did not suite the purpose of the call center. The centralised human resource policies were missing which ultimately led to high attrition rate at the center at approximately around 35%. The rate was quite normal in respect to the call centers but for a Banco unit it was exceedingly high. Also, the management did not have fair experience in handling the call center operations. The banking executives could not understand and meet the requirements of the call centre executives and operators. In organisations like that of the call center which involves high degree of human value as the executives have to answer the calls personally, centralised human resource policies would have worked well. The centralised policies would have treated all the employees at par and also could have taken the requisite measure to keep the work force motivated and charged up. Also, in order to yield better results the bank could have hired experts to handle the call center operations as the organisation suffered from the inadequate experience. The centralised human resource policies also should have developed an all round policy that would have taken care of all the important factors like recruitment, reward management and also the training and development (Scullion & Collins, 2006). Employee Resourcing Employee resourcing has been a major issue in the present day organisation. With the increasing competition in the industry, the companies try and attract the best of the talents that are available in the industry. It is observed that in case of the Banco Call Center, the two different verticals of recruitment, namely the central HR and the agencies, were used. Also, the company focused on the personality development, as after the selection of the staff, the company organised for the all round personality development programs. The company had the necessity of keeping the functions open for 24 hours daily and the employees were often compensated with the overtime payments. The company also emphasised upon the multi skilling attributes of the chosen and the selected staffs. It has been a common practice in the area of human resource to recruit the permanent staff through the centralised human resource department and to select the temporary ones by the agencies (Stahl & Bjorkman). In that regard, The Banco Call Center was perfectly fine in the ways of recruitment. But the major flaw of the call center existed in the way of selection. The executives were selected on the basis of their personalities. Apart from that, after selection, again the selected members were taken through a personality enhancement module. Such measures definitely provided a cutting edge for the outgoing personality in the process of resourcing. But the job of the call center was predominantly inward looking. As a result, the outgoing employees became increasingly impatient which contributed towards such high turnover ratio and also towards absenteeism. The selection criteria should have been changed and more apt methods should have been employed like voice and accent criteria among others. The rate of overtime was high which often lured the employees for the category but basically it did not serve any purpose as in the industry of call center, the employees should essentially remain fresh to successfully carry forward the job. But overtime led to fatigue among employees. The ability to carry multiple tasks was also not required as the executives predominantly handled the basic telephone call at the outset. Learning and Development One of the most vital attributes required for the successful working of any organisation is having effective training and development modules. Training can be provided either in the class room or on the site. In many of the cases, professionals and experts are hired by the organisations to ensure that the training methods are efficient. The skills of people are of significant importance and the employee force should be kept motivated and focused (Rae, 1998). In Banco Call Center, training was under the purview of the centralised department and the team leaders were expected to initiate the measures to develop the training needs for their team. But the team leaders were under tremendous pressure of their own work and could not serve the purpose. Under such condition, the Banco management should have hired professional experts for training and development with the expertise in call center training. Also, a dedicated department should have been in place that would look up to the needs of training for the team members. Reward Management Reward management is the other important aspect of the modern day organisation. The reward management is the part and parcel of the performance management and should ideally comprise both the financial (remuneration and salary) as well as non – financial parts like recognitions and promotions (Armstrong, 2002). The Banco Call Center had very poor reward management in place. The pays were much lower compared to the standards of industry to attract the best of the talents. Also, there were only few incentive structures to lure the employees to attain the desired status of customer servicing. Contrary to the normal practice, the organisation had higher overtime pay structures which did not serve any purpose. Also, the company executives did not find relevant career growth prospect within the company which further de-motivated them. The management should have effective performance management mechanism in place which should essentially be able to quantify the performances and the efforts of the executives. The rewards should be based on such performance management to accrue maximum benefit for the organisation. Employee Relations As Farnham observed in 2000, employee relationship is all about interactions among the parties to the employment relationship. According to him, there are three parties involved namely primary, secondary and tertiary (Farnham, 2000). It has been observed at Banco Call Center that there existed very few communication channels between the management and the employees which could have well encouraged the grievances among the teams that contributed towards the high turnover ratio and high absenteeism. Also, the team leads were so engrossed with their own share of work that they hardly contributed towards the emotional affairs of the team. In order to have effective employee relationship in place, the company could well have an informal communication channel through which the employees could share their needs and aspirations with the top management. The idea of having a trade union is also feasible but again such organisation can lead to certain unnecessary complications within the Banco Call Center. Rather, the management should effectively portray the care and emotions that they have towards the employees and should treat them as the part of the family. Conclusions and Recommendations It is evident from the case that the real objective of setting up the call center by the Banco Bank has hardly been achieved as the call center has been rocked by numerous problems since inception. The call center had a supposedly wrong selection method as it focused upon the outgoing personalities which should not have been the case for the inward looking job of telephone operator. Also, the attributes of multi-tasking was not at all required. The company should have effective selection criteria that would judge the qualities required for being successful phone operator. The training modules should be developed by the experts of the arena and it is recommended that the company hires such experts from outside. The team leads are quite busy with their work and basically have no time for the personal development of the members. It is high time that the company has efficient performance management modules for the employees which ultimately guide the policies towards reward. The pay structure should be at par with the industry to attract the best of the talents and also the employees should get the career growth opportunities within the organisation. Despite attempting the above measures, the team members could well have certain grievances and for the purpose a dedicate communication channel should be implemented between the management and the employees. The proposals of development should be encouraged from the employees and a sense of responsibility and belongingness should be imbibed upon. The resources for such measures could be well supported by the bank itself as these features, if successfully implemented, would definitely help the bank to regain the lost market share and develop its business. References Armstrong, M. Employee Reward. CIPD Publishing, 2002. Farnham, D. Employee Relations in Context. CIPD Publishing, 2000. Rae, L. Using People Skills in Training and Development. Kogan Page Publishers, 1998. Scullion, H. & Collins, D. G. Global Staffing. Routledge, 2006. Stahl, G. K. & Bjorkman, I. Handbook of Research in International Human Resource Management. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006. Bibliography Bratton, J. & Gold, J. Human Resource Management: Theory and Practice. Routledge, 2001. Pinnington, A., Macklin, R. & Campbell, T. Human Resource Management: Ethics and Employment. Oxford University Press, 2007. Storey, J. Human Resource Management: A Critical Text. Routledge, 1995. Read More