Hr Problems At Westbank Call Centre

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Benn appointed as an HR Manager by Anne Jones, in order to resolve the situation at WestBank Call Centre in this scenario, I will therefore come to identify HR problems, analyse them, along with bringing forth a recommendation to solve them.

Introduction

When going thru the case study itself, I came across multiples issues that compile to be the main problem found at WestBank call centre and underneath this paragraph. At first stage has a grown up organisation is WestBank PLC, the concern should be more strategic by having established good HR Management which is not the case at WestBank in order to define suitable plan of action to promote excellence service within the organisation, I therefore recommend a comparative insights to HR policy and best practices, which is beneficiary for all stakeholders, along with their current employees. In the other hand, I’ll underpin what stage needed to be revised, such as re-managing the remuneration of staffs, timetabling their working schedules, selecting appropriate staffs member with the desirable attributes needed to perform the tasks, ameliorating their working condition along with going thru a process of training the currents staff members of the Call Centre.

HR problems at WestBank Call Centre

Knowing that the team lacks of IT problems and call centre experience along with an inexperienced management team leader, thought all staffs member are not facing an absenteeism problem with the organisation itself, but still HR policies and procedures, that they should follow, which will eventually leads the core staff member to a no clear progression as it was also mentioned in the assignment brief of WestBank call centre. When improving in modern’s day life event, we could considerably see that, lives of the people are gradually changing, now having a call centre organisation operating in a high pressure places, where there is no proper channel of communication or consultation within the staff themselves wouldn’t expect its core staffs to be enjoying working for the company as communication matters in most things, that we daily do in the society we leaving. On the other hands if considering an happy medium staff in the organisation, employer should consider how to meet the needs of its employees by giving them well-paid salary in order to be making sure that the staff turnover will not lack, which is not in the scenario of WestBank call centre where the paid rate for its employees are relatively low compared to the local labour market, which is unlikely to attract and retain the calibre of its staff in order to be achieving a high quality customer service which is expected from WestBank. If considering the prime objective of WestBank which is to develop excellence and consistency services, by giving 24/7 banking access to his customers and reducing overhead costs, as schedules have traditionally been appointed by WestBank, to be working 24/7, where needs for services beyond those hours will not be that necessary. However, I will implement an appropriate mix of part-time and. full-time employees along with agency’s I will staff based on the needs of the call centre service to reduce overtime shift..

After an organisation's concept design is outlined, it requires staffs with the right skills, knowledges, and abilities to fit in that structure, which can enhance the aim of the company as nothing matters more in winning than getting the right people on the field, as its the capability and commitment of employees that ensure its success (Source: Paul Banfield & R K). Knowing that the internal most important resource of any organisation depends on its staff members, I will thereby make sure to be having recruited the right staff that can drive thru WestBank’s objectives with some variation in order to guarantee its imminent achievement. At first stage, I will work with the actual call centre staffs, due to the fact that hiring new people is expensive and one cannot ignore the importance of the selection process (Source: Paul Banfield & R K), knowing in advance that they lack knowledge in call centre experience including IT problems, inexperienced management team, along with lack of HR policies and procedures, the working hours seems to be inappropriate to meet the cover requirements. Going forth with the staff wages despite the fact that the call centre is still not operating on 24/7, I will invite everyone to go thru a training section, by moulding the call centre’s staff into an enthused and devoted team capable of handling change effectively and reaching objectives.

Selection & and training section

considering that recruitment is important in two ways, in which it brings people in the organisation and also challenges each vacancy that arise but still expensive(Source: Paul Banfield & R K), I will therefore make sure I apply a thorough selection process to bring the best people into organisation for the right role. I will come with changes that will improve the hard and soft skills of the call centre staffs along with their team leaders or line managers, as for the call centre employees a training section will be giving unto them, which will surely endorse improvement in agent engagement and motivation, increase accuracy among the staff, enhanced customer experience and consistency of messaging, reduced agent attrition

and decreased call duration along with wrap up time, where the soft skills will includes, listening and keying in alpha & numeric keyboard training, data entry, inbound and outbound calls along with a good customer service (Source: call centre). When all of these skills will be accomplished among the trainee staff. Knowing now, that the employees are the important assets and can give Westbank a competitive edge. History reveals that employees learnt primarily by doing, which means that they learnt from experience of working, but also as operation become more complex and challenging, they would have more learned by being trained (Source: Paul Banfield & R K), as training staff members can be expensive activity where resources needed to equip a function do not come cheaply, we also know that its more often that it is not possible to recruit the ideal person with the exact skills needed for the job even when good candidates are available (Source: Paul Banfield & R K), but I will emphasis my training section, to bring forth the attributes needed to perform the tasks of the company and these attributes are as follow:

Leadership attributes:

The new Team Leaders should be responsible for the good functioning of their staff establishment, where direction and influencing others to follow order given to the Team Leader will be kept and accomplished at the daily goal. Having in mind that constancy is the key to leadership perfection said Sir Peter Drucker (Source: Human Resource), going forth with this statement of his, commonly to all my appointed Team leaders to be, they should all have the notion of an individual who, through its actions facilitate the flow within a group of persons toward a common goal, as I will mostly be focus on quality service, time management and also how keen they are on managing their personal staff, this will amplify the leadership influence process. When mushing the criterion how to able to monitor people at work, it will be necessary to identify the common characteristics or skills that make a good leader among my appointed Team Leaders, I will concentrate more by selecting to work with a person that appear to be ambitious, energise, the desire to lead although certain attribute are helpful in the selection of my Team Leader these attributes are:

Keen to drive staff. Leaders are ambitious and keen to take initiative when thing seems to be going wrong at work in order to bring forth a positive result out of it. I will expect my Team Leader to identify and put in place a sense of mission ever since good leaders set goals, priorities, and standards, to by making sure that such objectives which are communicated be maintained (Source: cliffs notes).

Motivation. A leader that is capable to lead and is willing to take charges and responsibility to drive people out along the journey and comes with a positive feedback, by keeping the trust of others, it should have personal integrity and inspire trust among its followers.

Honesty and integrity: been honest on the recruitment day concerning your duty at the work place will be helpful to the company, because I will expect Leader to be frank and ensure what he says be done when signing up with the company to meet the board objective.

Self-confidence. In my most expected attribute of a Leader, it should be assertive and decisive, enjoy taking risks. He should be able to admit mistakes by fostering up trust and commitment to a vision. Should also be emotionally stable rather than thoughtlessly adventurous, along with been intelligent, perceptive, and conceptually skilled. He should be showing analytical ability, good judgmental decision, and the capacity to think strategically.

Call centre team's attributes:

Working in a team is a conjoint procedure within today's business organizations, managers need to understand group behaviour and team concepts. As every team requires a leader to follow a systematic planning and implementation process to assess them at work in order to improve the organization's goal attainment, by removing barriers to team building and endorse an effective team through training, empowerment, and feedback to the consultant expect at the HR Management administration. I will therefore go through four stages, according to Bruce Tuckman the following sections describe what procedure I must apply to establish a good team building. Where communication barrier will no longer an issue, where at the forming stage all core member staffs should not only know themselves but getting familiarised within along with their duties including personals interest in the organisation project, going thru the storming process I’ll expect the staff embracing competition and conflict within them as people learn to bend and mould their feelings, thoughts, approaches and beliefs depending on team’s organization in order to move to the norming stage where team building should mostly emphasis on cohesion and then at last seen an improvement in the performing stage of a good team building, where I’ll expect them to be equally engage and highly oriented when coming to work together.

Motivation & strategies reward system

Finally, my recommendation to WestBank will to make use of a motivation strategy to enable staff member to give the best of them in order to meet the board requirement, when highlighting the specific factors that caused them not to work with self-interest, were due to the fact that their working payment was, which in the sense wouldn’t give them the envy to work accurately at WestBank, as their basic needs model when looking in the content theory of motivation was not adequate prior to their job, although these factors are found within an individual. In short, all people have needs that they want to be satisfy of, due to the fact that human behaviour is based on selfish-interest said Adam Smith, when it comes to their primary needs, such as better pay, knowing now that the payment rates of WestBank staff are relatively low compared to the local labour market, which is the mean reason staffs are willing to leave the organisation and do no achieve expected goal that they have been set for. On the other hand, going thru this aspect of expected benefits from the organisation, the other issue to be able to retain the current staffs members for them to produce high quality customer service and perform well, will be classify in the psychological category, meaning that they are learned at first stage through knowledge in the optic of consist internal states. Again going thru the secondary needs of any employee at the working field plays a significant role or aspect in their lifestyles and also for the organisation itself. When taking into consideration numerous theorists, including Abraham Maslow, its provided theory, helped me to understand how to meet people expertise and needs in the working environment, by the use of these motivation theories which I tempt to apply on the staff in order to come up with a strategic action by meeting the duty of a good HR Manager I have concluded on how the staff will now be working at WestBank and what to do, to monitor them while there are at work. In order to generate strains that can stimulate a person's work approaches and behaviours if taking Abraham Maslow theory into consideration on the basis of its definition of the need, human being are driven by several needs and that such needs exist in a hierarchy. Into his theory, Maslow has displayed five levels of human needs. These five levels of needs offer recommendations of how to meet every need. I will push each and every core member of staff to work according to my objective where a reward will be given to the best team of the month within the employment relationship to those that acquired new compatency, achieved agreed level of output, by meeting targets (Source: Paul Banfield & R K). I will also come with a new shift term schedule to cover the 24 hours of work, up to seven days a week. With the 200 hundred staffs given to the call centre, if want it them to cover the basic shift terms of 24/7, I will have to split the staff members into 4 different groups which will come to be 50 members for each group of 48 staffs including 2 Team Leaders which come to be 50 people in a team of 12 working hours shift a days, from 6am to 6pm and then having the second team coming from 6pm to 6am all group will be having 3 days’ of work and free days off to be having a proper rest. for instance if taking a whole month of January four teams will be presented Team Alpha, Beta, Mega and Gama each of them having 50 members, the Team Alpha and Beta will be working on 24 hours a day divided unto 2 teams where each of them will be having 12 hours a days until 3 working days while Mega and Gama are on they days off and will start working on the 4th day when the first two teams will also be having their days off. I will also bring forth some motivation by increasing their work pay along with a living wage to compensate the hard work of everyone at WestBank which will draw the attention of staff not to leave the company. Now considering the attendance issue every core workers in the call centre including their line manager will have to show attribute of disciplinary attendance. A clock in machine will be used to record the in and out of the staffs in which if you fail to clock in on time a sanction will be address where a possibility of being ask to leave the job could be applied.

Maslow's Hierarchy

Needs

Satisfactions

Self-actualisation

Creative and challenging work: when working in the team helping each other in the working environment, where each of them will be thinking for themselves to work accurately toward the board objective, we will then be able to perceive the will of working for WestBank, the enthusiasm of making things right once and for all, the accuracy of following instruction to achieve objective with a flexible job and autonomy at work.

Esteem

Responsibility of job: each staff member will be taking their responsibility of everything that will be happening at the working environments when it comes with health and safety, deadline of achieving an objective on time, keeping record of everything they do as at the end of every shift they will give a report to the Team Leader according to what they did while working.

Promotion to higher status job: In order to push them working with passion at WestBank I will suggest the Board Member of WestBank to propose a promotion to the staff such as any staff member that stays with the company for more than 3 years with the organisation will be promote to be a Team Leader or with the agency staff an offer of joining WestBank full time employee will be proposed unto them and this will be taking place after working with the company for more than 6 months. Another thing will also be praise and recognition from the Head office every New Year’s day concerning staffs that meet the objective, always on time at work, having a good feedback from Team Leader

Social

Friendly co-workers: as every working place that expect their staff member to be trustful and reliable, a friendly approach will be establish among the crew member in order to build good relationship among Team Leader and staff member, communication will be faire approachable where each and every one will be open minded by giving their thought if an issue arise while working, and because the staff members have been placed into group, language and background barrier will no longer exist among them where everyone will be working in a friendly manner by respecting each members of the staff along with interaction to customer when dealing with them over the phone along with a pleasant supervisor

Safety

Safe working conditions: as every organisation that meets the UK standard of working environment a sign notice will be display in almost everywhere in the building to enhance staff member about the health and safety at work, not only that the employee should also feel safe from thefts at the working environment.

Job security: to well establish the safety of every one a CCTV surveillance cameras will also be operating to monitor every move within the organisation along with security staff members at the entrance of the building.

Physiological

Rest and refreshment breaks: in the long term working hours it should be evident for staffs’ member to have a reasonable break where after every 4 hours of work the break of half hours will be given unto them until they close for the day when achieved 12 working hours a day. Having 3 days of work and 3 days off will also allow the staff members to refresh themselves on they days off which they could use to be looking after their families and any others things they feel like doing.

Bibliographies:

Source: Paul Banfield, P. & Kay, R. (2013)//>> Introduction to Human Resource Management//>>2nd edition//>>Oxford//>>Oxford University Press//>> pages viewed 320, 254, 255, 101, 97, 95

Source: Human Resource//>> Home//>> business strategies//>> petter drucker//>> http://www.humanresourcesiq.com/business-strategies/columns/if-peter-drucker-rated-leadership-in-the-2008-pres/ viewed on the 07/03/13

Source: cliffs notes//>> home//>> staffing as management function//>> http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Staffing-as-a-Management-Function.topicArticleId-8944,articleId-8891.html viewed on the 07/03/13

Source: Maslow//>> Maslow's Hierarchy 1965//>> Mullins,L. (2010) Management and Organisational Behaviour. 9th ed.Essex, FT Prentice Hall

Source: Bruce Tuckman//>>1965, quoted in p.310 //>>Conducting educational research//>> Mullins,L. (2010) Management and Organisational Behaviour. 9th ed.Essex, FT Prentice Hall

Source: call centre helper//>> guide//>> soft skill//>> http://www.callcentrehelper.com/wiki/Soft_skills_in_call_centres.html viewed on the 07/03/13