The Global call center Industry worth $ 800 million in 2001 and spread across 100,000 units. The call centers are developed to handle large volume of outbound and inbound telephone calls. At few call centers the caller and call center share the cost, while in some case clients will born the cost. Back in 1970s, the call centers become necessary for many industries in US with the rise in catalog shopping and outbound telephone calls. Each industry had their own call center, consist of own preferred technologies and quality standards. The total number of employees work at call center at particular given time was depending on the availability of seats. One call center range from 5-10 seats set up to 500-2000 seats. The call centers were established mainly for customer service, marketing or sales, and for technology support in areas like banking, telemarketing, market research, and hotel and airlines reservation.
In 1999, the teleworking industry has been considered as the new opportunity for Indian corporates. In 2000, NASSCOM predict that by 2008 that Indian IT services business will reach to great heights. The MIT scholar, Michael Dertouzos stated that IT service sector will boost the GDP of India by a trillion dollars and the revenue of call centers will grow from Rs. 24 billion in 2000 to Rs. 200 billion by 2010. During 2000-01, in India hundreds of call centers were established involving over Rs. 12 billion. However, by 2001 the conditions of Indian call centers seemed to be very different from the predictions. The Indian call centers were facing a problem of no business the employees of call centers are just sitting ideal, waiting interminably for the calls. The IT sector burdened with idle capacity worth around $75-100 million. There are various issues attached with the Indian call centers, besides offering attractive salaries the call centers are unable in hire suitable employees for an organization. The IT industry was supposed to generate substantial employment in India but the sector performed really badly.
The major player in the Indian call centers are Citibank, ABN AMRO, Global trust, American express, British Airways, HLL, BPL, ICICI Banking Corporation, Wipro, Godrej Soaps, GE and Swiss Air, Global Tele-system, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Bharati BT and Airtel. After the prediction of Mckinsey and NASSCOM about the Indian IT sector industry these companies entre the Indian market to earn more money from the Indian call centers. However, after entering into Indian market these companies are facing various kinds of problems.
The problems that Indian call centers are facing are, Labor Turnover, not matching Service Level Agreements, employees are not much skilled as per the requirement of job, employees are not aware of technology involved, not matching marketing aspects, and poor client service.
The purpose of this report is to identify and analyses the different types of Human resources strategies in general and specific which are more suitable to the case study and for identify the problems and to provide possible solutions. This report also provides recommendation to Indian Call centers with the help of which they can improve their conditions.
Human resource strategies are defined as plans developed by an organisation to maintain its human resource management practices and policies and to know how they should integrated with the business strategies. HR strategies may set out intentions and provide a sense of purpose and direction, but they are not a long term plans. Every organisation is different and all strategies are different. There is no standard strategy available for Human resource management strategies are simply base on the type of business and its functions.
The two basic types of HR strategies are:
Selection and Recruitment: recruitment is the procedure of screening and choosing qualified and prospective candidates, who are most suitable for particular job. The main aim of this process is to attract pool of qualified applicants. Recruitment and selection involves various function like, interviewing candidates, job description, making offers and negotiating salaries and benefits.
On-job-Training: the human resource department is responsible for on job training even if they hire skilled employees, this is because every organisation performs tasks in different ways. The training becomes more important when the organisation is running global operations in number of different locations (Budhwar, et.al. 2010). Having modernised processes across different locations makes communication and share of resources much more manageable task.
Professional development: the professional development provides personnel an opportunity to grow and get educated on an individual basis. The HR department offers its professional development opportunities to their personnel by subsidising their visits to conferences, external skills training and trade shows (Jaiswal, 2011). This will make employees feels that they are important for organisation.
Benefits and Compensation: benefits and compensation refers to the non-monetary and financial benefits passed on by firm to its employees. Compensation and benefits is an important aspect of HRM as it helps to keep employees motivated. The HR chose this strategy to bring out the best out the employees at workplace (Russell and Thite, 2010).
Legal Compliance: ensuring legal compliances with various laws is a important part of HRM, which ensure the continued existence of the organisation. The local, state and federal government where the operation of business take place impose various mandatory compliances like tax allowances, employees working hours, break time and working hours, minimum wages amounts and policies on discrimination (Noronha and D’Cruz, 2011). It is essential for human resource to stay aware about all legal requirements.
The strategies, which the Indian Call Centre can utilise to manage their working and to retain the talent, are as follows:
Talent management: maintaining talent management strategy at Indian call centres is very important for Human resource department. Both fresh and experience talent are at the priority list of the company. To attract the person who can perform the functions effectively and efficiently in the company are main target (Nath, 2011). The general strategy like Compensation and benefit will support HR in attracting talent.
Retention: To retain the employees in the organisation is the main task that HR needs to perform and for that, they make some strategies to keep the hard working and skilled employees with them. To retain the employees in the organisation the base is develop from the selection process (Mirchandani, 2014). At selection process, only they need to hire the people who are seem loyal for an organisation.
Motivation: A motivated employees is an asset for an organisation, if the employees of the organisation is not motivated the productively will be harmed. Motivation is the most important aspect of any organisation and it is a two way street. The responsibility of motivating employees majorly lies with the Human Resource Department of an organisation (Morgan and Ramanathan, 2012). The motivation can be in term of monetary incentive or non-monetary incentives.
Knowledge management: To get the productively and for achieving the goals it is important for Human resource manager to build an environment within an organisation through which employees can acquire, create, capture, share and use knowledge to enhance their learning and performance (Laureani, Antony and Douglas, 2010).
Corporate social responsibility management: For every organisation, it is important to manage and develop corporate social responsibility. It is a commitment to manage the business ethically in order to make a positive impact on the society and the environment (Guest, 2011). When the organisation accomplish their corporate social responsibility it image in society get enhance and the trust of people will be increased.
The major problems, which the employees of Indian call centres face are in comparison to the employees of US and Europe the employees of Indian call centre get paid less and the working hours are more, which provide benefits to the Call centres but Indian employees get exploit. To solve this problem the Human Resource Department need to assure that all sections of the supply chain are complying with the Fair work Act obligation. The Fair work Act contains the provision that treat all employees who are involved in an organisation in as same way (Guchait and Cho, 2010). The definition of Fair work Act involves area of accessorial liability these are underpayment or non-observation of provision, Sham contracting, adverse action and discrimination and breach of the Employment standards.
Another problem lies with Indian call centres are lack of knowledge and technology related to the work. The employees who are hired for jobs in call centres are have no idea what the business is all about. The Human resource managers are responsible for providing training and developing knowledge among employees (Millan-Ruiz, and Hidalgo, 2010). If employees are underperforming or not having proper knowledge of the wok or not meeting the understanding of the job the HR manger of an organisation need to conduct a meeting with employees and will ask the reason behind their poor knowledge and bad performance. When the HR comes to know about the reason behind all the issue, they need to arrange a proper training and development session for employees (Procter, et.al. 2016). In that particular session HR will ensure the knowledge of employees in relation to work get develop and the employees get familiar with the technology associated with their respective work.
The Big challenge in front of Indian call centre is poor Customer service, the main reason behind the poor customer service is lack of knowledge of work and hiring unskilled employees for the job. To solve the problem of poor customer service besides improving the knowledge among the employees, it is important for Human resource manager at the time of recruitment and selection they should hire the people who are best suitable for job. The employees who they select for job must consist of skill and knowledge, which is essential for job.
One more problem, which the Indian call centres are facing is managing a Service Level Agreements (SLAs). The Service Level Agreements is a contact between the end user and the service provider. The Service Level Agreement contains all points related to level of service the end user or customer expects from the Service provider. The majority of Indian call centres could not managing Service Level Agreement. Because of that, many US companies are not willing to invest in amateur business (Castanheira and Chambel, 2010). To solve this problem the HR of an organisation need to develop a proper Service Level Agreement which consist of all formalities related to call centre work and after developing the agreement they will ensure the proper implementation of Service Level Agreement in an organisation and they should responsible for taking continues feedback.
Labour Turnover is the major problem among the Indian Call Centres the employees just prefers working for maximum two months at Call centre because the employees did not find good career opportunities by working at call centres. The employee’s turnover is the biggest question of concern in front of the Human resource department of Indian call centre. To solve this problem the HR department need to follow few practices like, recognise and praise the work of employees, which will motive the employees in working with the organisation (Budhwar, 2012). The department can use reward policy, which will show the individuality of the employees. To retain employees with an organisation the HR manger can use training and development policy, which will bring out the productivity from the employees.
Leverage idle time: After analysing the case study it is been found that the employees at call centres are sitting ideal while waiting for call or work and the said ideal time cost $ 75-100 million to the industry. To save the idle time it is essential for HR to create the finest use of that specific ideal time. The HR can utilise the unproductive ideal time to organise ‘off-phone activities’ to expand the productivity and profitability (Parry and Tyson, 2011).
Allow employees to take frequent short breaks: It is been noted in the case study that the continuous working on laptops and on phones generates the stress within call centre, affect the employees and call centre. The stress results in decreased productivity, job satisfaction and health. It is important to allow short breaks to employees when they are stressed. Providing them this elasticity will permit them with a superior sense of control over their knowledge.
Provide incentives and rewards: The main aim of rewards and incentives programs are develop to inspire employees to perform optimally, foster individual development and growth, enhance employee’s satisfaction with their effort and retain talented personnel from leaving (Pritchard, 2010).
Increase awareness of employee’s impact on end-customers: HR can apply extra strategy to enhance the efficiency by raising awareness about the impact of their actions on the end customers. Relating agents straight with end-customer, displaying client photos, sharing client stories and having agents define their own optimistic experience with the clients as all can increase efficiency.
Conclusion:
To conclude, previously the Indian call centre consider to be the best area to set up the internal call centre but after implementation of their respective plan various issues arise and to control the issues and to find the relevant solution of the problems the Human resource manager need to plan some strategies. With the help of those designed strategies the Human resource manager can solve the problems occurred at Indian call centres.
References:
Budhwar, P., (2012). Management of human resources in foreign firms operating in India: the role of HR in country-specific headquarters. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 23(12), pp.2514-2531.
Budhwar, P.S., Varma, A., Singh, V. and Dhar, R., (2010). HRM systems of Indian call centres: an exploratory study. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 17(5), pp.881-897.
Castanheira, F. and Chambel, M.J., (2010). Reducing burnout in call centers through HR practices. Human Resource Management, 49(6), pp.1047-1065.
Guchait, P. and Cho, S., (2010). The impact of human resource management practices on intention to leave of employees in the service industry in India: the mediating role of organizational commitment. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 21(8), pp.1228-1247.
Guest, D.E., (2011). Human resource management and performance: still searching for some answers. Human resource management journal, 21(1), pp.3-13.
Jaiswal, A.K., (2011). Customer satisfaction and service quality measurement in Indian call centres. Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, 18(4), pp.405-416.
Laureani, A., Antony, J. and Douglas, A., (2010). Lean six sigma in a call centre: a case study. International journal of productivity and performance management, 59(8), pp.757-768.
Millan-Ruiz, D. and Hidalgo, J.I., (2010). A memetic algorithm for workforce distribution in dynamic multi-skill call centres. In European Conference on Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimization (pp. 178-189). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Mirchandani, K., (2014). Practices of global capital: gaps, cracks and ironies in transnational call centres in India. Journal of Global networks, 4(4), pp.355-373.
Morgan, B. and Ramanathan, V., (2012). Outsourcing, globalizing economics, and shifting language policies: issues in managing Indian call centres. Journal of Language Policy, 8(1), pp.69-80.
Nath, V., (2011). Aesthetic and emotional labour through stigma: National identity management and racial abuse in offshored Indian call centres. Journal of Work, employment and society, 25(4), pp.709-725.
Noronha, E. and D’Cruz, P., (2011). Employee identity in Indian call centres: The notion of professionalism. India: SAGE Publications.
Parry, E. and Tyson, S., (2011). Desired goals and actual outcomes of e?HRM. Human Resource Management Journal, 21(3), pp.335-354.
Pritchard, K., (2010). Becoming an HR strategic partner: Tales of transition. Human Resource Management Journal, 20(2), pp.175-188.
Procter, R., Wherton, J., Greenhalgh, T., Sugarhood, P., Rouncefield, M. and Hinder, S., (2016). Telecare call centre work and ageing in place. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 25(1), pp.79-105.
Russell, B. and Thite, M., (2010). The next division of labour: work skills in Australian and Indian call centres. Journal of Work, Employment and Society, 22(4), pp.615-634.
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