Human Resources

Human Resources at Banco call centre

Prepared by

Executive Summary

This report identifies and analyses the main Human Resource issues at Banco in addition to providing recommendations for improvements. It indicates key benefits based on appropriate theory and literature. It evaluates each department of human resources and provides solutions to help resolve existing problems and eradicate aspects of business activity that are hindering the overall performance of the business.

Context and Problem

Banco currently operates throughout the country with nearly 300 branches nationwide. The report focuses on human resource issues concerned with the call centre Banco has recently established in order to provide a more competent service for its customers. This industry has rapidly grown throughout the UK within the past few years and an increasing number of businesses have integrated these methods into their services as a means to improve customer service, evaluate staff members more proficiently and ultimately improve the efficiency of the business as a whole. Call centres are at present the fastest growing part of the service sector in Europe, within the UK alone there has been an increase of 24% in the number of call centres from 2001-2005 (Mintel, 2006)

The centre is located in an area of low employment; the majority of staff are full time workers, although predominantly, staff in the call centre operate on a part time basis. Although there is a distinct lack of routes of communication for staff, there is a recognised trade union integrated within the company. However, the problem with this being that there is only around 50% of staff who are currently involved. Currently there is an ineffective hierarchy that has struggled to achieve the high standards expected from the managers. It is vital for Banco to reconsider the structure of their hierarchy in order to help push for a more competitive advantage in the market. This has seen Banco attempt to centralise its activities by providing 24 hour banking to improve the service they offer and establish loyalty and trust with it's customers. This needs to be a main focus for Banco in an industry which relies heavily on the trust between service and customer.

HRM Roles and Activities

Human resource management has developed from personnel management during the 20th century. HRM is a distinctive approach to employment management which seeks to achieve competitive advantage through the strategic development of a highly committed and capable workforce, using an integrated array of cultural, structural and personnel techniques (Glew M, 2000).

HRM focuses on the most important asset a business has, its employment. Roles and activities that HRM are responsible for include:

* recruitment and selection

* training and development

* human resource planning

* provision of contracts

* provision of fair treatment

* provision of equal opportunities

* assessing performance of employees

* health and safety

* disciplining individuals

* dealing with grievances

* dismissal

* redundancy

* encouraging involvement

The report will take into account these areas within the four sections shown below and will analyse how well the business is carrying out HRM as a whole.

Employee Resourcing

Resourcing is the key role of people as contributors to the realisation of corporate purposes, strategies and goals (Lauden, 2004).

Banco's main Employee Resourcing problems are recruitment and selection and work place flexibility. This is because increasing competition is forcing a 24/7 environment in order to retain a competitive customer satisfaction rate at the company. These drastic increases in employee targets have caused various problems within the call centre in terms of finding employment with sufficient skills and work flexibility levels.

Banco's External Recruitment Process:

Banco recruited external agencies to hire applicable staff. The agencies "focused recruitment and selection on identifying good communicators with 'personality' or 'naturals' but once employed and trained they were 'reprogrammed' and instilled with a sense of conformity. This had resulted in frustration for those staff selected for their outgoing personality". As shown in the text Banco's external recruitment and selection team are hiring people that aren't necessarily right for the job and then trying to change there key strengths, such as personality in order to fit them to the job.

This is an example of incompetent HRM, not only will this method demoralise those employed but it will also prevent them from performing to their full potential. More importantly it seems that there is a contradiction of interest between Banco and the Human Resource agencies as they are selecting genres of people that Banco seemingly don't want or need. It is a waste of resources for Banco to pay for an agency to find them staff that doesn't conform to there needs. It would be sensible for the company to re-evaluate the exact type of employer they require or design an employment process of their own which suits the requirements of the company. This could be done by applying the theories of Munro-Fraser (1954), a five point grading system to create a proficient specification that identifies potential employees who are more suited to the business (call centre) environment (Wikipedia, 2003). This would allow the company to get more sufficient staff that can work more flexibly, with sufficient skills. However they are located in an area of low employment and finding the most applicable staff may be hard. This theory would allow the best possible workforce to be retrieved within the area.

Improving the recruitment and selection process