Overview of Human Resources Management Tasks for Ufone

Service provision:

The basic activity carried out by HR specialists is that of providing services to internal customers. These include management, team leaders and employees. These services may be general, covering all aspects of HRM. Or it may be provided in one or two areas of HRM.The basic aim is to provide services that meets the needs of the management and its employees to handle them evidently.(Armstrong, 2001: P 88)

Guidance:

The recommendations include on HR strategies that have been advanced by process of analysis and diagnosis to address strategic issues arising from business needs and organisational factors. The guidance may be provided on HR polices and procedures and the implementation of employment legalisation. The aim is to ensure consistent decisions are made on things like performance ratings like pay increase and disciplinary actions. (Armstrong, 2001: P 88)

Advice:

HR practitioners provide advice on matters like job design, advertising for staff, short lists for selection, training needs and the rates of pay to be offered to new employees or promotion. The advice also given to individuals to deal with aspect of work and development like suitability of the present job and career planning (Armstrong, 2001: p 89).

Ufone HR activities:

Introduction:

The company begin its operations under the brand name of Ufone, from Islamabad in January 29, 2001, as it is the subsidiary of PTCL established to operate the cellular services.

Due to privatisation of PTCL, 26% of its shares obtain by the Emirates Telecommunication corporation (Etisalat).The management of Ufone also taken over by Etisalat as it is part of PTCL.The company expanded its network coverage to new cities and rural areas of the country.Ufone has the network coverage of more than 750 cities, villages and all across the major highways.

Due to major network expansion, Ufone has increased its assets from RS 20 billion to RS 27 billion. Recently the company has been awarded new licence for providing cellular services to in Azad Jammu & Kashmir and Northern areas.Ufone is the second largest cellular company in Pakistan. (www.docstoc.com)

Vision Statement:

“To be the leading telecommunication service provider in Pakistan by offering innovative communication solutions for our customers while exceeding shareholder

Value & employee expectation. (www.scribd.com)

: Service provision:

Every organisation has policy of evaluating the employees and on that basis gave them the rewards. It varies from organisation to organisation. In Ufone, the employees are evaluated once a year. This is done by senior management and assistant manager of the department. Sometimes they use their central database system which is called Human resource information system (HRIS), which contains every employee personal and organisation information like skills and previous performance. On the basis of that evaluation the management decides whether to promote or not to promote the employee (www.docstoc.com).

Advice:

After the evaluation of employees the management of the organisation decides the future of the employee. If the employee is performing below the standards then they go for training, as in Ufone they give training to those who agrees the condition of not leaving the organisation for specific period of time, which has a positive impact on the organisation .they do prefer the off job training (www.docstoc.com).

Objectives:

Customer service.

Brand.

According to my opinion and research Ufone stated in its mission and vision statement that it will be a leading telecommunication organisation available for “u” with promise to provide best customer services to their customers.Ufone started its operations when Mobilink was only the service provider with the good network and customer service. Now Ufone is the second largest cellular company in Pakistan with 30% of market share, because they are giving quality customer service and excellent network coverage to their customers. For the improvement of their network and to enhance the subscribers they invested £550 million. With that they have been granted the licence in Azad Kashmir.Ufone proud to have an efficient and friendly customer service through 21 company owned customer service centres and nearly 250 franchises all over the country. They are equipped with the web based franchise management systems and with innovative solutions been able to satisfy the customer’s problems. It has the ability and potential to retain its existing customers through high level customer service satisfaction via 24 hour call centre facility. While keeping its traditions of being the trend setter in the industry, Ufone launched its youth segment with the prepaid brand. Ufone prepay brand is considered to be one of the favourite brand in youth market.

They are offering most attractive and cheap packages to their customers with no hidden charges. They also offer international roaming to different countries like Europe and Middle East etc.

To look at the performance of the company one can say that HR department of Ufone and the activities they are doing are quite successful and playing a vital role to maintain and enhance the set standards of the organisation.(www.scribd.com).

Harvard Framework Model of HRM

The Harvard model of HRM presented by Beer et al (1984) at Harvard University USA.

It states that HRM should have two characteristics first, line manager should take and accept the responsibility for ensuring the alignment of competitive strategies and personnel policies,, and second, personnel has the mission of setting goals that govern how personnel policies are developed and implemented.(Armstrong, P 24).

General Managers are the key members to implement the policies to achieve the strategic goals with the help of their employees, they should have a view point that how to involve and develop employees ability and skills to achieve the strategic goals.

As the world become global village and the competition among the organisations very tough, therefore the human resources demand broader in the market as compare to earlier that’s why the HRM needs to take decision by involving their employees then decision and action should be in relation between organisation and employees interest (Armstrong, P 6).

Harvard model also recommends for human resource outcome that is commitment, competence, congruence and cost effectiveness. As a result the Harvard model tends to contribute on people outcome rather than organisational outcome and business performance.

The advantages of Harvard model are as follows

1 – It takes care of stake holders interests.

2 – Recognises the interest of owner and employees as well as between various interest groups

3 – It widens the contexts of HRM that is “employees influence”

4 – Acknowledges a broad range of contextual influence on management’s choice of strategy, suggesting a meshing of product -market and socio-cultural logics.

(Armstrong, 2006: P8).

Stakeholder Interests

Shareholders

Management

Employees

Government

Unions

HR Outcomes

Commitment

Congruence

Cost effectiveness

Long Term Consequences

Individual Wellbeing

Organisational Effectiveness

Social well-being

Situational Factors

Work force characteristics

Business strategy and conditions

Management Philosophy

Labour market

Unions

Task technology

Laws and Social values

HRM policy choices

Employee influence

HR flow

Reward systems

Work system

Figure 2.2 The Harvard framework Model of HRM.

Source Beer et al (1984)

MATCHING MODEL OF HRM

The matching model of HRM developed by academics at the Michigan business school, introduced the concept of strategic human resource management by which HRM polices are linked to the formulation and implementation of strategic business objectives.(B.C. et al 2007).

It emphasis that it should be link between internal polices and external forces that how it can effect the organisation goals. The internal strategies should matched that organisation can meet the challenges to compete with the external forces like political and economic factors. The organisation must have firm structure, motivated employees and strong management to address these issues. (B.G. et al 1999).

The following are the key areas for the development of possible HR polices and systems.

Selection of the potential employees to meet the upcoming challenges.

Performance in the pursuit of business objectives.

Appraisal and providing feedback to the organisation and employees.

Rewards to motivate the employees.

Development of skills and knowledge to meet the business objectives.

Political

Force

Economic Cultural

Forces Forces

Mission &

Strategy

Firm

Human

Organization resource

Structure management

HRM Matching Model.

Source: B.G et al (1999).

HR PLANING.

To achieve the strategic goals of the organisation HR determines the human

Resource needs in such a way that it can satisfy both the organisation and the employees by ensuring the qualitative and quantitive terms. Basically there are two types of HR planning, one is hard form of HR planning and second is soft form of HR planning. Hard form of HR planning is based on quantitative analysis to ensure that right numbers of people are available when needed, while soft form of HR planning is focused on shaping the culture of the organisation in such a way that it integrates between corporate goals and employee beliefs (Class Lecture).

HR PLANING AT UFONE

As Human Resource Management plays a vital role in the success of any organisation as same case with the HR department of the Ufone as well. They should be able to forecast and meet the future demands of the human resources. As the competition among the telecom companies are much tougher, therefore employees are less concentrate on their job and are less loyal towards the company.Ufone is aware of the fact that their employees can leave the job whenever they get the opportunity, therefore they do not have a formal strategy for succession planning although they prefer to recruit internally whenever the opportunity arises. They do develop employees for there career planning but their is no formal succession planning as such practiced by Ufone. For the existing employees they make sure to give them incentives like bonuses, paid leaves, medical facilities and friendly environment to motivate. In order to achieve the strategic goals. most of the time they promote the employee within the organisation to fill the vacant vacancy according to their performance by using their database which is known is Human Resource information System.(HRIS).(www.docstoc.com)

Critical Evolution:

The drawback of their HR planning is that they do not practice succession planning due to this employees are less concentrate on their job.

The drawback of their HR planning is that their is solution to overcome the workload on their employees.

Recruitment:

“Recruitment is the process of finding and attracting a capable pool of applicants.”(Aswathappa k, 2005. P, 132)

There are two types of recruitment takes place in any organisation, one is internal recruitment which almost every company follows, because it generates healthy competition among the employees as well as motivates them to work hard in order to achieve the strategic goals, and second is external recruitment.

Recruitment at Ufone:

The HR department of Ufon provides many monitory and non monitory incentives to the existing employees to motivate them in such a way that they can work hard towards the achievement of organisational goals. As the turnover in the company is quite often due to workload on the employees, therefore the employees prefer to leave the organisation whenever they get the right opportunity. To over come these issues the HR department hire the new employees to fulfil the vacant place. (www.docstoc.com)

Internal Recruitment

For the top and middle management they do prefer to promote some one with in the organisation by analysing their performance from their central data base. As internal

Recruitment make a healthy competition among the employees and motivate them in such a way that to perform their assigned duties to achieve the organisation goal.(www.docstoc.com).

External Recruitment

To employ the enthusiastic and potential candidates from the labour market the HR department using various techniques and tools to hire the applicants for the proposed job. They also discuss and take the ideas of the supervisors and managers of the relevant department when they are going to make the job description along with job specification. They are using the following methods of recruitment (www.docstoc.com).

Referrals:

Ufone gains added advantage by advertising the job internally i.e. the current employees of Ufone can pass on the information to their relatives and friends. This is t valuable source of advertisement.

Advertisement:

The HR department hires the services of “interflow”, an advertisement agency, to propagate their service and company for them. They also take the benefit of the web designer etc.

Private employment agency:

As the private employment agencies collect the information about employed and unemployed people skills and knowledge .these agencies tries to find right applicant for the proposed job. (www.docstoc.com)

Critical Evaluation:

Due to lack of proper advertisement they are unable to fond suitable people for their company.

They are not following the lead the market pay strategies due to which they are suffering from high turnover.

SELECTION PROCEDURE:

“Selection is the process of decision weather to hire or not to hire an applicant”.

(Class Lecture).

The HR management decides on the length of short list, which is normally not more than five or six applicants maximum. If they are short of time they involve the supervisors and managers of the relevant department to span of time. Apart from time

They do this to take there point of view as well. They looked at to the following things while reading to application.

Is the applicant meets the requirements for the job?

Is their any unexplained employment gaps?

Is the applicant will be future asset of the organisation?

The quality of presentation.

Those who meet the requirements of job specification are called for the online evaluation test; those who pass the test are then called for the interviews. The date and time are given for the interviews. The interviews are designed in such a way that personality and ability of the applicant can be judged. After the interviews the set of panellist screened the results in order to minimize the chances of error. (www.docstoc.com)

Critical Evaluation:

They do not have a specialist people to evaluate the online test and furthermore selection should be free of biasness due to corrupt society.

Development Methods

With the population of 170 million people the Pakistani mobile market has a great potential, with an annual increase rate of 140% in subscribers. It is absolutely raising star in the Asia telecom market.

The development of an organisation and human resources skills, abilities and knowledge is purely done on the basis of organisation set goals SWOT analysis of an organisation and keeping in view the strengths and weakness of your competitors. The top management of Ufone and make strategic plans including developmental methods. The HR then formulates strategies and policies to achieve the organisational goal (www.docstoc.com).

Developmental methods used in Ufone

Ufone is currently following “Internal growth policy”. As it is the second largest telecom company operating in Pakistan. The Company is mainly focusing on market development that is they are expanding their network to capture large market share. For that in September 2006, Huawei was awarded by Ufone a $550 million contract.Huawei would provide future oriented Gnerg GSM solution, including new generation GSM BTSs, intelligent network system, to complete a network expansion project covering over 1,500 cities, towns, villages, and all major highways over the country.furthmore, the new edge based network would enable subscribers to enjoy high speed wireless data services, along with that they are also doing human resource development such as training and development, organisational developmental, human resource planning and human resource information system in alignment of strategic goals of organisation.(www.docstoc.com).

The HR department always keen to develop the skills, abilities and knowledge of the employees to be able to do their assigned work easily. To achieve these objectives they give “on job” and “off job” training to their employees and senior management.

On job training:

Basically there are two types of on job training has done in Ufone. One is when they hire new employee with the condition that they will not leave the organisation for a specific period of time, which is according to them have positive results. The second is done after the evolution of the employees. They assess and gave the training according to the needs of each employee.

Off job training:

Basically off job training has done for the senior management of organisation. It may be in the form of workshop, seminar and etc.Recently a workshop was held in Islamabad, the focus was to equip them with the latest knowledge in “MS OFFICE”.

(www.docstoc.com).

Critical evaluation.

They outsourced technological development for which they are paying huge money rather than going for future product development.

There should be no training condition while hiring the new employees.

Suggestions of functioning HR.

The HR should adapt new “ERP “software to be able to promote the right employee within the organisation at challenging role.

They should introduce the overtime system to decrease the turnover in the organisation.

They should have a formal succession policy in the organisation.

The HR department should improve in the forecast of various human resources demand and should be able to predict the areas within the organisation where there will be future labour shortage or surplus especially in customer service.

The HR department try to recruit people externally rather than outsourcing.

They need to concentrate on “on job training” as well without any condition.

The HR department try to increase the facilities and incentives to keep the employees motivated.

The department needs to know the limitations of the labour market as well.

The interviewing panel should be consisting of experience and independent people in order to hire right employee without any biasness.

They should improve the advertisement method as it will help them to attract the potential applicants.