UniCall Business Improvement: Strategic HR Management Interventions

This report analyzes the human resources management challenges faced by UniCall, particularly focusing on employee resistance to change and high employee turnover. It investigates the factors contributing to these issues, such as the lack of effective change management strategies and inadequate employee engagement. The report highlights the importance of Human Resources and L&D professionals in understanding potential issues and implementing novel techniques to support management. Furthermore, it recommends ten crucial aspects associated with transformational change, including techniques for design change, building understanding, and managing change. It also explores turnover trends in the United Kingdom, methods for measuring turnover costs, and reasons for employee resignations. The report concludes by recommending effective strategies for improving staff retention, such as consultations, fair treatment, flexibility, career counseling, and training developments, all aimed at improving UniCall's overall business performance and achieving its objectives. Desklib provides access to this and other solved assignments for students.

Topic:
Recommendations on how Human Resources management can intervene to
improve the overall business and achieve set objectives.
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Executive summary:
This report explores how UniCall faced issued with mainly on people management and
employee resistance and secondly on employee turnover. This reports also researched
the effective themes of the making change management more effective and also how can be
prevent the employee high turnover as many employees are changing jobs or departing with
the organizations with different factor which explained carefully with the practical
example. Organizational change today is something that is driven by a wide range of factors
such as clients and stake holders, competitors, different types of markets as well as
technologies. Research however demonstrates that majority of the required changes fail to
deliver the outcomes that are desired or are intended and may even end up limiting the
capacity of an organizations and the people working for this organization. (CIPD, 2014). The
end result of not being able to control or manage change in an effective manner is something
that can be dangerous as well as long drawn out. It is therefore essential for Human resources
and L&D professionals to take the initiative and arrive at understanding of all the potential
issues, engaging themselves with a wide range of novel techniques for the purpose of giving
the management the support that it needs.
The report also recommends as many as ten crucial aspects associated with the process of
transformational change in primarily three important areas such as, the techniques that need
to be deployed for design change, to build an understanding as well as to manage change.
Such a theme also recommends that Human resources and L&D understand the effectiveness
of these themes and implement wherever necessary for effective change. Moreover, these
themes identify as how organizations successfully land transformational changes. This also
requires Human resources and L&D practitioners to possess the knowledge and the skills that
are necessary for working with important business leaders as well as other very high level
managers for the purpose of designing and also facilitating change.
This business reports also researched the in depth understanding and the reason behind the
staff turnover. And also, its looks at turn over trends in the United Kingdom, which can be
varies from across occupations, industries and regions. This report also recommends the
different methods that need to be deployed for measuring turn over as well as the costs that
arise due to the resignation of employees. The reports aims to examine as well, the reasons
that compel individuals to resign from a particular organization and also recommends
effective ways to improve staff retention through the step by step process
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including consultations, fair treatment, flexibility, and offering career counseling and training
developments.
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Table of content
S.No. Topics Page Number
1. Introductions 4
2. Analysis of the issues 5
2.1 Identification and analysis of people
management issue
5
2.2 Employee turnover issue 9
3 Recommendation 13
4 conclusions 22
5 References 24
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Introduction:
Organization is defined as group of people who work together in structured way to pursue
collective purpose. Every organization, weather financial, service, or industrial is made up of
humans and it is widely accepted fact that people is essential assets of any business and have
highest impact on growth and development of any organization. Moreover, role of people
management in overall business performance has been recognized in every sector today.
This business report consists of Human Resources Management issues at Unibank and its
dedicated call Centre Unicall and detailed research on how the Human recourses management
interventions which will improve the business performances. The various business
operational issues such as lack of performance management and appraisal system in an
organization, lack of technical competence in staff and stress on existing training programs
due to increase in demand, poor staffs image which ultimately causing negative impact on
company's image have been identified.
This main purpose of this report, is to focus on few prime people management issues such as
employee resistance to change in management and employee turnover, in line with provided
case study and with the help of recent article and human resources theories to justify and
recommend the best practices and interventions of Human Resources Management which can
be proved helpful to Unibank to achieve its future business objectives.
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Analysis of the issues:
1. Identification and analysis of people management issue:
Firstly, the change in management and employee's strong resistance has been identified as a
high priority issue in given case study. In today's economy, change is inevitable in any sector.
Financial sector like banking is no exception in that and under continuous pressure to achieve
highest consumer satisfaction. The emerging trend of utilization of more advance
technological innovation is result of climbing competition in financial market. In provided
case study, it is noted that with an intention of business growth, Unibank has decided to
transfer a huge portion of its management regarding general accounts and enquiry activity to
Unicall call Centre.
According to a Strategy and Katzenbach Centre survey 2013, it is demonstrated that the
success ratio of change initiative is only 54% in study which is very minimal. It is noted that
when change initiative goes wrong, this affects not only on financial effect on business but
organization also loses their invested resources, prestige and development opportunities. In
provided case study, same thing has happened with the Unicall too that employees are feeling
insecurity about jobs and it is creating anxious workplace environment. It has affected the
company reputation in very damaging way. Furthermore, it is shown in research that there are
some major management factors which have high impact on change outcome include, change
fatigue, which means that if the company introduces everything at one go or any change they
made without prior planning causing nervousness in employee.
In research, approximately 60%employee and respondent suggested that this is the major
problem. If this happened then employee feels exhausted and also pressurized as there is no
preparation time for them to deal with new change. Especially this happen when this all
change initiative is driven by top directors also called "whole new day" for employee. In
provided case study, with Unicall. This happened exactly the same as UniBank introduced
the telephone banking without prior structural change in alignment with the employee's
involvement in business. So in result employee doesn’t have enough knowledge for changed
initiative in organization. According to 48 % of the participant in survey found the change
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initiatives are flounder. For example, the top leaders always have the expectations only on the
final results without consideration of necessity of new process change. They are not keeping
eye on how is the trend shaping in between the management and lower lever and middle level
employees. The top leaders always tend to blame the technology and also claimed that front
line employees are not up to the mark in case of failure of change introduction. IN this case
study, UniCall has the same problem, the management just had aim to improve Unicall
customers and increase the customer satisfactions 2 but they didn’t concern with what
employee are facing through and they didn’t much care about their own employee.
The recommended solution will be to invest more on operational improvement, such as give
proper training to front and middle level employee and give more knowledge to them or any
cultural support if they needed. According to the reports on change management, 44 % of
participant reported that they are not able to comprehend the changes that are expected to be
made by them while around 38% are not able to decipher the nature of the changes that are to
be made in the first place. Moreover, the transformational change decided by the top lever
managers or CEOs but the main operations start with lower level employees. So,
management should make the strategy according with the situation which they can also
involve the all employee before any changes makes and at least employee of all level should
be aware that company need transformational change and will be benefit to all in future.
Unicall has the same issued when the management introduces the new system where the
employees were not well aware with fully informed instructions and also, they don’t have
enough resources available to deal with new system. In addition, some of the employees are
lacking the required skills to adapt the change transformation.
There is an absolute clear resistance from Unibank employee has been identified for this
change in management. Furthermore, it is also observed that because of inefficient change
management system within organization, it has created initially major devastating effect on
company's reputation because of involvement of social media and trade union in contrast to
business improvement. Balogun and Hailey have addressed the complexities associated with
change and a few of the problems that are which impact the organizations that implement
change.
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The report captures the negativity witnessed in change and change capabilities in
organizations. The pre-dominance of the use of machine based metaphors when designing
change on the part of an organization is also something that the report identifies. As the
senior team’s membership is one that is under a continuous state of evolution, it is tough to
find anything being learnt about change at all at the senior levels of management. There are
hardly any change management units in any organizations. More often than not, the strategies
that require being implemented for the purpose of cultural change are those that are often
divorced from the actual day to day activities and operations of the organization. It became
very difficult therefore on the part of the senior team members to use strategic thinking and
strategic behavior to bring about the desired levels of change in the management, given that
such behaviors and modes of thinking are often quite removed from the day to day practices,
activities and goals of the organization.
What the CMC report also identifies is the importance of organizations to be able to
successfully engage with their employees. The report points to the case of organizations that
are large and geographically dispersed and talks about how the role of middle managers in
such organizations becomes something that is highly important for implementing change.
Local change initiatives are regarded to be far more effective when it comes to such
organizations as the employees are often unable to identify with the wider goals and aims of
the organization. It is the middle managers who are well aware of the needs and requirements
of employees working in the regional or divisional branches of the organization and can
engage with them effectively to bring about the changes necessary for the organization to
grow and to prosper. The report also reiterates that it is an absolute necessity of any business
to have highly engaged and high performing employee in order to grow and survive in
current competitive market. It has been well documented in various research that highly 3
focused workers have huge climbing impact on productivity of the business and can play
important role in cost minimization. And in contrast, less engaged workforce can have major
detrimental effect on organization.
If CIPD reports and ONS surveys undertaken in recent years are to be believed, the employee
engagement deficit in the United Kingdom is one that is quite prominent. There is therefore
an increasing urge on the part of business and political leaders in the United Kingdom to
increase engagement with employees at all levels of an organization. This is largely also
motivated by the fact that employee engagement plays a vital role in ensuring overall and all
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round success of a business, be it an international business or a local business. According to
Harvard Business Review Analytic Services report, vast majority of company leaders have
acknowledged the impact of employee engagement but at the same time have admitted the
fact that high proportion of their employees are not highly engaged and still much work need
to be done on this issue in order to achieve overall business performance.
Moreover, it is widely accepted fact that employee resistance is closely knitted with
employee engagement in business. It is human nature to defend the status quo if they sense
insecurity in change in their status. It is well known that if management refuse to understand
the initial resistance in their employee and become ignorant toward effort to work with and
reduce that resistance then, it can hinder the organization improvement. The initial
disapproval and objection from Unibank employee for Unicall is reasonably understood as it
has become apparent reason for job redundancy in Unibank. It is noted that with decision of
starting of Uniline, same reason has appeared to because of resistance in Unicall employee as
well. So it is strongly recommended that management should make strong efforts to tackle
the resistance on the part of employers and consider creating transitional phenomena.
(Morgan, G. (1997). Images of organization Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.)
2. Employee turnover issue:
According to the association of London government (ALG), stated that
none organizations in London region can hope to begin to manage the supply of
high labor without the understanding of its turnover rates. In addition, they stated that
employee turnover can be divided in to two broad category such as employer initiated and
employee initiated. Some employee turnover occurs because of the employers wants it or
early retirement, dismissals and redundancies are all employer initiated. However, the
normal age, illness and accident in work place and death in services are all factors resulting
in turn, over. The one and big predictable category of turnover is usually voluntary
resignations by employees. According to ALG survey 2004/2005, they stated that the mean
resignations rates in London borough was 9.1% and the median was 8.8% and around the
range was in between 4.4% to 18.3%.the accountable resignations over all was 59%.in
addition to that its showed that the resignation rate for 2004/2005 is higher than the figure for
2003/2004.according to the reports conformed that there was a huge and steady increase in
dismissal rate. As the inner London the dismissal rate was 1.1% and for outside London was
0.6% so all accountable rate of dismissal approximately 6% of all leavers.
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Employee turnover it’s very expensive and that can be cost thousands of pounds when we
replace one staff member. they also stated that costs are not purely financial, organization can
also loss of skills, knowledge and experience, disruption to service provisions and the effect
on staffs morale top so this can also be included if we lose one staff and this can also affect
company prestige. The Royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) has developed its
own model to cost employee turnover and it’s include direct cost, indirect cost and also
assumptions about the effectiveness of new employees in the job. The have summarized some
findings. For example,
Gross annual cost excluding vacancies salary savings (reported in 2004)
Total annual cost of turnover was $4.5 million pound.
Average cost per leaver $7354 pound.
Percentage of average salary 26%.
Net annual cost after accounting for salary saving during vacancy period
Total annual cost of turnover was $1.2million pound.
Average cost per leaver $ 1875 pound.
Percentage of average salary 7%.
If we take RBKC's average cost per leaver figure of $1875 and multiply by the total number
of leaver gives the total cost of almost $27 million or just $900,000 per borough. By taking
this example of RBKC's we can see that employee turnover can be expensive however, it also
depends on organizations to organizations depending upon small medium and large.
As like UniCall it’s also depends upon how many employees are employed and also what
kinds of resources are available.
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According to the new research by Robert Half UK, claimed that UK business are dealing with
the high turnover as its increase as over a third (36%) of human resources officers have seen
the number of leaves rise over the past three years. While some of the businesses recognized
the issue like current retention strategies and some business are already giving offers like
incentives for the employees to stay. Current survey shows that the issues with internal poor
work life balance (31%), boredom and frustrations and also the current role in particular
company are the main reason why employees choose to leave the company. Boredom has
been identified as the main reason for staff turnover across all the companies’ small (27%)
and medium scale (35%) but especially in large business (42%) they affected by this issue.
(Robert Half UK, 2017). Employee high turnover it’s the biggest problem in services-based
organizations like call center and banking sectors (Heskett at al, 2008).
In the view of Hokey Min (2007), employee turnover in an organization is something that is
determined by a wide range of demographic variables. Examples in this respect include
gender, the level of education of a person and age, in addition to knowledge, skill sets,
experience, firm size, industry standards etc. There are both push and pull factors that have a
vital role to play in influencing the decision of an employee to continue working with an
organization. More often than not, a poor or inadequate relationship with the top levels of the
management is something that has a vital role to play in influencing the decision of an
employee to leave an organization and go and take up employment elsewhere. With regard to
the high turnover rates that are prevalent in organizations like Uni-Call for instance, it may be
said that the fact that employees are dismissed within just a few months of their recruitment
into the organization goes a long way in getting employees to feel adversely about working
long term over here. The recruitment process is often carried out in below average fashion
with the human resource administrators seldom ever taking care to recruit the right people
with the right sets of talents and skills to work for the organization. Instead of giving
employees the chance to grow and evolve with the organization, the organization seems hell
bent on picking on the flaws of employees and terminating their employment or tenure at the
earliest possible instance. This is something that is definitely contributing to a high employee
turnover rate while also influencing, the business growth and development of the
organization.
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If the survey reports pertaining to resourcing as well as talent planning are to be believed, as
of the year 2017, then it can be said that both the recruitment as well as talent management
budget is one that is likely to see a huge increase in the years between 2017 and 2018,
something that will likely help in the process of recruiting the correct set of employees for the
jobs pertaining to the organization rather than recruiting employees who feel like there are
fish out of water inn the new work environment, contributing to high employee turnover in
the process.
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