2018

HR Strategy of Vodafone
FOR GUILDFORD’S CALL CENTRE
YUJIE WANG
 Table of Contents

HRM PLAN FOR VODAFONE’S CALL CENTRE IN GUILDFORD -1-

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY -1-

INTRODUCTION -1-

HRM STRATEGY -2-

Strategic approach -2-

Competitive strategy -3-

RESOURCING -3-

REWARD -5-

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT -6-

Performance Management System -6-

Action research -7-

Communication linkage -7-

Assisting facilities -8-

HRD AND TALENT MANAGEMENT -8-

CONCLUSION -9-

REFERENCES - 10 -

APPENDIX - 14 -
 HRM plan for Vodafone’s call centre in Guildford

Executive summary

Vodafone will “onshore” their overseas call centre back to the UK, and 800 jobs will be
added in their call centre in Guildford to provide a better quality of customer service. Our
mission is to give an HRM plan of this operation and promote the company’s business
through the HRM plan. The plan consists of five chapters of HRM strategy, resourcing,
reward, performance management, and HRD & talent management to set forth our analysis
and recommendations for practices. In HRM strategy part, after analysing the company’s
condition and customers’ needs, we decide to recommend best-fit strategic approach to
formulate HRM strategy based on differentiation competitive strategy model. Then comes the
four main functions in HRM, and each part’s recommendations are committed to shape and
motivate employees to meet the requirements, which formed following the direction of HRM
strategy and Vodafone’s business strategy. Resourcing part includes recruitment and
selection with local labour market analysis. In this part, employee’s requirements, three ways
of expanding applicant’s pool are given. Reward part developed from financial and non-
financial two sectors, indicated that these two parts have equal importance for the
organisation’s long-term success, and focus on rewards for high-quality performance is
crucial. Performance management part divided into four sections by means of improving the
quality of performance. At last HRD & talent management part, it involves training from
individual and organisational view with giving recommended training methods.

Introduction

Vodafone has announced an operation which brings 2,100 call-centre roles back to the UK
from its external agency. Part of the new roles will place on the Vodafone’s existed call
centre in Guildford (Fildes, 2017). The purpose of this report is to provide an appropriate and
competitive human resource management (HRM) plan that is aligned with Vodafone's
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business strategy and uses a strategic approach to participate in the primary functions of
human resources management. Our HRM plan involves resourcing, reward, performance
management, HRD and talent management four areas, each part consists of analysis,
practices and recommendations.

HRM Strategy

In the annual mobile customer satisfaction survey conducted by consumer lobby group
Which?, Vodafone had the lowest score both in customer satisfaction survey (49%) and
likelihood to give a recommendation (Which? Press Office, 2018). Add to this the record of
being fined £4.6 for the mis-selling products, inaccurate billing and poor complaints handling
procedures in 2016 (Ofcom, 2016). Under such circumstance, the task of improving the
quality of customer service needs to be their priority. In Vodafone’s business strategy, it
emphasises this mission to build a competitive advantage through core strategic programme
named “Customer eXperience eXcellence (‘CXX’)”, and include it via their strategy purpose
of building connection and pass positive living attitude as well (Vodafone, 2018).

Strategic approach

Combining the challenges mentioned above with Vodafone’s intention to bring call centres
back to the UK, we recommend using the best-fit strategic approach. It emphasises that HR
strategies should be in line with the context and circumstances of the organisation, and it can
be used to ensure vertical integration or alignment between the organisation’s business and
HR strategies (Armstrong et al., 2009, p.35). It has been argued that HR strategy becomes
more efficient when it is linked to its surrounding context or environment of the business
(Baird and Meshoulam, 1988). For the competitive strategy, there two options for the
company to choose, either by lower costs than its competitors or by distinguishing itself with
better customer service but at higher costs. Moreover, it is a one-way choice because the
possibility of wasting company’s resources is getting higher (Wright, 1987). We suggest
abandoning the cost-reduction one because it has already led to unsatisfied customers due to
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offshoring call centre operations. Instead, if it is based on product’s attributes rather than
price (i.e. through providing better service) to target customers in most or all market
segments for higher prices, then it is seeking a differentiation strategy (Porter, 1985). Using a
differentiation strategy to build a strong connection with the customer and positive brand
impression to pursue the company’s competitive advantage would be recommended.

Competitive strategy

The critical point to apply differentiation strategy is to find and utilise one of the company’s
attributes that also appears on one or multiple fixed functional departments. For example,
General Electric Company (GE) gained enormous profit via using finance function to make a
difference. Jackson and Schuler suggest that the integration of control through HR practices
and processes is seen as a vital element of the best strategic approach (1995). By using
contingency theory, organisations can promote employee behaviour that is consistent with the
company's business strategy. Because behaviour stems from abilities and motivations,
organisations can implement HR practices to recruit individuals they need, while promoting
policies that motivate employees and coordinating with these strategies. (Delery and Doty,
1996). We recommend applying this strategic approach to concentrate on creating sustainable
competitive advantages by conducting a series of policies and practices through resourcing
(include recruitment and selection), reward, performance management and Human Resource
Development (HRD, include talent management) these four main parts within Human
Resource Management (HRM).

Resourcing

The general working environment and content of call centre advisors are constructed on the
large quantity of employees in one closed space and continuously answering customers at
same time. This certain condition gradually leads to the results of high rates of absenteeism,
labour turnover and stress problems - what has described as “emotional exhaustion” (Deery et
al., 2002; Taylor and Bain, 1999, 2001). Regardless of the “type” of the call centre, it is
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becoming commonly accepted that high levels of emotional labour are required to perform
well in their roles (Mulholland, 2002; Wray-Bliss, 2001). On the other hand, compared to
other abilities which can be acquired, mental labour in high-intensity environments is more
dependent on a person’s existing characteristics (Nickson et al., 2001). Recruitment must be
focused on finding employees who have the ability of emotional self-control and managing
emotional labour, and an attitude to match the organization, rather than the skills to match the
tasks (Wray-Bliss, 2001; Callaghan and Thompson, 2002; Alvesson and Willmott, 2002;
McKinlay et al., 1999). Therefore, valuing emotional labour and bring it into the HRM
strategy is essential. An appropriate approach should be used to fit in this kind of work
situation which needs concentration and continuous mental status, more importantly, this
focus could align and promote in great extent our strategy of differentiation on customer
service quality.

Based on the above analysis, we recommend a set of applicant’s requirements (except

must-have basic skill and common knowledge) to take into priority as listed:

• Extreme patience in communication with the customer

• Positive attitudes towards day-to-day tasks

• Ability to empathise and care for customer via phone, online chat

• Ability to stand the toughness of mental labour and pressure

• Emotional self-control/manage

Guildford’s latest numbers of residents who are in economically active status but stay in
unemployed are around 2100, and the proportion is only 2.6% (refer to Appendix). For
achieving the goal of recruiting about 800 new employees, this size of the labour market is
not broad enough to meet the actual demand and requirements. To addressing this dilemma,
we believe the solution could be found from both external and internal, local and
international aspects of the organisation.

Although recruiting locally is important and will be the primary focus, given that the
labour pool in the local market is quite low, expanding the applicants' pool by diverse and
effective approaches is necessary. Using employee-centred strategy and above-average wages
within the job advertisement is vital for attracting more candidates. The proportion of
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students in Guildford account for 41.9%, which is almost twice higher than Great Britain’s
students proportion of 26.8% (refer to Appendix). By converting this trait to the utilised
resource, offering stable part-time jobs will be useful in attracting the student candidates.
Besides, using a variety of online recruitment media such as LinkedIn or RiteSite, or some
influential business media, specialist recruitment agents could produce more potential
candidates, who the recruiter can then discreetly contact and screen (Acas, 2006).

Internal recruiting generally happens as a way of employee’s promotion, in call centre the
promotion could be the position of contactor trainer and executive leader. Therefore,
considering merging the geographical factor with internal enrolment becomes a suitable
approach. Providing the for current employees who are especially experienced and meet the
requirements mentioned above from other cities or overseas branches would be an attractive
opportunity. Through internal path, not only can Vodafone address the shortened supply of
the local labour market problem, but also to improve the resourcing efficiency by reducing
both financial and time costs.

Reward

In the majority of the sector, reward is tightly associated with performance management, as
reaction and stimulation at the same time. From the company view, an effective performance
evaluation must be conducted to make incentives a major contributor to reward performance.
This section usually includes compensation policies and practices, salary and payroll
management, total compensation, minimum wage, executive compensation, and team
rewards (Mitchell, 1982). The adequate financial support for this sector is the fundamental
need, and we recommend using the financial reward to emphasise the quality of working
outcomes more than quantity, which works towards the consistent direction of HR strategic
approach.

The other indispensable sector is coordinated with the training process. Although
financial types of reward account for a large part, it is significant to pay attention to non-
financial rewards such as commendation, training, development which could increase job
responsibilities (Armstrong, 2007). From the individual view, the employee’s personality also

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is a factor that needs to consider in reward to help them build a personalised path which could
maintain the mental labour in a non-overload condition. It also helps for deepening the
employees’ understanding of organisational culture and constructing it reversely. This sector
also could be seen as the extension of the employee-centred recruitment to achieve the
unified strategic approaches.

Rewards in individual view improve employee’s mentally working environment by

giving them positive stimulation and sense of belonging in the organisation, while in
organisational view of rewards concentrate on employee’s daily work activities and outcomes
in order to achieve a certain degree of productivity (Reif, 1975). Simultaneously, the
equilibrium of finance and HR needs the patience to control, the profits of this large-scale
investments are temporarily invisible until the resource transferred to core competencies in
the long term.

Performance Management

The definition of performance management (PM) is described as a strategic and integrated

approach, which increase the effectiveness of companies. By improving the performance of
the people and by developing the capabilities of teams and individual contributors
(Armstrong and Baron, 2005), and are employed "to manage and align" all of an
organisation's resources in order to achieve highest possible performance (Muchinsky, 2012).
Considering that this is a process of the overall strategy that requires multiple parties to
participate and make interactions, building an effective and ordered performance
management system (PMS) is a necessary for our HRM Strategy.

Performance Management System

A PMS is a systematic way to ensure the efficiency of mutual transformation between

employee’s productivity and company’s profitability. Implementing high-commitment
management could produce better outcomes of providing qualified customer service than
low-cost one. The high-commitment practices were used to address and compensate the
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negative impacts of tightly controlled work environment rather than as a part of HR system to
improve the employees’ working effectiveness (Kinnie et al., 2000). The evidence found in a
research that was conducted in two UK call centres with high-commitment work practices
that when tight controls met high-quality standards, these contradictory practices led to high
levels of stress during employees’ working time. Moreover, a call centre model based on low
discretion and rigorous monitoring of performance is not appropriate and need to balance the
emphasis on productivity and quality (Halliden and Monks, 2005). Thus, we recommend
applying focus on quality performance in the whole PMS, which should notably appear on
the performance planning and appraisal parts. When it comes to the evaluation stage focus on
quality, having useful feedback and complaints mechanism for employees is necessary. It is
essential to correct misunderstandings and errors in the evaluation process, and deliver the
positive influence on employees, which can lead to high-quality of customer services.

Action research

Customer services quality could also be improved through conducting action research in the
problem-solving process, constructing fixed communication linkages and updating assisting
facilities. Action research is either research initiated to solve an immediate, specific problem
or a reflective process of progressive problem solving within a program or an organisation
(Stringer, 2007). These research programmes are aiming at providing efficient platforms for
employee’s individual development, such as self-learning, organisational lecturing and
knowledge expanding (Coghlan, 2001). The purpose of applying this method in the call
centre is to motivate advisors developing not only by internal organisational training but also
by the natural learning and practice in the form of a team or individual.

Communication linkage

The construction of communication links needs to be multiple tiers, across departments and
position classes to absorb adequate and comprehensive performance appraisal information.
The level of performance that people achieve is related to how they work, and includes the
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language spoken and undescribed in the conversation that plays an important role in how the
performer's situation occurs. (Erhard and Jensen, 2017).

Assisting facilities

The condition of assisting facilities and physical working environment have important and
robust influence on employees, the underlying layer of working. For an instant, changing the
tight lattice room office to an open, comfortable workspace could also change the atmosphere
in office to the gentle mood, which encourages people to discuss with their colleges (Halliden
and Monks, 2005). Similar situation on the IT system, the degree of how easy the system be
utilised could affect the quality of the advisor’s service in aspects of reaction time, problem-
solving time and patience.

HRD and talent management

Human Resource Development (HRD) could be seen as a process of training employees to

obtain an ability that develops the positive relationship with authorities and people who holds
different opinions, and this is one of the guarantees of company’s long-term success
(Tannenbaum and Yukl, 1992). Talent management is suggested to be incorporated into the
organisation’s business plan, and apply it in the daily functioning comprehensive process
(Hoover, 2013). The training procedure of the organisational view can be identified as multi-
collaborated feedback. Except the conventional on-the-job fundamental skills training,
working proficiency and satisfying the requirements of customer service takes precedence
over organisational training for long-term development (Frenkel et al., 1998). Therefore, we
recommend:

• Establishing a practical and real-time feedback system and involving the

managers into the feedback process is pivotal for training outcomes (Russell,
2002).
• Telephone role-play is a highly effective method to give consultants the
opportunity to demonstrate their ability to process information while
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 maintaining a dialogue with their customers and, more importantly, to
micromanage their emotional work (Wray-Bliss, 2001).
• Encouraging employees to develop their working style and find speciality
through practising talking skills, collecting questions and requests be asked,
writing work log during every day’s work.

Conclusion

On the basis of researches and data, several recommendations are given in each part of HRM
plan with thorough analysis and evidence. And all the recommendations are aligned with our
HRM competitive differentiation strategy, formed to shape and motivate call-centre
employees towards to the needs of the company. Although some strategies and suggestions
are theoretical arguments without enough evidence of practical success, and it does not cover
the overall aspects or elements of HRM, we believe the above-proposed solutions and
strategies are most beneficial for the company’s long-term sustainable development in the
current context.

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Appendix

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Resource :

https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/imp/la/1946157330/printable.aspx

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