The Human Resource Department has emerged as a vital platform for any organization as it plays an important role in objective setting, aligning mission and vision with the company strategy and setting performance standards for employees.
Though all telecom companies have well established Human Resource Departments but still their functioning is not optimum and there is a need to improve certain procedures and processes in this regard.
The major issue with the Human Resource Departments in the telecom industry is that they are centralized. For almost all of the companies human resource departments are limited only to their head offices (Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad). Though the cellular companies have their offices established across the country but no human resource professionals are available there to coach the employees.
The cellular companies should decentralize their HR departments and HR professionals should be accessed by the companys employees easily so that they could coach and guide the employees regarding certain procedures and issues.
It should be binding on HR department bosses to organize regular meetings and coaching sessions for employees and keep a close relationship with them so that the employees of distant areas do not feel distressed.
It has been a common observation that centralization hardly allows the distantly located employees to have much knowhow of HR policies and procedures and moreover they dont get much opportunities for recreation and other activities organized from time to time by the relevant HR department as most of the activities are organized in major cities (Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad).
Another important issue is that the number of HR professionals in all these organizations is very much less. Normally not more than 100-150 HR employees are in any company (even there may be less number of HR employees than this). Due to this reason a single HR employee has to look after the issues and problems of more than 100-200 employees. Consequently, they wont be able to have close liaison with their colleagues of distant or regional offices.
Though all companies talk about considering employees as human capital and valuing them equally but in fact their words differ much from their actions. Still HR departments are being treated as personnel and clerical departments in actual. Still the role of HR is limited in devising policies and procedures but they are not being taken onboard for their implementation.
Still HR department is not involved in performance appraisals as the fate of employees depends upon the discretion of their immediate managers. In most of the cases even if employees are performing well, they do have to accept the ratings given by their managers mainly because of the virtually non-existing checks and balances by HR department.
In case of recruitment in any department, the role of HR department is quite limited to creating job descriptions and HR professionals are confined to the role of just an observer during the process of conducting interviews or issuing appointment letter to newly hired employees.
The training and development programmes should be organized keeping in view the needs of individuals rather than imposing only department decided trainings for them and all employees should be given fair opportunities to attend training sessions so that everyone can enhance his/her professional abilities.
Another important issue is lack of proper compensation plan to cater employees needs which is considered a potent reason of increasing de-motivation for any employee. Unfortunately, the cellular companies spend a major chunk of their revenues on advertisements and paying huge salaries to their CEOs and top management and hence to balance these costs lower grade employees are paid low salaries, that normally de-motivates their employees.
All these are the critical issues that need immediate attention of the senior management of the relevant companies. They should ensure that all employees are paid as per their performances and market standards and they should also keep inflation level in account while offering salaries.
The need of the hour is that Cellular companies should take on board their Human Resource Departments while designing all the policies and procedures. It shouldnt work as a dummy department but it should have some actual role for the company and most importantly for employees.
The number of employees in HR department should be increased in addition to ensuring de-centralization of these departments. Moreover, these departments should develop such strategies so as to treat all employees equally regardless of gender and ethnicity. Such steps if taken effectively would definitely deliver and remain successful in winning over the hearts of the employees and, of course, these employees would portray the enhanced professional performance that would ultimately make the relevant company achieve its desired goals.