HRM Issues and Diversification Strategies

HRM Issues/Diversification Strategies

The company under analysis consists in a medium size call centre providing assistance for a variety of other companies operating in more than two different business sectors. The top management of the company has recently been changed and the new leaders of the organization want to bring about some profound changes. These changes regard the organizational culture and refer to the mission and vision at the same time.

The company is now customer-oriented. In order to achieve the goal of providing value added services the new managers believe that it is best to treat the employees as equal members of a team and provide them with the maximum of autonomy. In the past the company was profit-oriented and the members of the staff were motivated into doing their work as fast as possible. The idea was to obtain a standard procedure which would minimize costs and allow the company to function more efficiently.

The new management has brought about changes regarding the very approach to business. This resulted into the occurrence of confusion amongst the employees. The problems that the organization now faces refer mostly to the implementation of the strategy. The first problem is that the people continue to do their work just as they did before the management members changed. This means that there is a discrepancy between the organizational values- which may have extremely negative consequences from a long-term perspective.

The second problem is represented by their incapacity to act autonomously. It is important to mention that the evaluation of the employees is done according to the quality of their work. And the quality of their work depends on their degree of autonomy. So far, the members of the company apparently fail to understand the new philosophy that they should base their actions on.

This leads to the occurrence of a third problem in terms of strategy implementation.

The company set its goal to provide the customers with added-value services which can be achieved only through the contribution of the employees who need to dedicate themselves completely to what they are doing and to the company as if it were their own family. Since they do not understand the new work mentality, the consequence can be found in a confusion of roles and tasks. It is true that the tasks are defined by the contract binding the employee, but it is the "autonomy" concept which confuses people to the point where they do not clearly understand how far do their responsibilities reach. This confusion has more people assuming the same roles and ending up fighting over the same powers. The problem is that beforehand they were encouraged to compete one with the other whereas now they are encouraged to collaborate.

What we are actually dealing here with is an organization which first emphasized fit and then moved on to emphasizing flexibility. This means that at present the firm can be considered a related one. In addition, this means that the management should shift its focus from the strategies employed to control outcome towards the strategies employed to control what is going on inside.

Micro control refers to the formation and the type of "clan" within the organization and the behaviour of the employees. It could be stated that, focusing the attention towards the internal functioning of the organization is a method of controlling the outcome of the company's efforts regarding the services which it provides its clients with. In other words micro control operations are necessary as a sort of basis for the macro control ones.

It is true that in terms of efficacy the company should focus more on the difference between input and output, but it is just as true that the internal management of the human resources is fundamental, especially under the circumstances in which the company has changed its approach to business and pretends to value the employee just as much as the customer. This is all the more true if we take into consideration the fact that the company serves several lines of business, not just one. Therefore all the services must be strategically coordinated and in perfect synergy in order to provide the company with a solid identity.

Since related diversification is the strategy that the company under discussion needs, it is obvious that there are some structural changes that should be made. The managers should act as power nodes, coordinating all the other members of the organization. Communication should function more efficiently within the parties which are directly collaborating to the achievement of a common goal. In addition, the members of the staff should have a clear idea about whom they have to respond for their actions, whom they can collaborate with and whom they can ask advice from.