U.S. Cellular Human Resource Management

U.S. Cellular

Human Resource Management at U.S. Cellular

Company Description

United States Cellular Corporation was founded in 1983 and it is currently headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The organization activates in the telecommunications industry and it possesses a wide market share in the wireless sector. "U.S. Cellular, the sixth-largest wireless service provider in the United States, operates and invests in wireless systems across the country. The company serves 6 million customers in 26 states and employs 8,000 associates. Operating on a customer-satisfaction strategy, U.S. Cellular meets customer needs by providing a comprehensive range of wireless products and services, superior customer support and a high-quality network. U.S. Cellular is a business unit of Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. [AMEX: TDS], which owns 82% of the company" (Investor Relations, Thomson Financial, 2008). The company is publicly traded onto the New York Stock Exchange under the acronym USM and the current value of the stock is of $56.40 (Forbes, 2008).

During recent years, U.S. Cellular has been engaged in growth and development strategies, managing in 2007 to add a total number of 297,000 new clients to their already existent customer base. This resulted in increased need for more staff and the human resource department had to develop the personnel planning, process through which they identify the present and future staffing needs of the organization. Another major change that generated implications was the introduction of newer and better technologies. These brought about a net increase in the quality of the products and also managed to increase the efficiency of the operations process, but forced the company employees to develop along. And this education and training of the personnel is an ongoing process within U.S. Cellular who wishes to benefit from the best employees that add value to the organization and help it differentiate its products and services.

The primary goal of the organization is to continue its expansion to other regions and offer the highest quality products, with the incorporation of the latest technologies and the delivery coming from extremely skilled and obliging staff. With all these, U.S. Cellular wishes to increase their annual profits.

In regard to their staff, the company strives to integrate them within the corporate culture. U.S. Cellular values its employees and cherishes the value they bring in and the support they offer the organization in reaching its overall goals. They see the staff as equal partners and as a result do not refer to them as employees, but as associates.

2. New Employee at U.S. Cellular

The wireless products company lures its candidates by forwarding the corporate image, brand and position. They emphasize on the great work that the U.S. Cellular associates do and how much this contributes to the development of the industry and the overall satisfaction of the customers - U.S. Cellular's ultimate goal. "The environment at U.S. Cellular® is, in a word, dynamic. it's also fun. And that's not just because we're interesting people. We live and work in a Dynamic Organization. One where we work for the customer, not just for some mysterious, distant bottom line. Everything we do revolves around their satisfaction. Everything." (Official Website of U.S. Cellular, 2008)

Only until recently, the recruiting and hiring process was generally based on the classic human resource theories: issuing of a job advertisement, selecting the received resumes, calling the selected candidates for an interview (which was generally held by two U.S. Cellular associates and which lost a lot of time and money in organizing the interviews), testing the most suitable ones for personality, health and most importantly technological knowledge and finally, making the employment offer. The employer would often develop advertisements and make them public on the workforce market. In addition, continuous hiring processes are hosted by the corporate website, which presents detailed information on the available jobs. U.S. Cellular allows all interested candidates to participate to the process, treat them equally and never discriminate.

The interested candidates sometimes send the resumes directly to the company, but due to the complex and dynamic nature of their operations, U.S. Cellular encourages candidates to sell their resumes to Vault, a human resource organization specialized on recruiting and selecting candidates. The most common available jobs are within customer care and financial services, professional / operations support, information services, engineering and sales and marketing (Official Website of U.S. Cellular, 2008)

The traditional process of selecting, recruiting and hiring personnel had to follow several steps and was extremely complex and inefficient in terms of both time and money. Changes had to be made most because the company was growing at a rapid pace and needed to constantly hire new associates, and generally because the current system was too slow to cope with the needs of U.S. Cellular. Consequently, a new technology assisted system was introduced. It is called People Filter and it is a "highly-configurable applicant tracking solution that manages every step in the recruiting process" (People Filter Technology Inc., 2007). The new system was introduced in 2005 and the "suite of products uses a skills-based approach and a proprietary matching and ranking technology to solve the issue of resume overload and deliver the right candidate for the right job at the right price each and every time" (Human Resources, 2005)

Major improvements have been made since the People Filter was introduced in 2005 and however it was only initially meant for the call centers, it is now present in all U.S. Cellular facilities. It was first implemented due to the fact that the organization had to hire 400 specialized technicians in a limited time period and the results amazed the corporate management. Senior Director of Enterprise Talent Acquisition Manny Torres said: "We wanted to maximize the effectiveness of our hiring efforts and ensure we got qualified candidates to hiring managers quickly. People Filter is helping us to manage effectively our staffing levels in all of our call centers. People Filter technology enables us to create a strong pipeline of qualified candidates for each location by screening candidates, matching them to job profiles and managing the entire assessment process. We are very excited about the power, flexibility and functionality that People Filter brings to our recruiting process. Additionally, the People Filter team became an extension of our own team by becoming knowledgeable about what we are trying to accomplish." (Human Resources, 2005)

Once the candidate becomes the new employee, the company immediately tries to integrate him within the corporate culture. He is also offered a wide array of training programs, generally to help him acquire extensive technological knowledge. "We offer training programs that cover everything from leadership and technology, to diversity and time management. If you need to learn a skill to help you do your job better or to get you ready for a promotion, we'll help you gain it" (Official Website of U.S. Cellular, 2008) but given the dynamic nature, the large numbers of orders and served customers, the company seldom has time to invest large amounts of time into the professional formation of its associates, requiring them to be self-taught. Performance reviews occur at the end of a major project or at the end of a fiscal year and the associates' salaries are often based on the scores registered during evaluations.