Human Resource Management in the Service Sector

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Human Resource Management in the Service Sector

• Lectures 4 and 5 Call Centres
• Nick Kinnie

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Objectives

• Define call centres and understand the reasons
  for their growth
• Identify the key characteristics of the nature
  and management of call centres
• Analyse their forms of human capital and consider
  the implications for HR especially recruitment,
  selection and retention
• Examine recent changes in call centres especially
  the moves towards outsourcing and off-shoring
• Apply the 4 ID model to gain insights into the
  nature of work in call centres
• (Refs Deery and Kinnie, 2004 Korczynski, 2002,
  Frenkel et al, 1999, Homan, 2004)

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Introduction

• Call centres are
• Fast growing and important sources of employment
• Subject to controversy and attention customer
  service and movement of jobs
• and can be defined as
• Dedicated centres engaged in voice-to-voice
  contact
• CSRs interact directly with customers
• Involve use of sophisticated computer based
  systems
• Monitoring the pace and quality of their work

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Call centre images.
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• They can be found in
• Private sector customer service, sales and
  telemarketing
• Public sector information, advice and support
• In different locations
• In-house
• Outsourced
• Off-shored
• And involve
• In-bound and outbound work

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Why have they grown?
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Pressures on call centres
Product market - Customers and clients
Call centre
Financial success short and long term
Employment market needs of employees
(Maister, 2003)
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Nature of call centre work contrasting views

• Assembly line in the head (Taylor and Bain,
  1999)
• Engineering/manufacturing model dominates
• Jobs are divided up into small tasks which are
  repeated
• Technology exerts a powerful influence especially
  in allocating work
• Work is tightly controlled and routinised use
  of scripts

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Manufacturing model

• Target setting, monitoring, measurement and
  feedback of both quantitative and qualitative
  (customer based) criteria
• Aim is to reduce skill level, improve efficiency
  and simplify procedures
• Leads to low skill, low pay jobs with few career
  prospects

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Critiques of the engineering model

• Employees are the key point of contact voice of
  the firm and quality of their service is critical
• Employees often need to exercise some discretion
  and be able to draw on variety of knowledge and
  skills
• Customer involvement always leads to some element
  of unpredictability
• (Frenkel, 1999)

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Service model

• Firms use a series of HRM techniques in order to
  manage their employees
• Careful recruitment and selective employment
• Attention to training and development
  especially coaching
• Sensitive performance management paying attention
  to employee needs
• Pay systems which are consistent with aims of the
  business

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Contradictions in call centre work

• Call centres have to be both efficient and
  provide a high quality service
• Both logics are important
• Customer oriented bureaucracy (Korczynski, 2002)
• Fun and Surveillance (Kinnie et al, 2000)
• Segmentation of customers and of employees (Batt,
  2002)

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Links between CSR-customer interactions, HR
practices and business performance
CSR-customer interactions
High - Relationship Management
Business performance
Pseudo- relationship
Low - Transaction
HR practices
High Commitment Management
Cost minimisation
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Impact on employees

• Acknowledgement that employees play a key role in
  the delivery of the service the voice of the
  brand
• Engage in emotional labour expressing or
  suppressing emotions that they feel or do not
  feel
• Low autonomy and close supervision and monitoring
  associated with increased stress, burnout and
  emotional exhaustion reduced employee
  well-being
• Effect on work-life balance time and length of
  working hours

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Employee reactions and responses

• Negative
• Employee withdrawal from work temporary or
  permanent
• Various forms of resistance manipulating the
  system to create space, disregarding the rules
• Collective organisation trade unionism
• Positive
• Satisfaction from interaction with customers and
  peer groups
• Acceptance of performance monitoring
• Well-being in some call centres compares
  favourably with sales and manufacturing work
  (Holman, 2004)

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Analysing call centres using the forms of
capital/reactor model

• Use the reactor model to highlight the forms of
  capital within call centres
• Which are the most important forms of capital?
• How do they interact?
• What are the implications of this for HR
  practices especially recruitment, selection and
  retention?

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Knowledge skills and experience of staff
Forms of Capital
Human capital
Knowledge of and relationships with network
members
Social capital
Network Capital
Knowledge embedded in values, culture and
relationships
Intellectual Capital
Structural capital
Client Capital
Knowledge of and relationships with clients
Organizational Capital
Ways of structuring work
Procedures, policies and processes
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The HR Wheel
Strategy
Resourcing
Structure
Job and Work Design
Involvement
Intellectual Capital
Training and Development
Performance Management
Pay and Reward
Kinnie et al 2006
Delivery
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Types of call centres

• In-house part of a wider organisation
• Outsourced giving some or all of the work to a
  third party
• Off-shore where the work is carried out
  remotely may be directly owned, joint venture
  or third party

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Why outsource/off-shore call centre work?

• Reduce costs
• Improve efficiency
• Provide a buffer against demand fluctuations
• Give access to specialist knowledge and skills

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Multiple sources of identity

• What are the key sources of identity in call
  centres?
• Which of these exert the most powerful pull on
  employees?
• What are the implications of this for HR
  practices?
• How can this analysis help us to understand the
  HR issues within the Norwich Union call centres?

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Multiple sources of identity
Organisation
Professional
Employee
Client
Team
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Conclusions

• Call centres are growing but face a series of
  conflicting pressures and tensions
• The reactor and 4 ID model can provide insights
  into the sources of these
• HR issues are often at the centre of these
  pressures, especially recruitment, selection and
  retention