Trends project.

One of the industries experimenting growth in some countries in development is the contact center industry. Dominican Republic is benefiting from this nowadays; according to experts, it is expected that for the year 2017 the number of bilingual (English-Spanish) agents will double in this country (Bujarski, 2012). Based on my experience working in this type of industry most of the people who work in the contact center industry are usually young people who are willing to hold a part time/full time job while they go to college.   

 

  Furthermore, to work in a contact center, the basic requirements are to be 18 years old which is the minimum legal age to work in Dominican Republic and to speak English and have computer skills. If you have these, then there are probabilities of being hired because the demand for bilingual customer service representatives is high in some countries in development like Dominican Republic, India, Philippines, and some others.

  One of the trends that affects the industry in Dominican Republic is demographics; to be more specific, the age of the people applying for the position at the call centers which is usually among 18-23 years old, ‘‘there are increasing retirements in the developed countries and greater number of young workers in developing nations’’ (Froelich, 2005). However, the fact that it is among 18-23 does not mean that we are not going to find people who are older than that. There are ages from most of the groups, still, the predominant is the one above mentioned. Most of the people apply for this job when they are starting or in the middle of college in order to have a job and have some money to pay for what might come up or pay for school depending on their economic situation.

   Most of the times, when people are in college and have any or little work experience, you do not know what to expect from them until you have them working for you. This is the case in many applicants for this kind of job. Their performance and desires to move up in the organization are different from older workers, ‘’Young workers may be less interested in progressing into leadership positions and more concerned about achieving a healthy balance between work and non-work activities’’ ((Maccoby, 1995; Zemke et al., 2000) as cited in Loughlin & Barling, 2001), they will be living their college life and will be worried about their social life instead of being excellent in their job. The employees usually do not perform to their fullest in this stage of life, this is why the company should develop ways to engage them ‘’employees feel more engaged when they have opportunities to provide input and can contribute actively in the workplace’’ (O'neal & Gebauer, 2006) and in this way make good use of the fact that most of the employees are energetic young people who are starting their working stage of life.

  Moreover, the way to attract young people to the organization (who are energetic, customer service oriented, patient and show commitment in what they do) is different than if we were targeting an older audience; their interests are different and so is the strategy we must use as an organization in order to attract them and retain them.

   From what I have seen, if there is not a consistent hiring process and a human capital strategy defining how the company will work with these young people who are entering the workforce, this will appear directly on the company’s result performance. If these kind of organizations do not have the right people to perform the job, the goals, technology and plans for the future are useless, ‘’ for companies that are truly competing on the performance of their people-their human capital- it is not enough. They need to adopt an HC-centric approach to organizing’’ (Lawler, 2008).

    For example, the company I worked for did not have a human resource department and therefore, they did not have a strategy to retain employees which resulted in them not having the necessary personnel to work at the company and not being able to open more projects. If this is not addressed by having a human resource planning strategy then the business will not be able to perform to its full potential because every time, it will be limited to working with the people they have and not with the amount they need. The human resource department is key in an organization. In this case, human resource should consider including demographic in their planning as this is necessary in attracting and retaining the necessary amount of people in the contact center industry.

  If organizations invest money in developing training specifically targeted to young people and not effective ways to retain them and show them the way to excel in the tasks performed, then it is useless. A well-developed training system and engaging program that allows employees to develop their skills to the fullest while they are in the organization should come with good ways to retain and attract the people for which the learning methods are designed. As Swedish Leif Edvinsson expressed ‘’the only vital value an enterprise has is the experience, skills, innovativeness and insights of its people’’. The contact center industry will continue to expand, hopefully, employees will not only find a job but also a way to grow and develop their strengths.

References

Bujarski, L. (2012, 03 12). BPO Outcomes. Retrieved from http://bpooutcomes.com/dr-call-center-double

Froelich, K. (2005). Talent management in the 21st century: Attracting, retaining and engaging employees of choice. Journal of Small Business Strategy (Bradley University), 15(2), 1-17. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.rit.edu/docview/216372208/1377CCE43004118C6E4/31?accountid=108

Lawler, E. (2008). Talent: Making people your competitive advantage. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Loughlin, C., & Barling, J. (2001). Young workers' values, attitudes and behaviours. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology,74(1), 543-558. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.rit.edu/docview/199343846/abstract/1377CB8749C1B980E03/2?accountid=108

O'neal, S., & Gebauer, J. (2006). Talent management in the 21st century: Attracting, retaining and engaging employees of choice. WorldatWork Journal, 15(1), 6-17. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.rit.edu/docview/216372208/1377CCE43004118C6E4/31?accountid=108

Human capital planning in China. 

Globalization’s effects are being more notable every day; one of the biggest changes we can see is how companies are now expanding to other countries to settle down there and therefore need nationals to work for them. One of the countries that is experimenting a tremendous growth in many of its industries is the Asian country China, which has a population of more than 1.3 Billion people as stated in the CIA world fact book; in theory, this allows organizations to have a wide poll of prospects to choose from, of course depending on what they look for of course.

   Nevertheless, with growth comes complications, not everything is sunshine; international employers in China are having a hard time to fulfill the leadership capabilities in the organizations, this is among many other reasons because people have a lot of opportunities and they are constantly looking for better opportunities which makes it even harder for organizations to work on plans to develop the leadership skills the organization needs.

            Moreover, because of the population policies and gaps in the education system not everyone is capable to work for the well-being of the organization in an optimal way, it is common to see people with eight or ten years of experience obtain a position for someone with 15 years of experience. This is all happening because of the rapid growth of the industries and to the countless opportunities that people have as mentioned above.

Today, not finding enough qualified people to place in the key positions of the organization represents a major issue, not everyone can be considered a leader. If there are no leaders in an organization, then there is no one to guide the employees in the establishment of the corporate culture, as mentioned in the course readings, when working in China leaders must be able to achieve the goals established by the American (or any international) companies knowing that the employees have been educated in a totally different culture.  Leaders are needed in order to guide the team in the complexion of the plan it has designed. 

In china, the situation is delicate as there are so many opportunities people can jump from one job to another without even thinking about it. This is bad organizations as they cannot grow leaders inside the organization, also the high percentage of people who do not have strong educational background make it harder for companies in regards to training, if employees have not been well educated in the past, it will be more difficult to present them new knowledge in the future. Another effect that this trends will have is that if companies do not address the problem quickly it might result in some companies not going to china because of the difficulty to find suitable leaders who can guide the team and therefore accomplish the company’s goals which is why the move to countries like china where they can obtain the same results for a lower cost. If this continues to happen then companies will spend many of the money they save in recruiting and hiring process. This can be avoided if managers develop efficient ways to work around the leadership issues present in China nowadays.

However, increasing leadership competency is not an easy task, leadership is something that grows in the morning and works in the afternoon. It is something that needs to be instilled in the people before you expect them to use it in many cases. What I propose for managers in China (in this case for the long run) to do is to start since now just like Cisco Systems creating alliances among educational institutions and their organizations so that people can be educated aligned with the same values that the company has. In this way, companies will have more prepared people than what they need and they will be knowledgeable about the companies’ culture and the way they do things which is an advantage for them and will eliminate the deficiency of leaders in the not so long run. While in the programs, the educational deficiencies can be enforced and leadership skills can be identified in people. Some people have an innate ability for leadership, when they are found in an organization; this should be used in order to benefit the organization

 Nevertheless, as one of the problems is that people do not have enough experience by letting them access the organization ideals before they even start their careers is a great technique for employees to develop their soft skills and competencies. Competencies can for sure be learned by employees, once the organization determines what benefits them then they can work towards having the employees show these competencies in what they do at the organization. Training is effective; they should also work closely with HR in order to hire people who are not likely to leave the organization at the first chance they have, they can determine that through the work history if the employee is very young then they will know that higher positions are not to be considered in this case.

Moreover, as we all know, companies have different leadership styles because every corporate culture differs from one another. What companies can do is to develop effective leadership program where the employee in involved since they become part of the organization, not only leadership programs but also employee engagement programs, as also one of the trends is that employees do not feel as part of the organization and that is something that allows them to leave the organization faster; if an employee feels like the role he/she does is vital to the organization he/she will feel the efforts are worthy. 

In conclusion, I would recommend developing effective leadership and employee engagement programs for the existing employees, also they must work on retention programs because if good intentions are nothing without actions. Also, form strategic alliances with educational institutions in order to give the population access to be prepared to work for the multinational companies in the future, for now they could work with these institutions and prepare leadership oriented training. Wherever there is growth there are challenges and good managers know how to face them, if they do not at the moment, they will find a way.