Introduction
Human Resources (HR) managers are in charge of an essential part of the organization: the workforce. With knowledge about handling human capital, an organization maintains its success by ensuring its bottom line remains within the company’s goals. The department’s role is to assist in identifying company values, helping staff resonate with their values, updating the company culture, and recruitment and training (Kurdi‐Nakra et al., 2021). The paper focuses on defining the HR manager’s role in a scenario where they articulate a new business setup using their critical thinking skills and results-driven and process-oriented mindset to develop the company’s best strategy.
External Workforce Assessment
Considerations for the Best Location
The location of an organization can be a complex decision to make, given how it intertwines with other aspects of the business. It can define a business’s chances of success, hence the need to consider various aspects of different locations. A location strategy could also contribute to its failure due to high costs and local zoning laws. The location options provided include the cities of Memphis, Montgomery, Jackson, and Baton Rouge, all located in the South. Some factors to consider for the cable company aiming to hire a hundred employees include square footage, pricing, zoning, nearby businesses, government incentives, and access to transportation. Concerning the new employees, factors to consider include cost of living, housing, traffic, schools, healthcare, and safety.
Memphis, TN. The state of Tennessee offers a low living cost, pro-business regulations, and a robust infrastructure. The state provides exemptions for setting up data centers such as the one this cable company aims to build despite the 6.5% corporate tax (Lanier, 2022). Moving to Memphis also favors newcomers with a lower cost of living than the national average and the affordability of resources. Some neighborhoods boast spacious yards, top-rated schools, and safe streets for housing families (Extra Storage, 2022). Tennessee ranks highly in the top states one can live in and start a business or, in this case, build a call center hence being the ideal location for this business.
Montgomery, AL. Montgomery is the safest city in Alabama, with less crime than the national average. Violent crime and property crime places the town at a lower-than-average position but still make it a risky location (Best Places, 2022). Alabama offers plenty of views, an affordable neighborhood to live in, and low real estate prices (Kovachek, 2022). While the state of Alabama also boasts a low cost of living and taxation rate, Tennessee offers lower rates, making Memphis the better option for the cable company.
Jackson, MS. The capital of Mississippi offers great views illustrated by the agricultural powerhouse it is and the tremendous historical museums. Unfortunately, many negative undertones affect the city, such as insecurity, racial tension, and a higher cost of living than the state average. Despite having a lower housing cost average than the national average, crime is above average and two times higher than the national average (City Data, 2019). It is not a factor that encourages businesses or people to settle down in the long term, especially one that aims to hire a hundred employees.
Baton Rouge, LA. The capital of Louisiana offers excellent prospects for people wishing to settle in the area. It is an affordable place to live in, with a tight-knit community supporting a vibrant culture. Louisiana’s cost of living is lower than the national average, and utilities, groceries, and clothing are significantly less pricey (Rent Café, 2022). The city of Baton Louge remains relatively unsafe, with homicide rates ranking highly, making it unreliable when hiring a hundred new personnel (Arceneaux, 2022). Nevertheless, the security figures suggest that property crime is lower than the national average.
Job Description and Job Specifications
Job Description
The required staff members include a hundred customer service representatives to work in Memphis, Tennessee. A customer service representative is a front-line staff member who is the first to contact customers and clients (McCabe, 2021). They have to ensure that customers get served and feel contented with the company’s services they subscribe to, products purchased, and features provided. The primary role of the customer service representative is to respond to complaints, answer questions clients may have about the products and services, and provide helpful information. The more specific duties of the cable company will include the company’s basic tasks and particular needs. They include responding to customer feedback and complaints made through social media platforms, guiding them through troubleshooting processes, selling different service packages, and processing payments.
Job Specifications
The customer service representatives chosen must have the right qualifications, experience, mental capabilities, skill set, and emotional capacity. The aforementioned duties showcase that the personnel would deal with complaints from clients and would have to possess the temperament to deal with the situation efficiently. Furthermore, the great communication skills of the representative would help be timely and informative about the company’s new packages to guarantee customer satisfaction (Álvarez-García et al., 2019). Therefore, they would have to be able to retain information about the company services to be in a position to respond to queries efficiently. A good attitude towards dealing with others would be a valuable addition to one’s arsenal as one handles customers and potential clients and works under the direction of the customer service manager.
Recruitment Program and Ads
The role and duties articulated in the job description and specifications make customer service representatives valuable to the workforce. The adopted recruitment program allows the HR department to identify the critical customer service skills and attributes that staff should possess (Boon et al., 2019). The strategy allows the identification of resources that will enable the hiring of top candidates. First, the department has to identify which values stand out in customer service personnel hired. The stand out for the HR company would have to be brand loyalty, a good job attitude, and excellent communication skills. These qualities are helpful from the company’s long-term perspective, which aims to ensure well-qualified staff, a low turnover rate, and an excellent customer satisfaction rate.
Companies that offer good products and services but lack an efficient customer service program do not reap the full benefits of the available market. Businesses with good customer service will outperform them and experience better long-term success and growth. The recruitment strategy herein would be an articulate advertisement that entails a clear job description, the job specifications, and core competencies the candidates should have during their application. The instructions would include which documents to submit, such as a cover letter to test their writing skills, the face-to-face interview for selected candidates, and the potential to grow professionally on the job once employed. A vital aspect of the recruitment program advertised is the priority of the company to foster inclusion and diversity, which must be visible in the management teams, not only in the ads (Alm Andreassen, 2021). Easing candidates with inclusive language and gender-neutral norms allow a great deal of caution that may increase the number of applicants, which translates into a larger pool of potential employees.
The ad would run on websites customized for hiring customer service representatives and social media platforms. While opting to reach potential hires through job boards is acceptable, the advertisement’s creative design must be through modern, cost-effective channels with a broader outreach (Dwivedi et al., 2021). The images depicted could offer a colorful incentive, such as pictures showcasing various inclusivity programs and managers interacting with employees to attract potential candidates to apply. The process could also utilize video content as testimonials from existing customer service representatives in other locations. They could give stories on the positive experiences they have had serving the brand, the opportunities for growth availed, and the fulfilling moments of the job.
After the first three years, the company aims to hire more customer service representatives. Hiring more staff can be expensive in terms of training and more expenditure incurred through salaries. Therefore, there would be an analysis of the company’s coverage patterns after the first three years to identify the working hours and busiest times and offer guidance during the next hiring period. The first three years would provide insight into the customer service team’s capability to handle existing issues and if it was necessary to shift some support from the company’s other departments.
Selection Process and Interviews
Once the advertisement is for public consumption and people begin applying for the job, the HR department can begin evaluating applications as they come in. The first step is to identify which candidates acknowledged the specifics in the ad and applied them to respond appropriately. As aforementioned, customer service representatives must possess outstanding communication skills, including careful reading, listening, and articulating responses. The other part of the process is the review of resumes handed in to see how past experiences and qualifications fit into the customer service representative role, given that proper aspirants would craft applications that reflect their abilities.
Interviews
Selected candidates would get to attend interviews to reaffirm the written declarations of skills and abilities. There would be a face-to-face interview with questions prepared beforehand to test the interviewee’s understanding of the role. The interview questions would include how candidates define good customer service, what makes the job appealing to them, the difference between customer service and customer support, and a time in the past when the individual received terrible customer service. As part of embracing technology, the recruitment strategy should include using recruitment data to analyze the performance data on hiring success (Helms et al., 2021). It highlights if the process is too general, whether the requirements are too stringent, or whether the ad reaches the right demographic.
Training and Orientation Program
Customers who resolve issues without reaching out to the manufacturer or service provider make up the minority. Most of them contact the company for assistance, which makes training customer service representatives an essential part of the hiring process. Hired candidates should get professional training to ensure they can help customers deal with inconveniences effectively and quickly. Customers today expect to be the top priority of any customer service interaction and to get a personalized experience that resolves their issues conclusively. Failure to deliver on this front means there is a possibility of negative feedback or, worse, losing the customer entirely.
The orientation program for customer service representatives includes giving personnel information on the cable company, its services, and products, as well as industry knowledge. It has to incorporate training for essential skills in customer service by including a guide for onboarding purposes, an informative step-by-step walk-through on customer support, and providing information on services, products, and the company. The goal of an orientation period is to set up the new employees for success with less time (Jeske & Olson, 2021). What follows is testing to evaluate the competency and offering consistent monitoring of how they proceed to perform their functions and duties. Eventually, feedback from them on the experience, as well as client feedback, would help in determining if the job delivery is excellent for customers.
Pay Structure
A customer service representative’s compensation package must reflect their role and responsibilities to the cable company. While employees view the monetary rewards they receive as remuneration for work done, receiving a fair and equitable amount defines performance and how staff members view their jobs (Valentine et al., 2020). Human behavior dictates that people aim to underpay for something or service more times than they would overpay for it. God calls for people to be good stewards but not at the expense of others, which means the company would do well to pay the employees what they are worth. Jesus taught his disciples that for all those aiming to build something, it is imperative to calculate the cost to ensure one can afford it beforehand (“Bible Gateway passage: Luke 14:28 – New International Version”, 2022). For the cable company, it should be able to fairly compensate the hundred customer service representatives before hiring them.
Pay Survey Information
An informed decision on the proper compensation for customer service representatives demands a remuneration survey. The research would identify the figures other players in the industry offer their customer service representatives. The use of industry averages by organizations gives some perspective into the standard level of the competition and perhaps aims to do better. Regarding how much customer service representatives earned back in May 2021, the records show that the median hourly wage was $14.44, while the mean was $16.07 (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021). The offer by the cable company would have to be marginally higher for new hires leaving room for bonuses and significant rises with good performances.
Conclusion
The paper allowed one to consider the role of an HR manager and his team in a company aiming to start a new service center. With external workforce, assessments came consideration for the best location between four cities in the South. After yielding Memphis was the best location based on suitability to new personnel and the company, a recruitment process got created featuring ads to run on social media platforms. The job descriptions and specifications offered insight into what the company expects of potential employees, including good communication skills. After receiving the applications, the selection process would feature face-to-face interviews that include a few questions that help interviewers choose the top candidates. The new employees would get reeled in gradually through an orientation program that sets them up for future success. With a pay structure set for the base pay and future bonuses, the HR manager achieves a setup that bodes well for individuals and the company.
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