Organization lies in its dedicated work force. It has been the constant endeavor of the management to develop an efficient team and to improve the quality of life of its employees. (www. hinduonnet. com) The organization that I have selected for the present module is GECIS (India) as I have worked in the call centre of GECIS (India) for three year and can relate to the HRM issues faced by it. GECIS is a subsidiary of General Electrical Company of USA and is a world-class remote processing operation centre, serving clients from around the world through its IT-enabled services.
It was set up in 1997 to carry out back office operations for a number of the Capital businesses in order to leverage the English speaking, highly educated, intellectual capital of India to deliver processes that do not require face-to-face contact with the customer. Today GECIS (India) is one of the pioneers in the call centre industry in India. It started with a workforce of 600 in 1998 to 12,000 in 2003.
Operating in a service industry, with only human services in the form of call centers, data processing etc as the thrust of the business, the HRM aspect is most crucial as employee cost of the organization is the largest percentage of total costs. Hence the HRM department plays the most crucial role in GECIS (India). GECIS follows the same HR structure as the rest of General Electrical (GE) follows world-wide, it has a centralized HR team, which is further divided into sub-sections, dealing with different aspect of HRM like understanding present/future demand/supply for human resources, recruitment & selection etc.
At the same time there is an involvement of operations staff in certain HRM specific jobs like participation of operations line managers in staff selection and recruitment. The HRM of GECIS uses scientific methods in designing and implementing policies for e. g. use of Markov’s Analysis (refer appendices#1) of the effects of internal and external supply to predict total supply, aptitude tests etc for recruitment, selection.
The functions of HRM in GECIS includes recruitment, selection, trainings and developmental activities, appraisals, promotions, safety and welfare, job related disciplinary policies, Industrial relations arrangement, employee relations framework, retrenchments etc. (Source: Employee handbook, GECIS (India) The importance of HRM in GECIS can be gauged from the fact that it has moved from normal employee issues to strategic role of integration of HR strategy with overall business planning. As GECIS operates in a human centric industry, employees are its biggest asset.
This has resulted in manifold increase in the responsibilities of HRM. Success has its own disadvantages, the large volume of people and rapid expansion on the industry has resulted in high labor turnover rate ranging from 30% to 50% in GECIS. This rate is quite high as compared to the 30% average rate of the industry. While GECIS has set an example for other call centers, it has also become a poaching ground for these companies as it is a relatively new industry and GECIS has helped it significantly in terms of experience and knowledge.
Higher growth and better rewards offered by the competitors in the industry in order to attract the experienced and trained staff of GECIS is one of the external factors for the high attrition rate. When high employee turnover happens at an organization with such a large employee base, it costs very high in terms of time and money on hiring, training etc. This can be explained by models like Capitalization of historical cost by R. Likert which involves capitalizing all costs related with making an employee ready for providing service i.
e. recruitment, training, development etc and Replacement cost method by Dr. Flamholtz’s ( see appendices#2 for details) which states that, the cost incurred by an organization on replacing the earlier employees and strengthening the organization further, had to reflect the human resources value of both – the employees and the organization. But at the same time high rate of attrition leads to some irreparable losses like the loss of experienced intellect and expertise.
