Roles And Responsibilities Of HR Department Of Telstra

Answer :

INTRODUCTION TO HRM AND LEADERSHIP 

Executive summary 

HR management team plays an important role within an organisation. It is their due responsibility to look after the organisation as well as employees. They are responsible for recruitment the best employees for their organisation in order to enhance the productivity. The current report has discussed in details about the roles and responsibilities of HR department of Telstra and the strategies they use. In the other part of the report, a development plan for Telstra has been provided and key issues related to poor retention of employee within Australian organisation has been focused.  

Task 1: Application of Human Resource Management concepts 

1. Overview of company

Telstra is one of the most well recognised companies within Australian telecommunication industry that has spread globally within a short period. It has been noticed that this company has a long history in their past. In the current times, it has been noticed that this company is working with near about 10000+ employees who are extremely dedicated towards the company and achieving their business goal. It has been found from history that this company started their journey as Postmaster General Office and has turned out to be Australia's largest telecommunication industry with having its presence over 20 countries. Reports have showed that they have successfully gained competitive advantage with their turn over in 2017 with USD 10 Million (telstra.com.au, 2018).         

2. Atkinson’s Flexible firm model

The employees working within Telstra are fully passionate and dedicated towards their work and company. This can better be explained by taking the help of Atkinson’s Flexible firm model. As stated by Bailey et al. (2018), this model describes in detail about maintaining labour flexibility with core employees. In addition, this model depicts three types of flexibilities including that of functional, numerical and that financial. In the context of Telstra, it has been observed that that they follow functional flexibility within their organisation where the HRM team adjust the task of their employees in order to meet the changing workload as well as production.           

3. Structure, roles and responsibilities of HR Department 

The HR department of an organisation play the most crucial role within an organisation and they are the part of various activities as well Bratton & Gold (2017). In case of Telstra even, the HR department forms an integral part and is allocated with the task of recruiting the “right” people for the organisation. It has been noticed that the core responsibility of HRM of Telstra is to administer the benefits they are generating along with that of providing training to the employees and looking after their safety. They are also entrusted with task of developing proper strategies for compensation plans, reward program as well as wages of the employees and worker of that organisation. Recently, Telstra being influenced from DXC Technology Business Process Services has notified it, they have brought about modifications within their HR department and that of Payroll functions as well thereby establishing them as centralised one (telstra.com.au, 2018).       

4. Diagram to demonstrate the different HR roles and responsibilities

Figure 1: HR roles and responsibilities

(Source: created by author)

5. Approach to HR

The HR department of Telstra follows a different type of approaches. It has been noticed that they follow an employee engagement approach within their organisation.

6. Strategic human resource management model

As stated by Nankervis et al. (2014), Australian organisations are suffering from various issues related to HRM due to increased globalisation, increased competition and others. In case of Telstra also, a number of issues have been identified. Moreover, poor maintenance of employees has led to the growing job dissatisfaction among employees that has further resulted into high rate employee turnover. In fact, the salaries that are offered by the organisation are one of the major reasons for employee dissatisfaction. Thus, it is clear that the HR team of Telstra are not conducting their responsibilities property; hence, the organisation is suffering.       

7. HR functions at different level

Strategic: HR of Telstra in this level are entrusted with developing strategic plans related to workplace safety, providing benefits to the employee in order to retain them, allocating the with training   

Operational: At the operational level, they are provided with preparing, reviewing and approving budgets along with maintaining proper HR system and that of incorporating new company policies  

Functional: Job designing as well as analysing, providing training, recruiting, motivating are some of the responsibilities at functional level that the HRM team has to maintain within Telstra. 

Task 2: Retention and development 

1. Option 2: Issues for poor employee retention

Telecommunication industry, though a developing industry, still faces some major issues. Reports have suggested that lack of communication among employee and that of HRM is a major issue that has been identified in most of Australian organisations. This has resulted into lowered employee morale thereby letting the organisation suffer. Due to lack of communication, various others issues have been rose up including that of reduction within production, poor customer service. As influenced by the idea of Albrecht et al. (2015), providing proper training is another issue that has contributed in poor retention of employees within Australian organisations. Training is required for both low skilled labours and experienced as well; however, various organisations have lacked in providing these to their employees for which no proper innovation have been carried out in recent years. In addition, absenteeism of employees is another issue that has sprang up from the above mentioned issues (as influenced by Jackson, Schuler & Jiang, 2014). HRM team of various organisations has failed to motivate their employees and has suffered from poor retention. This dearth of motivation has led the employee to remain absent from their work thereby hampering the growth of organisation. Telstra is such a telecommunication industry within Australia that has been suffering from these issues.  

Task 3: Performance management 

1. Copy of job description and a brief overview of the company

Table 1: Job Description Template

(Source: created by author)

2. Evaluating types of performance review method

To date, various scholars have identified a number of performance review method among which self- evaluation, behavioural checklist and management by objectives, ratings scale and that of 360-degree feedback deserves special mention.  

• Self-evaluation: this method allows an employee to judge his or her own performance against predetermined criteria. As stated by Lai et al. (2016), this method helps an individual to reflect their working capability and performance 
• Behavioural checklist: in the viewpoint of Paillé et al. (2014), behavioural checklist method allows an employee to judge and rate him or herself prior to solving a list of question stating yes or no.   
• Management by objectives: it is a modern approach and provides aid to an employee to set  a goal that need to be done within deadline
• Ratings scale: this method has been developed depending on set of criteria developed by employer himself. 
• 360 degree feedback: as commented by Maheshwari & Vohra (2015), this methods helps an employee to improve the character as well as the leadership skills of an employee 

3. Justification of chosen review method

Among all the five above mentioned performance review method, the most widely accepted method is that of 360-degree feedback method. This review method helps an employee to get feedback from outside sources. This helps an employee to work on the areas of gap within his/her performance.   

4. Pros and Cons of 360 degree performance review method 

Table 2: Pros and Cons of 360dgree method

(Source: created by author)