Question

Read the case study below and answer the questions that follow.
BPoland
Sandeep Mirchandani was heading to his new office at BPOLAND Ltd, Gurgaon, India's business process outsourcing (BPO) capital. Sandy (Sandeep's preferred name at work) looked at the massive growth of technology parks that had sprung up in the National Capital Region and wondered where the next frontier of growth is going to come from. On his way to the escalator to his office, Sandy kept reflecting on what PremVohra, the CEO and President of BPOLAND, said at his job interview, “We've grown at an unprecedented pace and the medium term outlook is not one of a slowdown. It's time now to consolidate and take the learning platform to the next level.”
Sandy had accepted the role of the Vice-President of learning and development at BPOLAND, and was wondering how he could apply his two decades of HR experience (mainly in learning and development) in the consumer durables industry to the BPO industry. One of Sandy's mandated tasks were to integrate and exploit the deep pockets of experience and learning of his and operations teams. Reflecting on Prem's comment, Sandy felt that a new set of capabilities was needed for its core operations, people management, and business development teams. New roles needed to be created for sustaining future growth. In order to chart out a way forward, Sandy felt he needed to get a better understanding of the drivers of customer and economic value at BPOLAND and get a better handle on what the key triggers of investment in learning and development (L&D) are for his workgroup. Owing to the high growth and service dynamism at BPOLAND, Sandy knew that he or his L&D team alone could not service BPOLAND's L&D needs. In shaping his learning and development strategy, he needed to better understand the dynamics of work, work organisation and his team's interaction with BPOLAND's largest business groups – insurance services and content solutions.
About BPOLAND
Established in the 1990s, BPOLAND has its corporate office in Gurgaon, India, and is owned by three large US-based multinational companies (MNCs). It offers BPO services to a number of industries around the globe. BPOLAND had witnessed organic growth in its products and services. In 2006, BPOLAND expanded its operations from India to seven other countries, and to keep pace with its increasing skills needs and improve its service proposition to customers it had created 24 process delivery centres world-wide and employed a pool of engineers who could converse in 28 different languages to deliver a range of services.
BPOLAND was initially started as a wholly owned offshore BPO for a large and diversified US-based multinational organisation, but it was acquired by two large US-based MNCs.
Drawing on its parent firm's heritage of lean production, SS, and other quality management methods, BPOLAND implemented quality management systems (QMS) to exacting process requirements from its clients to deliver cost and productivity gains to its customers. Its staff strength grew from around 350 people in 1997 to over 26,000 globally in 2006, of which, nearly 20,000 are employed in India. Since 2006, BPOLAND had witnessed a rapid growth in its employee base, revenues, service complexity, and an expanding portfolio of services. In order to service its diverse skills needs, the L&D group had established the BPOLAND University.
What started as a modest back-office offshore mail processing centre for BPOLAND's parent organisation in the USA, the organisation then offered BPO services in sales and marketing analytics, supply chain and after-market services, financial services, core operations and collections, finance and accounting, information technology services, enterprise application services, and program management. Within these services, it had a diverse range of products, which it offered to range of industry sectors, such as banking and finance, insurance, retail, manufacturing, transportation, automotive, pharmaceuticals, media and entertainment, and professional services.
Organisation structure, strategy and business processes
The organisation was structured around domains (service areas) and verticals (industry sectors). The organisation had a five level employee hierarchy, wherein level five was at the entry level band. Employees could move within and between various service groups. A typical Taylorist or Fordist work design was prevalent, with the majority of the employees (97 per cent) being in Bands 4 and 5. A very small executive and managerial team headed these service groups.
Since its inception, BPOLAND had transitioned over 1,000 business processes for over 60 different businesses. Following its transition from a captive (servicing only its US parent) to a non-captive (offering third-party services) provider, BPOLAND also received business from several Fortune 500 customers.
Its business development team was spread across the globe and identified business opportunities based on its market intelligence and research. BPOLAND's competitive strategy typified a blend from mass service transaction BPO services to highly differentiated BPO services. Its focus had shifted to areas where it had strong service capabilities.
At an operational level, its structured work transition methodology ensured steps such as understanding clients' existing processes, solution identification, work transition set up and knowledge transfer, pilot operations, and service delivery. Each step was further broken down for project definition and scope and involved developing high-level process flowcharts and collecting information based on business needs, and developed metrics around them, especially the metrics that are critical to quality (CTQ) and, hence, the performance of that process. These steps were followed by framing solutions, based on a cost-benefit and risk mitigation analysis.
Insurance and content solutions services
The insurance and content solutions service lines accounted for bulk of its revenues and employment, so Sandy's focus was on getting a better understanding of BPOLAND's core business. Sandy had met with a number of business managers from these groups and supporting functions. The insurance service line provided business processes outsourcing for insurance products, such as life, medical, home and content, industrial, and commercial risks insurances. The content solutions service line delivered design and development solutions for training projects for the BPOLAND as well as its clients. Although an in-depth understanding of the core business groups was critical, Sandy also needed to come to grips with the nature and extent of the learning and development activity undertaken by his team and how they were organised.
Nature and extent of learning and development
In a briefing by Shantanu Kumar, the Associate Vice-President learning and development (L&D), Sandy was surprised by the complexity of BPOLAND's L&D function. Shantanu explained that in terms of the extent of training provided, BPOLAND invested more than 1.5 million people-hours every year (on average, 12 days per annum or approximately 5 per cent of its payroll) through various training and development programmes. The nature of such training included: Education@Work programmes, executive development, communication skills, process training, domain training, Six Sigma-certification and numerous other educational programmes offered by BPOLAND University. In 2006 alone, about 5,700 employees were enrolled in the Education@Work programme. BPOLAND University offered employees MBA courses from reputed institutes in India, as well as from other international institutions, for programmes such as project management professional and certified public accountant (CPA) to offer education for people to learn and grow in certain areas. The organisation's emphasis on, and expectations from its training function changed on an annual basis, and was part of its strategic reviews and planning process. This strategic approach to training was noted in organisational documents and observed during the case study visit.
Training leaders representing every service group assisted the central L&D team. In addition to this structure, each group had a team of process trainers and training leaders. Sharing of training resources from various groups helped in bringing together common issues and “good practices” from all areas, for the purpose of sharing them with others in the organisation. There was therefore a strong presence of both informal and formal learning.
Adapted from source: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/20450621211292364

QUESTION 1 (20)
Making reference to the article above, consider BPoland’s human resource development practices, and discuss whether BPoland may be regarded as strategically mature in its human resource approach.
QUESTION 2 (20)
Examine the changes at BPoland and critically discuss whether the implementation of an organisational development (OD) approach would reasonably strengthen efficiencies organisation-wide
QUESTION 3 (20)
Design a performance management system for BPoland, which would further inform the training and developmental needs for their employees.
In doing so, highlight the benefits of this system for the organisation.
SECTION B (40)
QUESTION 4 (20)
Suppose you have been appointed as part of a cross-functional team of the HR department of an organisation, to assist with the task of selecting and implementing an HRIS;
Recommend a systematic plan for selecting and implementing E-learning for the organisation.
QUESTION 5 (20)
Discuss the significance of the need for HR Directors to make HR risk management a core part of their strategic management process.

Answer 1

Ans 1. As per the above case study BPOLAND has a very lean hierarchy, which has 5 levels, with decreasing importance in the organisation. Most of the employees (97%) were a part of levels 4 and 5, which consist of entry level jobs, which means that around 2-3% of the employees were in-charge of decision making. Such an organisational structure requires a very sophisticated operations management and sound HR practices. BPOLAND also has a very effective L&D mechanism where it provided its employees with specialised education programs to enhance their skill sets and knowledge. Thus, it can be stated that the leadership group at the company was cultivated organically within the organisation. These factors indicate that BPOLAND's human resource approach was a strategically mature and updated.

Ans 2. BPOLAND evolved from being a backend operations unit to an organisation handling multiple functions across different industries like banking and finance, insurance, retail, manufacturing, transportation, automotive, pharmaceuticals, media and entertainment, and professional services. The core business of the company comes from the insurance and content solutions sector. Despite of its large operations scale it has a lean hierarchy where a handful of senior management personnel handle the bulk of the staff who are in entry level jobs. The cluttered hierarchy has smooth operations which involves understanding clients' existing processes, solution identification, work transition set up and knowledge transfer, pilot operations, and service delivery. Each step was further broken down for project definition and scope and involved developing high-level process flowcharts and collecting information based on business needs, and developed metrics around them. Organisational development is required to understand known problems, set measurable goals, implement changes, and analyse results. However, from the case study it cannot be inferred that BPOLAND has any problems with its operations.

Ans 3. The goal of an effective Performance Management System (PMS) is to set targets which are derived from company’s objectives and monitors employee performance. This ensures that both employee and company performances are maximised. BPOLAND practices quite a structured methodology when working with a client, the PMS should rank each activity according to its criticality to the larger scheme of things and denote a time and a quality coefficient to it. Each employee should be awarded a score from 1 to 5 for each of these activities, where 1 is the lowest and 5 is the highest. The cumulative score of all the activities should be summed up to determine the efficiencies of individual employees. Organisation wide numbers should then be collected and compared to arrive at deciding minimum performance indicating criteria. Employees struggling to adhere to these criteria should be provided extensive L&D training. Top performers should be provided extra incentives to perform better and provide L&D training to enhance their performances and create a benchmark for employee and company excellence.

Ans 4. As a part of cross-functional team of the HR department of an organisation, the following can be planned for a systematic plan in selecting and implementing E-learning for the organisation:

a. Identification of e-learning needs.

The first and foremost step is to identify the need for e-learning in the system and assess the training are aligned with business goals.

b. Collect and document the e-learning needs with the help of specific surveys and feedback form by employees. Integrate the process with the top-level management.

c. Select the training program suitable for e-learning. This can be done by testing a session with on a small group of employees by providing the training traditionally and online as well.

d. Identify the barriers in e-learning by testing on employees, taking feedbacks on testing processes.

e. Approval from top level management is required. Present the e-learning process with the top-level management and take their reviews.

f. Select the LMS- open source or commercial as per the demand of the organisation and usage of the employees.

g. Encourage employees to learn through e-learning and share the benefits of it. Motivate employees in e-learning and sharing how it will benefit in achieving their goals.

h. Keep an eye and measure the success of e-learning from time to time and make the amendments as and when required.

Ans 5. The need for HR Directors to make HR risk management a core part of their strategic management process is important because of the following reasons:

a. It will monitor the human resources and keep them in harmony. It will create right person in right place, train and reward the employee as and when require.

b. It will insure the unsaid calamities of human resource like chronic illness, accidental death or other inappropriate risks.

c. Management succession is an integral role of human resource management risk and it requires management of activities like job analysis, job description, training, performance appraisal and compensation.

d. Human resource management risk plays a very important role in performance evaluation. There should be guidelines of the duties performed by the managers including descriptions, delegation of power and authority, and responsibility at the action level.