Background of AT&T
- AT&T is an American multinational company that offers telecommunications solutions to retail and enterprise consumers.
- It is among the largest employers in the United States
- Human resource strategies are incorporated in overall business strategy of AT&T (Daspro, 2009).
- AT&T was founded by Alexander Graham Bell. It continues to grow based on its strategy of innovation.
- Business focus is in communication and entertainment industries.
- AT &T has more than 250 million mobile customers.
- It offers consumer & enterprise data, video, and mobile services solutions (Engstrom, 2011).
Human resource (HR) concerns and features at AT&T
Employee harassment
Employees at AT&T come from various world cultural backgrounds.
Social nature of employees may show bias in race, religion, sex, and nationality.
Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) Forum at AT&T serves as a means of integrating and leveraging enterprise-wide. initiatives that make the company achieve its goal of being the leader in diversity and inclusiveness of people.
HR management insists on valuing employees and a no tolerance policy on harassment.
Past incidences of harassment concerned female retail store employees being verbally abused by male colleagues.
Case ended up in a lawsuit and exposed policy enforcement challenges at AT&T (Koster, de Grip & Fouarge, 2011).
Union relations
Many employees at AT&T are in a labor union (Communications Workers of America).
The company relies on its compensation policies to appease to the interest of the unions.
The Union provides workers with fair contract support and other employment agreement terms (Stephenson, 2014).
No major disagreements have been reported in the recent past between unions and the company.
Salary and benefits issues
- To retain staffs and attract talent, AT&T offers competitive wages and benefits.
- In 2012, AT&T provided work contracts for its technician staffs with a total compensation of $90,000 in wages and $43,000 in benefits.
- Company aims to safeguard middle class incomes (Ivancevich & Konopaske, 2013).
- Excellent benefits programs include:
- medical, dental, vision, flexible spending account, health reimbursement accounts, pension, savings, life insurance, leaves of absence, long-term care, disability, adoption reimbursement, employee assistance programs.
- Company attracts more than 190,000 job applicants a year due to attractiveness of its salary and benefits (Ananthram, 2013).
- Present financial challenge is meeting the retirement bills for 335,000 retirees.
- All employees enjoy an average of 60 off days annually.
Global HR issues
- Multinationals have to attract the best talent around the world; they have to deal with cultural diversity in the workplace (Beaven, 2010).
- AT&T constantly reviews its cultural inclusion policies.
- Its policy seeks to merge organizational culture and employee or customer background culture.
- All systems within the organizing have a diversity aspect to cater for employee differences.
- For example, job performance and review takes place though team exercises, role playing, and educational material engagement.
Recruitment at AT&T
- AT&T relies on collaboration with faculty and staffs of higher institution to recruit the best talent.
- Company seeks the following attributes from job seekers:
- interest in communications, technology and innovation, commitment to honesty and integrity, ability to work in fast-paced environments.
- Employment opportunities depend on job demands and business development strategies of the company.
- New recruits pass through employee development programs in the company (Gianfranco, 2013).
- In addition, AT&T offers internships and jobs to students with disabilities as part of inclusion policy.
As the company develops and reacts to changing consumer demands, it is in constant need of professionals to fill its emerging areas of business. For example, in recent years, it has been hiring individuals with Internet Protocol (IP) expertise, and Radio Frequency (RF) protocol engineers and micro controller. Many of these professionals do not necessarily come from dominant American backgrounds of education, culture and work. They must therefore pass through various induction programs to fit within the AT&T human resource.
HR management team
- The company has a dedicated HR management team consisting of the following:
- corporate executive of the company,
- the human resource department staffs,
- the strategic business units heads,
- and members from delivery and business support, and production.
- The team makes up the HR Leadership Council and handles all company-wide issues of HR (McDonald, Charlesworth & Cerise, 2011).
- The council is interdisciplinary, delivering results for:
- corporate HR strategy.
- business units HR activity.
Human resource strategy of AT&T
- AT&T conducts HR transformations parallel to its sister companies (Lucent technologies and NCR corporation).
- AT&T identifies implications to HR as follows:
- continuous learning.
- team working.
- empowerment.
- The company, therefore, actively seeks to build systems that support organizational, cultural and structural changes(AT&T, 2012).
- Present strategy devises high-level HR initiatives in a devolved way that cater for AT&T needs like:
- downsizing.
- workforce planning.
- employee education.
AT&T has a devolved employee education framework that places line managers in charge of business-wide reviews of skill gaps. With HR as part of every business process at divisional and regional levels, the HRM team is able to deal with everyday workplace issues. The aims of the education program in the company are to design ideal features that focus on cooperation in work practices with job sharing and remote working.
Recommended actions the HR team should take at AT&T
- AT&T HR leadership council should create an employee complaints division.
- Enhance the companies ability to implement HR. policies at business units by creating independent HR policy units.
- The units will implement disciplinary measures e.g. reprimanding employees terminating employees
- AT&T should focus inclusion and diversity policies in the service centers and retail centers (Bratton & Gold, 2012).
The critical points for AT&T are its service centers and retail centers where employees directly interact with customers, and thus experience diversity in their interpersonal relationships. Understanding the emotional context of their labor and its implications in their behavior is important. Already the company demonstrates its concern by providing adequate off days and paid leaves for workers such that they have better work and life balance. Beyond that, it must continue its training programs, especially on sociological aspects of the work environment and its challenges to equip its employees with necessary coping abilities for high stress situations.
Related case law
AT&T complies with a number of legal requirements that govern human resources in the United States e.g.
Equal Pay Act of 1963, Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Titles I and V of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (Banfield & Kay, 2008).
Remarks
AT&T succeeds in being a top and favorable employer in the United States because of alignment of its HR goals (diversity & inclusion) with organizational objectives (HR transformation at AT&T Consumer Services, 2002).
Research was limited by scope and biasness present in the scholarly sources used.
References
Ananthram, S. (2013). Challenges and strategies for global human resource executives: Perspectives from Canada and the United States. European Management Journal, 31(3), 223–233.
AT&T. (2012). AT&T compensation in a competitive marketplace.
Banfield, P., & Kay, R. K. (2008). Introduction to human resource management. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Beaven, S. (2010). Two former employees sue AT&T claiming harassment and retaliation.The Oregonian.
Bratton, J., & Gold, J. (2012). Human resource management: Theory and practice, 5th edn. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Daspro, E. (2009). A cross-cultural comparison of multinational firms’ recruitment practices in Mexico and the United States. Latin American Business Review, 10(1), 1-19.
Engstrom, D. F. (2011). The lost origin of American fair employment law: Regulatory choice and the making of modern civil rights 1943-1972. Stanford Law Review, 63(5), 1071-1143.
Gianfranco, W. (2013). Employee emotional labour and quitting intentions: moderating effects of gender and age. European Journal of Marketing, 47(8), 1213-1237.
HR transformation at AT&T Consumer Services. (2002). Human Resource Management International Digest, 10(5), 6-11.
Ivancevich, J. M., & Konopaske, R. (2013). Human resource management (12th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Koster, F., de Grip, A., & Fouarge, D. (2011). Does perceived support in employee development affect personal turnover? The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 22(11), 2403-2418.
McDonald, P., Charlesworth, S., & Cerise, S. (2011). Below the “tip of the iceberg”: Extra-legal responses to workplace sexual harassment. Women’s Studies International Forum, 34(4), 278-289.
Stephenson, R. (2014). AT&T’s code of business conduct. Web.