Introduction
Globalization is the key driver of contemporary businesses indicating the globalization of products as well as globalization of markets and which has turned today’s business world more complex than any other era of civilization. It has generated a fundamental shift in the world economy and the days of national economies having self-contained entities isolated from the other world has departed. Now businesses gets the global nature and globalization makes business operations multifaceted and leads to perfect competition, making the world a global village; and business of one region has become connected with business of other region. Thus, various multinational ventures came out in last century and the concept of multinational corporations got priority (Hill 4). However, the policies of the same organization are different for different countries. The purpose of this report is to research such a multinational’s policies from different aspects and to assess whether the policies have changed or not.
Methodology
The whole research will be based on secondary data available from the books, reports, and internet. Some information will be collected through telephone or interviews of related employees of the organization. Secondary data means the already published data. The company website and the annual report will be used as a secondary data source.
Description
Background of the company
British Telecom is a multinational company operating in almost 170 countries providing communication services for its customers. Its business is covering from the large multinationals and public organizations towards the small business entities and the individual customers. BT is the pioneer in the age of information in advance technological field and digitalization. It is mainly a global technology player along with having concern about the world around it. It is triggering not only the concept of virtual markets, e-commerce, broadband, and mobility but also continuing innovations and changes in these fields. However, the start was in late seventies as a subsidiary and helping hand of the post office service. In 1981, the company became public corporation and got its own right as a distinct entity from the post office (British Telecom 1). After the privatization regulations had taken in UK in 1984, the company had made private and renamed as BT. After that it was coming with various joint ventures and thus became able to innovate and develop its own equipment.
In the mean time, BT got the chance to expand globally and within a few years, it establishes itself as a leaner, responsible, and highly competitive organization worldwide. There were some dramatic changes in BT in the early nineties, which change the framework, customer focus and increase the capability to chase many challenges. In 2000, BT got the structure of public limited company and Holdings limited British Telecom. These changes give the present figure of BT of four separate business entities such as BT retail, BT wholesale, BT global services, and open-reach, which have the facilities of a strong central R&D and innovation department. All these business are separate from each other and have different customer target and market. The main activities of BT are networked IT services, broadband networking and internet based products and services (British Telecom 12).
The host country UK
In the early nineteenth century telecommunication service earned fame as an industry in Britain. Primarily it was the telegraph service of government but later different companies came out with the same core service having some differentiation. In 1969, all these companies were nationalized as post offices of the Royal government. Later in 1984, it became privatized again and thus different entrepreneurs came with large investment and start telecom business (British Telecom 5). Thus the industry got a competitive environment and investment started to increase. New legislation brought independence of business, which made it possible to enter in the industry with even terms for new entrants. Many organizations used this benefit and go for joint ventures and many other strategies suitable for them. Now the customers served by this industry are huge and BT is serving about 20 million business and individual customers in UK. Though now the firms in telecom industry of UK have to face some environmental and other responsibilities, this is the most enlightened industry of UK (British Telecom 1).
Staffing
Appointing the potential talents is the key base for the staffing policy of BT. BT termed it as talent management program, which is focusing on five distinctive aspects. These are:
Staffing is a term of human resource management and BT is also used in this perspective rather to use in overall business operation. This talent management is particularly very important because the economy in certain region is uncertain and acquiring staffs and passing them through these five stages are key concern for BT. Somehow this program may be seem unprofitable. However, it is not. The diagram bellow will show the value addition of this program:
To attract the potential staffs BT has some uniqueness in its recruitment process. It is following flexible recruitment, which includes four criteria. These are:
BT is using a variety of recruitment channels to make sure that it is accessing the diverse potential candidates. It also takes help from employment agencies and goes for online recruitment along with liaison with educational institutions and other bodies. It has developed a system named “BT people system” through which it is also ensuring the diversified recruitment. The base of this diversification is many such as age, gender, education and many more.
As a part of training, BT is arranging MBA program from where it acquires significant education based diversified employees. If the employees attended in this program are assessed the gender based diversification will be clear.
Like this program, all other programs are giving priority for the female, minority and disable persons. This aspect is also creating strong diversification based on gender.
There are many permanent recruitment suppliers for BT, which are doing the basic task of diversification. These agencies are liable for collecting all the relevant information about the employees, which is used by BT later in recruitment process. To ensure the diversification, BT arranges an annual meeting, which includes all of the members of the recruitment supply chain. There is another program termed as “fast track program” which is mainly a two-year development program aimed to attract the experienced and valuable potential employees.
Outsourcing and in-sourcing are also playing a significant role in BT’s recruitment process. Outsourcings are mainly the support of its operation and business service operation as external contractors. The use of outsource has improved the efficiency and reduced the cost. Employee contracts, recruitment, training, pension, payroll, financial and accounting services are the core area of outsource for BT. The in-sourcing means getting employees from the field of operation of BT. The basic in-sourcing field is the communication within the organization which is developing some other important methods in communications.
Global sourcing is another reliable source of staffing for BT and it has many employees from different countries as a multinational company. BT is using the local employees in local operation, which is ensuring the appropriate skilled and knowledgeable employees who are informed enough about the local need. It has such diversification in countries like Brazil, China, India, Hungary and many more. This global sourcing has also ensured the cost benefits and helps to British Telecom to get the talents from almost every part of the world. Thus, it can use the best effort from best employees globally
BT has developed the idea of re-skilling to get long term and successful support from its employees. Re-skilling means changing the career of an employee towards telecom industry from any other. For this, BT has structured a “Transition Centre” where various training and support has given to the employees. According to the annual report 2009 of BT, this is the passage of enlightened staffing system of the company through, which training of the employees has completed.
Compensation
Compensation and rewards are the two main criteria, which attracts the employees most. Along with the strategic priorities, BT has developed a strong reward framework to ensure the highest motivation of the existing employees and attract heavily the potential employees.
The salaries offered by BT are highly competitive along with its additional benefits such as annual bonuses and share ownership. BT has different schemes of share ownership such as “save share” which means buying share at a discounted rate and “direct share” which means buying shares with the pre tax salaries of the employees. The lowest salary of starting with BT is 11,357 Pounds in UK as a week basis (36 hour). There is also a flexible scheme for the managers and the professional termed as “Choice” which gives the opportunities to the employees to exchange some of their salaries for some extra benefits.
Equal pay is the policy of BT, which ensures the fair payment and ensures the non-discrimination based on gender, ethnic origin, or disability. All the employees of the same stage o operation get the same pay regardless of demographic orientation. The compensation based on reward for the managers is also free from any kind of biasness. BT has maintained extra funds to ensure the increase in salary for every employee each year equally.
Pension schemes are limited for BT based on country and it is offering retirement benefits to its employees in 50 countries. As a pension scheme, named as BTPS (BT Pension Scheme), there are 14 definite benefit arrangements for the employees along with 38 definite contribution provisions. Another scheme termed as BTRP (BT Retirement Plan) where the pension is merged with the contribution. BTRSS (BT Retirement Saving Scheme) is another scheme, which is mainly a contract based pension scheme. From 2009, BT has three types of basic pension schemes.
The last compensation offered by BT is the flexible working environment of BT. The flexible working gives the opportunity to achieve the commitments of life of the employees along with helping them to meet the responsibilities accordingly. For this, the employees need not to concern about the caring of their children, elderly, or sick family members but to pay proper attention to the own job responsibility and BT will take care of the family. For this arrangement, customer can get services 24/7 and thus customer satisfaction has come. This job relaxation increases the quality of life of the employees. As a part of this program, many employees are getting the chance to work from home, which increases the productivity of them. This portfolio of flexible working is named as “Achieving the balance” which also helps to decide whom to give flexibility.
The company is using forecasting in almost every stage of its operation. Different assumptions like liquidity risk management, customer demand, inflation and sales all are depended upon forecasting. The other forecasting includes cash flow forecast, amount recoverable, discount rate, value of goodwill, benefits payable, transaction period and many other things are forecasted. (British Telecom)
Quality, project management, supply chain management, and inventory management are the other key operation management tasks, which BT is doing with positive assurance (Stevenson). This assurance is based on the accountability, which is governing through three basic principles.
Cultural issues/social responsibility
BT has the theme of its business, which indicates the gaining of profitability and sustainability ensuring the benefit providing to the customers, society, and the environment. BT is concern about the environmental and social consequences of its businesses but it is trying to reduce these effects as a corporate social responsibility. It is changing its corporate responsibility strategy continuously with the demand of the global environment. The CSR goal of BT is showing bellow:
As an organizational culture, BT was previously technology led but now it has changed its business functions to become service led firm. Customers are the heart of this organizational culture. As a customer oriented organization, BT has dedicated itself for helping he customers to help them in making changes. In case of values, BT has taken five key criteria. Firstly, it has commitment about what it says it will do that is it is considering the trustworthiness. Secondly, it is working as one team to help the customers. Thirdly, it is creating new possibilities, which will inspire the customers and employees. Fourthly, it has a great heart that makes it possible to believe what it does. Finally, it is very straightforward and it is trying its level best to make things clear. (Our culture)
Labor practices
BT has about 147,000 labor globally which are treated as a resource in BT. In this case, BT is using a coach approach. However, it has a plan to reduce its labor forces whose are treated as employee and get some benefits like employees. Open practices of labor right is combined with the overall rights of the employees.
BT in UK
UK is the key success region for BT fro the beginning of its operation. Most of its profits are generated from UK and thus the business is separated into two segments UK and non-UK. In almost all sectors of business, UK operation of UK has better performance. The picture of BT global services has shown below:
Findings
- BT is a profit generating concern and almost all operations of it is bringing success.
- Employees are treated with high compensation and benefits in BT, which motivates them to work hard.
- It has different staffing policies and recruitment process ensuring the best employee collection.
- Its UK operation is more profitable compared with non-UK business.
Conclusion
BT as a successful business entity has some potentiality to become the market leader worldwide. Business of multinationals is now becoming dependent upon diversification in service designing and delivery and BT is also doing the same thing. The boom of technology makes the chance of BT to become more reliable to its global customers.
References
British Telecom. BT Group plc Annual Report & Form 20-F 2009. Web.
British Telecom. BT overview. 2009. Web.
British Telecom. Our culture. 2009. Web.
British Telecom. Sustainability report of BT: Assurance. 2009. Web.
British Telecom Sustainability report of BT: Employees. 2009. Web.
British Telecom. Sustainability report of BT: Our Corporate responsibility strategy. 2009. Web.
British Telecom. What we do 2009. Web.
British Telecom. Where we have come from. 2009. Web.
Hill, Charles. & Jones, Gareth. Strategic Management: An Integrated Approach, 8th edition. 2007. Print.
Stevenson, William J. Operations Management. New York: McGraw Hill, 9th edition. 2005. Print.