Negative Human Resource Practice: Telecommunication in Bangladesh

Acknowledgement

The submission of this report of “Negative HR Practice in Telecommunication Sector of Bangladesh” is a great opportunity for us. The success of this assignment depends on the contributions of number of people especially who have shared their thoughtful guidance, contribution, suggestions and experience to improve this report.

Thanks to Grameenphone and Banglalink Telecom for being patient enough to co-operate with us and completing out the surveys successfully.

We obviously would like to give a special thanks to the Almighty for giving us such patience and power for completing this assignment smoothly. Lastly we can say that, we have enjoyed in preparing this assignment and presented it for kind judgment.

Abstract

Purpose of this assignment is to analysis the HR situation in telecommunication companies of Bangladesh, from the Survey done with Grameenphone Ltd., and Banglalink Telecom Ltd. We made human resource questionnaires and got Grameenphone and Banglalink employees to fill them up, and analyzed the statistic with graphs and textually.

Because it’s impossible for us to survey all 3500 employees (summing up total employees of Banglalink and Grameenphone), we surveyed 33 employees from both the companies combined.

Introduction

Our project paper is all about “Negative Human Resource Practice in Telecommunication Sectors of Bangladesh”. For a long period, Grameenphone and Banglalink are ruling the Bangladeshi telecommunication market. Because, there was a great deal of opportunity is gradually increasing. For all the competitions upcoming there is a great negative impact on this sector.

Thus, there are a lot of challenges and opportunities today for managers to use HR management. In our project paper we have analyzed the survey reports and statistics, and reviewed them comparatively with the negative HR practices. All the data are collected from the companies, meeting the employees face to face or over personal linkage and the primary data are collected from the interviewed survey. Our sample size is 33 individuals (both male, female entry/mid level worker and managers). We designed our questioner in a contemporary way.

Almost 90% primary data has collected from the face to face interview with the respondent. Only a 10% data has been collected through the internet.

Grameenphone

Before Grameenphone’s inception, the phone was for a selected urbanized few. The cell phone was a luxury: a flouting accessory for the select elite. The mass could not contemplate mobile telephony as being part of their lives. Grameenphone started its journey with the Village Phone program: a pioneering initiative to empower rural women of Bangladesh. The name Grameenphone translates to “Rural phone”.

Starting its operations on March 26, 1997, the Independence Day of Bangladesh, Grameenphone has come a long way. Grameenphone pioneered the then breakthrough initiative of mobile to mobile telephony and became the first and only operator to cover 98% of the country’s people with network Since its inception Grameenphone has built the largest cellular network in the country with over 13,000 base stations in more than 7000 locations. Presently, nearly 99 percent of the country’s population is within the coverage area of the Grameenphone network.

Grameenphone has always been a pioneer in introducing new products and services in the local market. GP was the first company to introduce GSM technology in Bangladesh when it launched its services in March 1997. Grameenphone was also the first operator to introduce the pre-paid service in September 1999. It established the first 24-hour Call Center, introduced value-added services such as VMS, SMS, fax and data transmission services, international roaming service, WAP, SMS-based push-pull services, EDGE, personal ring back tone and many other products and services.

The entire Grameenphone network is also EDGE/GPRS enabled, allowing access to high-speed Internet and data services from anywhere within the coverage area. There are currently nearly 2. 6 million EDGE/GPRS users in the Grameenphone network. Today, Grameenphone is the leading telecommunications service provider in Bangladesh with more than 36 million subscribers as of December 2011.

Banglalink

Orascom Telecom Bangladesh Limited (“Banglalink”) is fully owned by Orascom Telecom Holding S. A.E, Egypt, (“OTH”); the ultimate parent company of the group is Vimpelcom, the 6th largest mobile phone operator in the world. Banglalink was acquired by OTH in 2004, and after a complete overhaul and the deployment of a new GSM Network, its telecommunication services were re-launched under the brand name Banglalink. When Banglalink began operations in Bangladesh in February 2005, its impact was felt immediately: overnight mobile telephony became an affordable option for customers across a wide range of market segments.

Banglalink’s success was based on a simple mission: “bringing mobile telephony to the masses” which was the cornerstone of its strategy. Banglalink changed the mobile phone status from luxury to a necessity and brought mobile telephone to the general people of Bangladesh and made a place in their hearts. The mobile phone has become the symbol for the positive change in Bangladesh. This positive change that is quite correctly attributed to Banglalink has become the corporate positioning of Banglalink and is translated in their slogan “making a difference” or “din bodol”. Making a difference” not only in the telecom industry, but also through its products and services, to the lives of its customers. This corporate stance of “making a difference” has been reflected in everything Banglalink does. Banglalink attained 1 million subscribers by December 2005 and 3 million subscribers in October 2006. In less than two years which is by December 2007, Banglalink overtook Aktel to become the second largest operator in Bangladesh with more than 7. 1 million customers. Banglalink currently has 20. 05million subscribers as of April 2011, representing a market share of 27. 3%. Growth over the last years have been fuelled with innovative products and services targeting different market segments, aggressive improvement of network quality and dedicated customer care, creating an extensive distribution network across the country, and establishing a strong brand that emotionally connected customers with Banglalink.

Review of the Report and Recommendations

Employees are more relaxed than stressed every day, and the source of the stress is hardly work life, which is a success for HR department. Even with that, HR department may take a lot of stress reducing procedures to help ease the stress level and keep the employees keen on their work.

The organizations also have good recruitment system, gathering enough skilled recruits to cover all the work as per organizational needs. There might be a little biasness in the selection process and promotion strategy, but it isn’t as bad as in other sectors, as it’s not affecting other employees’ mindset, also because even the worst recruit is skilled there. There’s also enough technical support because the organization wants their employees not to face any kind of frustration not being supported by any way.

Authority is very confident about the HR policy being decent, while most of the employees are even aware of it. There’s good employee-to-employee, employee-to-authority, authority-to-employee communication, and most of them have strong interpersonal relationship, and even the acquaintances are friendly there, having affect on the motivation level, uprising it by a sky high level. There’s pretty much a good level on equity among the employees, there could be exception in some cases but still the rate would be very low.

The organization sometimes might push the employee too much to achieve their monthly targets, but most the time the pressure level is reasonable for saying. The training process is quite good and effective but a few employees aren’t taken on any training program, whereas the employees are somewhat happy with their performance appraisal method. The compensation received is pretty much more than good for the employees, even with this highly priced lifestyle in Dhaka.

Favoritism tendency is also in reasonable extent, which is not a big problem as all of them are getting the same chance to learn and grow from working in the organization. The employees are very happy with their job security also. Human Resource Department might be too tight on them sometimes when they’re speaking out, for that they fear to speak out about the organization most the times. I think the HR department and the organization could use some improvement to make the employee satisfaction level even higher to make the most out of them. Recruits shouldn’t be selected at all in bias conditions.

• Promotion strategy needs improvising.
• Hear out the employees more often.
• Arrange more training for employees to make sure none’s left out.
• Increase the compensation of underrated employees.
• Less pressure on employees, as pressure might cause stress, which isn’t good.
• Appraise performance in more ways.
• Take more steps to reduce stress.
• Let not the employees fear you, causing them to sit shut still.
• Allow employees to speak out.

 Comment

From the data, we can say that most of the employees are pretty much satisfied with their HR policies and they are happy to work with the organization in both Grameenphone and Banglalink. Yes, they would need some improvement, but who doesn’t? There’s always room for improvement no matter how good you are.

In other words, the telecommunication sector has one of the best human resource management system comparative to other sectors of Bangladesh. Conclusion In the end, we can say that negative practice in HR in telecommunication is in very low rate, keeping their employees satisfied with adequate compensation and facilities that they expect. If this situation keeps up, we expect the best for the telecommunication business in the future.