Running head: HUMAN RESOURCES 1

PCA: Human Resources

Amy Harris

OGL 481

Arizona State University

September 12, 2020

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PCA: Human Resources

While working for Schue Products, I was a customer service representative.

There were three of us in customer service (CSR): Sandy who had been with the company

for 20 years and head of CSR, myself who had only been there for about 6 months, Sherry

who had only been there about 2 months, and we all shared the same responsibilities. We

put our phones on a loop, which means that when a call came in it would go to one of us,

the next call to the next girl and so on, that way we shared the call volume evenly. One

day I realized that my phone was constantly ringing, I would hang up with one customer

and right away I would be getting another call. When I looked around I would see Sandy

on the phone and Sherry was playing games on her computer. I later realized that Sherry

wasn’t getting calls because she kept her phone off the hook, so the loop would skip her. I

brought this up to Sandy, so of course she and her supervisor Pete talked to Sherry about it

and she started putting her phone back on the loop. Eventually the same situation

happened again.

I became extremely frustrated that Sandy and I were taking on the high volume of

calls while Sherry just played games and read websites. One day I had enough, so I e-

mailed Pete and informed him about my frustrations about the ongoing situation, how

Sherry kept making mistakes on rush orders, not processing payments and even forgot to

place an extremely important order for a trade show, and told him that he needed to either

fire her or I would put in my two weeks’ notice. About 20 minutes later Pete came to my

desk and asked me when my last day would be. I gave him the date and that was that.

Sandy told me later that Pete did not deal well with ultimatums, so as much as he agreed

with me, he let me put in my two weeks’ notice.

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In my opinion, there was no human resource utilized in this situation. There was

no effort to build relationships with the employees, we were looked at as people who

were there to get the job done. Management did not seem to care how we got the work

done, as long as orders were taken, inputted, and shipped on time. Sherry was not given

the time to properly train so she had no confidence in her job title which caused her to

take her phone off the loop, “undertrained workers harm organizations in many ways:

shoddy quality, poor service, higher costs, and costly mistakes” [CITATION Bol171 \p

145 \l 1033 ].

First, I would have taken more time to interview candidates to ensure that we had

someone that was a right fit. We were short staffed and the first storm in the Midwest was

going to hit at any moment so we knew our phones would be ringing off the hook soon.

Knowing this, I still would have taken the time to conduct interviews so that I knew that

when I hired someone, they would be able to keep up with the high volume of calls, order

entry, and follow-up on shipments. After finding someone for the position, investing the

time to properly train someone is key to the success of the employee as well as the

company. Ensuring they understood their roles and responsibilities and felt the support of

management and peers is something that should always be done, otherwise the company

can lose money from missed orders and customers who become frustrated.

Getting to know the employees and building trusting relationships would have

helped in this situation. Employees need to feel that the work they are doing is important,

that they have a purpose and making a difference. This would have motivated Sherry to

stay engaged in the work she did as well as feel more comfortable asking questions so

that she felt capable doing the work she was hired to do. The company didn’t want to
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invest the time or energy to train Sherry because, and I found this out after I left, they

were going out of business, so instead of keeping me on and getting as many orders in as

possible before they shut the doors, my supervisor didn’t want to have an uncomfortable

conversation with Sherry to let her go.

After learning more about human resources, I may have been more

sympathetic towards Sherry. From my perspective she was being lazy and just did not

care about her job, but in reality, I could have been because she didn’t understand her role

or what exactly she was supposed to do. I think I would have taken the time to get to

know Sherry a little more and made her feel like I was there to support her and there to

answer any questions she had. When I worked for this company I was only19 years old,

and Sherry was in her 40s, I’m not sure how comfortable I would have been approaching

this kind of situation, but if I had this knowledge back then, at least I would have

understood where she was coming from instead of jumping to conclusions.

References

Bolman, G. L., & Deal, E. T. (2017). Reframing Organizations. Hoboken.