Retention, Reward and Recognition in PTCL Field Staff

The Problem:

Retention is a major concern for PTCL right now, since the Business is majorly dependent on the hands-on experience of the field staff. Drastic turnover has been observed through the years due to multiple concerns like, the reward and recognition, nature of job in terms of targets to be achieved and the salary packages.  While some leave because of these discrepancies, there are others who come in to get the fundamental trainings of field related job, e.g. splicers, cable jointers etc. and after getting the certifications and name of a company so huge on their profile they exit in the search of better paying companies.

The major concerns that came up after we interviewed a few employees were;

• Absence of fair salaries
• Absence of appropriate technologies for monitoring their duty hours
• Unrealistic targets
• Rewards and Recognition

Currently, the consolidated running of business and sales with the allocation of sales targets to the business staff is causing discernment among the employees. The vendors for providing the 3^rd party staff are ASK and HTA and due to the enormous turnover, the quality of candidates goes down frequently.

There are 2 dimensions to the Sales Strategy, bifurcating the sales as per the product, with multiple IPTV for instance to be provided via the RDs only. The RDs can always be easily monitored or replaced where the performance goes low, but the prime area of concern in the chunk where the FSAs and CSRs are accounted for unrealistic sales targets and less remunerations.

Concerns regarding retitling and the discrimination between the regular field staff and the contractual staff were also evident, which has been identified as a cause of concerns for them.

This report focuses on suggesting a pattern to cover the concerns that the company Is facing at the moment in terms of retaining the staff and continuing growing in the form of product and customer revenue generation and growth. The reward and recognition currently that is evident in PTCL is the PTCL Champions Program which focuses on recognizing the field staff. The total cost to the company from it Is of around 27,000,000 per, with 500,000 for the smaller and 10,00000 for the larger regions. This has enabled positive responses from around the employees and however small the amounts are, the employee satisfaction has been enhanced.

Importance of Rewards, Recognition and Retention in any firm:

Rewards and recognition in any firm is most important thing for every employee because it will increase the motivational level of employees and employees will enjoy doing more work and they will put extraordinary efforts. Their will become satisfying with their job and then they will work with more honesty and trust. Due to all these elements the performance level of employee will be increase and it will affect better to the firm and then firm have their own recognition as the employee have their recognition because of their good performance and effective work. If firms have better reward system so the level of retention will also be increase means employee will retain in company for a long time because of their motivational level that helps to provide better results and the firm will have its own name and recognition in the market. If the retention level of the employee is high so the retention level of employee is also become high in the market and the firm will gain the competitive edge in market and can gain the leadership in the market for the long period.

Reward and Recognition for Front line customers at PTCL:

The following factors are recognized with on spot reward kit appreciation followed by cash rewards;

• Efficiency
• Knowledge Sharing
• Business Process Solutions
• Tangible Results
• Innovation
• % of New Sales accounted for
• Fault Fixation Rates
• Time taken to fulfill an order
• Cognition
• Cooperation
• Conflict Management
• Communication
• Customer Satisfaction Rate
• Customer Focus Attitude
• Customer Feedback

However, the amounts aren’t that huge keeping in consideration the importance of the field staff and the need to ensure their salary packages be fair enough. The program still has been successful in instilling valuable feedback from the employee. The overview of cash rewards for quarter 1 is as following in the North;

Region	Annual Budget	Monthly Budget
ITR	980,000	81,667
NTR-I	970,000	80,833
RTR	500,000	41,666
NTR-II	500,000	41,667
HTR	500,000	41,666
Total	3,450,000	287,499

The most major chunk receiving the rewards has been from the domain of business. The efforts of PTCL in this regard are undoubtedly appreciable, however we have developed a few more suggestions in order to enable further value creation for the company from its front-line employees, the face of the company.

BTS (Base Transceiver Station) monitoring:

It is the basically the small piece of equipment that helps to do the wireless communication between the device and network BTS (Base Transceiver Station). BTS is basically link with mobile communications and it refers to the equipment that creates the cell in the cellular network. The staff is plotted on various exchanges and to each exchange its BTS is assigned. The locality of the employee is then monitored via signal on track, this means that if a certain BTS goes down the employee would be shown automatically on another BTS and because of that being outside his territory, the employee shall be issued a notice for not being in his allocated area. For that we advise the technology of triangulate tracking and GPRS availability where the person can be monitored from his device without connecting them to the BTS.

ACS:

The attendance control in PTCL is via the ACS devices majorly through thumb impressions and these devices are allocated in the exchanges. Often what happens is that the employee does over time in the locality and because of the need of going back to the exchange to mark their check out time is inconvenient many don’t do it and remain unable to claim their over time. They utilize their managers assistance in ensuring their deductions aren’t made on the basic salary for the days they work extensively and are unable of marking attendances. The attendance system can also be mobilized for their ease and this shall allow better monitoring and satisfaction for the employee.

Target allocation framework: (Exchange Wise)

F-8 and I-10 for instance have the following numbers currently;

We have considered the F-8 and I-10 exchange, the potential customers and a methodology of assigning targets to them that aren’t unachievable.

Capacity	PSTN Jan'18	Broadband Jan'18	IPTV Jan'18	PSTN Feb'18	Broadband Feb'18	IPTV Feb'18	PSTN Mar'18	Broadband Mar'18	IPTV Mar'18
39,530	19,047	10,598	2,990	19,003	10,583	2,958	18,837	10,555	2,967
43,540	16,057	7,307	1,764	16,068	7,342	1,762	15,974	7,288	1,772

Allocation:

Dividing the product as per the past performance track of each field person, considering the values of their sales and sales target for the year.

Currently due to the unavailability of the sales graph sheet we haven’t been able to plot targets for each.

We propose a sum of 25 percent of their basic to be allocated to a referral percentage of sales and MTTR and fault rectification. This shall create a healthy spirited competition among them. The commission should be ensured for both, the sales as well as business staff if the bifurcation of the 2 isn’t something that the company is looking for.