Communicashuns Inc. is an ambitious software and consultancy company that has developed a good reputation for its range of internal communications software and its individual customer management systems. It is also growing its consultancy service, which provides both marketing advice and employee training and development programmes.
It currently has 2500 employees in the software division, around 2000 of whom are technical staff who create and develop the software. The other staff are responsible for sales, financial management and administration. There are also 100 staff in the consultancy division, consisting of 30 consultants (5 ‘leads’), 20 trainers and 50 support staff.
The Executive Board have decided that the market for their software is recovering from the recession and have set very high sales targets. This will include the launch of considerably enhanced versions of their most popular products. It is hoped that aggressive marketing will mean that the demand for both customer training for the software and for their consultancy services will also increase. The Management Team anticipate an immediate need for around 25% more staff.
The number of people employed by Communicashuns Inc. has grown steadily over the past 10 years and the long-serving members of staff have developed very easy going relationships with their colleagues, resulting in very few disputes between management and employees. In such a company, communication with staff is regarded as vitally important to the well-being of the whole company. There is some formal training activity, mainly Health and Safety, diversity and short courses run by software tool manufacturers. There has been no significant need for staff development – technicians are already regarded as being very skilled, and managers get on well with their staff!
The HR department has therefore focused on the administrative aspects of payroll, organising the formal training, absence management and exit interviews. It has organised small recruitment exercises on a regular basis (to meet staff and skill shortages) but has no experience of managing a large expansion over a very short period of time.
There is much competition for the technical skills associated with the writing of software, and employee turnover amongst this group was up to 12% last year (an increase from 9% the previous year). The company have established a very good core group of 250 software testers and ‘debugging’ specialists amongst these technical staff. This has meant a high level of reliability for their product out in the field and employee turnover in this group was only 2%.
The existing software is now fairly well established and well known to many IT training specialists and many Communicashuns Inc. trainers have left to start their own training businesses, providing the software training at a cheaper rate to customers. The company lost 4 of their trainers last year and 1 the previous year.
Of course, there are only a very limited number of people who could command the respect to earn the high fees charged for consultancy advice and so competition for good consultants and particularly for ‘lead’ consultants is very high (even in such a specialist area). Last year, the company lost one of their lead consultants (to a rival company at a reported 50% salary increase) and 12 ‘junior’ consultants most of whom had only been appointed to their post with Communicashuns Inc. for less than 6 months.
The Executive Board now require a recruitment strategy and outline budget for the expansion and will want to know how the HR specialists intend to meet the massive increase in need for new employees in each of the main areas of activity.