MSHR 6610 Week 1 Two Ledgers Discussion Post Example

Week 1 Discussion: Where HR and Operations Measure Differently

Eight Evening Vacancies in Two Ledgers: Restating an HR Measure as Unanswered Calls at a Utility Contact Center, and Arguing Which Ledger the Operations Director Actually Reads

The HR Ledger

HR's measure of our evening staffing problem, eight evening vacancies open an average of seven weeks, is accurate and nearly useless to the director who schedules the floor. I work in HR for Northfork Power & Light, a composite electric utility serving about 410,000 customers, and our contact center has 132 agent positions. Our monthly HR report lists vacancies, days to fill and engagement survey scores. Each figure is correct. None of them tells the operations director what she needs to know on a Tuesday at 6:00 p.m.

The Operations Ledger

Her ledger counts calls answered, calls abandoned, minutes of handling and the share of calls answered within thirty seconds. Restated in her terms, the eight vacancies look like this. At 6:00 p.m., our illustrative volume is about 135 calls per half hour, each taking about seven minutes to handle once after-call work is included. An Erlang C calculation, the standard queuing model for call centers (Gans et al., 2003), shows that about 37 agents on the phones would answer 80 percent of calls within thirty seconds. Because of the vacancies, we usually have about 33. With 33, the model predicts only about 36 percent answered within thirty seconds and an average wait of more than three minutes instead of under twenty seconds. Customers calling about outages or disconnections do not wait that long; many hang up and call back, adding to the queue.

So the eight vacancies are not a recruiting statistic. They are several hundred customers a week who wait too long or give up, concentrated in the hours after work when most residential customers call.

Which Ledger Is Read

The operations director reads her own ledger, and she is right to. Decisions about overtime, schedules and whether to pay for an overflow vendor are made in her units. Boudreau and Ramstad (2007) argue that HR's value depends on connecting talent decisions to the outcomes leaders already manage, rather than asking leaders to learn HR's measures. If HR wants the evening vacancies filled faster, it should report them as unanswered calls by interval, not as days to fill.

Question for Classmates

In your organization, which HR measure would mean most to an operations leader if it were restated in their units, and what would the restated version be?

Reply to Nadia

Nadia, your hospital's HR report on nurse vacancies seems a good candidate for the same translation. Your post mentions that the unit closes beds when it is short. Could the vacancy report show beds closed per week, which the chief nursing officer already tracks?

Reply to Owen

Owen, you argued that engagement scores matter to operations because engaged staff are more productive. I agree in principle, but Batt (2002) studied call centers and found that HR practices were linked to lower quit rates and higher sales growth; that linkage is what an operations leader would read. Could your engagement report be paired with quit rates by team?

References

Batt, R. (2002). Managing customer services: Human resource practices, quit rates, and sales growth. Academy of Management Journal, 45(3), 587-597. https://doi.org/10.5465/3069383

Boudreau, J. W., & Ramstad, P. M. (2007). Beyond HR: The new science of human capital. Harvard Business School Press.

Gans, N., Koole, G., & Mandelbaum, A. (2003). Telephone call centers: Tutorial, review, and research prospects. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 5(2), 79-141. https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.5.2.79.16071