AT&T: Reinventing Itself Amid HR Challenges - Essay Sample

Introduction

AT & T built the U.S communications infrastructure over the past century. It is due to this that the company was regarded as being the one that built the future. However, its legacy businesses are becoming outdated. The firm is in the process to reinvent itself by moving its industry from hardware and cables to the cloud and internet. The renovation in the industry has led to a massive HR challenge. AT & T employs about 280,000 people who get their foundational job training in different period of time. It has initiated many efforts to enhance its workers to obtain innovative digital skills. The average occupation in the company excluding the individuals working in the call centers is between 12-22 years. The firm prefers retraining the current employees than hiring new talent workers as it makes efforts inproducing a culture of continuous learning. Current Deloitte research shows that 39% of the large company executives were rarely discovering the talents that their firms needed.

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Randall Stephenson, the AT & T's CEO has been creating large deliberate gambles on the diverse variety of wireless technologies. Starting from 2007 to 2015, the customers have been demanding relentless connectivity. Thus, the companies have no choice of venturing into new businesses. During this period, the data circulation on the AT& T's wireless connection rose by over 150,000%. The company's aim in the next few years was that the network would be managed by the software-defined architecture. The company is struggling to rapidly shift its technical demands. This is to suit the customers' ever changing demand and interests. The firm's projection is to have most of its network being controlled by the software-defined architecture.

In order to remain competitive, the company has to struggle to fit into the new landscape. The new landscape needs skills in data science, coding, cloud-based computing and other technical capabilities. Most of these fields are rapidly advancing to an extent that the traditional training methods can't keep up. On the same note, the vice president of AT &T acknowledges that there are plentiful skills in the streets ready for employment but talents are limited. As a result, there is a competition for getting the right talent for every organization. Besides, other organizations are focusing on improving the skills of its employees in order to fill the gap. It is due to this that the case company has concentrated much resources to offer employees training, education and other professional programs that are aimed at enhancing the productivity of the employees. The implementation of some of these strategies has seen the company make some improvements.

Moreover, the text tells of the tremendous efforts put in place by the company to manage talents and enhance employees' productivity. By so doing the company consolidated multiple roles to few that were easily manageable. On the same note, the company has redesigned its talent practices in several ways such as raising the performance expectations and so on.

Lastly, every company has tools to manage performance, plan talents and develop careers. For instance, there is a career profile tool that 8is used for assessing business experiences, competencies, and credentials. It achieves by evaluating individual employee's skills and come up with development profile that an employee uses to compare him or herself to the requirements of a job. Other important tools that must be managed include; career intelligence tool, job simulation tool and so on.