Syrian Case study The role of HR in Syrian Telecom restructuring HR Strategic objectives

1. Syrian Case studyThe role of HR in Syrian Telecom restructuringHR Strategic objectives Syrian Telecom Rima KOUSA Rima.kousa@mail.sy

2. Background • Syrian Telecom has gone through a re-engineering restructuring process to meet the rapid changing in ICT sector and to promote the competitive environment in telecommunication market. • The strategic objectives of STE were formulated based on its visionand mission statement and goals. • The strategic objectives for STE’s cover the various aspects of its functionality and have five dimensions: • The market dimension, • The quality dimension, • The financial dimension, • The customer care dimension, and • The human resources dimension.

3. Human Resources Strategic Objectives The STE corporate Human Resources Strategic Objectives are to: • Improve productivity. • Recruit qualified personnel. • Allocate Customer Care resources. • Provide more responsibilities and exposure for the best qualified employees.

4. Human Resources Strategic Objectives • Develop employees’ commitment and team spirit. • Put in place an effective employee appraisal system. • Establish a career planning process. • Allocate employees according to manpower planning design. • Improve training and re-skilling efficiency of existing workforce.

5. Organizational Restructuring • To accomplish these goals an organizational restructuring and transformational process took place at the beginning of last year. • The Organization Design of the Human Resources defines the mission and roles, the HR activities and the interactions of the HR function with other STE functions.

6. HR Mission and Organizational Design The Mission of the HR function is “to develop & implement capabilities to attract, develop and retain the human resources required to ensure the fulfillment of STE’s objectives”. The Organizational Design was designed to cover the activities of HR according to the following divisions: • Organization and Planning Design Department. (new) • Manpower planning. • Organization and Job Design.(new) • Appraisal and Benefits Dept. • Compensations and Benefits. • Appraisal and Career development. (new)

7. HR Mission and Organizational Design • Recruitment Dept. • Succession Planning. (new). • Vacates filling. • Directorate of Administration Affairs. • Personnel Administration. • Internal Communication. (new) • External Coordination. (new) • Social Services and work Environment. (new)

8. HR Mission and Organizational Design • Directorate of Training and development. • Training Planning. (new) • Training design. (new) • External training. (new) • Internal training. (new) • Training Evaluation. (new) • System Support. (new)

9. HR Mission and Organizational Design • Directorate of Telecom Institutions and Professional Schools: • TI in Damascus. • TI in Aleppo. • Professional School in Damascus. • Professional School in Aleppo.

10. Implementation Difficulties and Challenges • The Syrian Telecom has applied the new HR design during 2007 and the HR played its new role for the first time as a leading party and as a partner to all other departments and not only as performing the traditional role of personnel administration. • Many difficulties and challenges faced this transformation process, such as the overlap between the new design and the Syrian Labor Law, and the resistance to change from many decision makers.

11. Conclusions • In spite of all difficulties and problems, the HR design was successfully implemented and the Organizational restructuring and the new Job Design were applied. • The new strategic HRM has succeeded in developing the new structures for all other STE functions relying on the TSSP vision and complying with the Syrian Labor Law and the vision of the steak holders of each administration and division.

12. Thank You Rima KOUSA Rima.kousa@mail.sy Resources: TSSP