Free Essay. Critical Examination of Resources Utilization at Omantel Company

The paper examines various management aspects implemented at Omantel Company. Omantel is amongst the leading telecommunication providers in Oman and the Middle East in general. The company serves the most significant portion of the Oman telecommunication market. It provides a wide range of services in the telecommunication spectrum ranging from web hosting, 3.5G internet plan, PLC development, emailing, among other services. The company has extensive experience in the telecommunication industry has been in the industry for a long time. The article explores the various benefits that the company has brought about in Oman (Gernal, Sergio, and Al Shuali, 2013, p.42). It also comments on the roles that the company plays in the personal development of its employees as well as the recent achievements of the company. The company has been awarded as the leading organization in the country for four consecutive years in the annual OER Top Twenty event.

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As part of the background information of Omantel Company, the article affirms that the company has hit several mileages of development as per the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority. The company has a Royal Decree No. (30/2002). The company is actively involved in cooperation with other telecommunication companies like the Oman Telecommunication and Oman Mobiles. The ownership of the company lies in the hands of both the government of Oman and the public. The government owns majority shares, owning 51 per cent of the company, while the public holds 49 per cent of Omantel's shares (Gernal, Sergio, and Al Shuali, 2013, p.59).

In an attempt to develop the company farther, the article investigates the various stumbling blocks and bottleneck of events in the company. One of the peculiar aspects of the company is its engagement with the employees. The company is exceptionally open with its employees. The level of control that Omantel's employees have in the company supersedes many companies in the Middle East as well as entire North Africa. The text praises the company for its ability to incorporate its employees into the running of the company. The article categorically states that many people in the Middle East view the company as a company of choice. As a result, people are interested in working with the company due to the privileges that its employees enjoy. Prospective employees were attracted by the transparency and flexibility exhibited in the company.

The most significant setback in the company, according to the article, is the power, flexibility and transparency that employees enjoy in the company. The freedom and flexibility in the company have resulted in a series of managerial problems within the company. These challenges arising from the misconduct of the employees are hard to diagnose since the company runs smoothly amidst these challenges. Most of the difficulties are prevalent in the top management and technical team of the company. The architectural, engineering and other senior management employees embezzle the company's resources, which are hardly detected. The company has also implemented a digital monitoring approach for the performance of the employees, which they can easily manipulate. The company employs the delegate form of leadership popularly referred to as the Laissez-fair (Chaudhry, and Javed, 2012, p.18). It is a form of management of employees where the employees are left at liberty to decide and execute some of the issues affecting their work cells. The employees at Omantel seem to misuse the authority delegated to them, leading to negative impacts on the company's operation.

Omantel is known for its automation and computer integrated management. The company uses an online biometric system that allows employees to sign in when getting to work as well as sign out when they are done with the day's routine. The approach is noble and saves the company lots of paperwork. However, there are various loopholes in the method that put its integrity in question. Employees can easily skive duties as they can sign in and pretend to be at work, yet they are not in their work station. Omantel is a unique company that uniquely treats its employees. The text sees the special treatment extended to the employees as a significant challenge to the overall success of the company (Gernal, Sergio, and Al Shuali, 2013, p.73). One of the special treatment extended to the employees is the provision of vehicles to employees. The company gives cars mostly to the top management, engineers and technical staff. The primary reason for the vehicles is to provide a quicker means of transport to their work cells in case any emergencies arise. The company ensures that all the gasoline costs are catered for. Nonetheless, they also offer credit cards to fuel the vehicle. It is worth noting that these are the heavy consumption vehicles like the Land Cruisers.

The special treatment extended to the employees affect the company's financial base in several ways. According to the text, the staff uses vehicles for personal needs. It reports on several instances where the company's cars have been used to take the employees and their families out for holidays. Therefore, the company incurs additional charges on fueling and repairing vehicles. The rate at which these vehicles depreciates and wear out are high due to overuse. The employees a times use the cards meant to fuel the company's vehicles to fuel their own. All these examples translate to increased financial expenditure in the company.

Omantel gives mobile handsets to its employees. The company incurs all the phone call bills of the employees. The primary role of the mobile handset given to the employees is to ease internal and external communication within the company. However, employees at times misuse the mobile handset devices. They use the company's paid bills to make personal calls. As a result, the company incurs additional charges on utility bills following the misuse of mobile devices.

According to the text, the greatest failed system is the remote attendance system implemented by the company. Remote attendance system was introduced in the company to ease monitoring of employees and ensure that employees are responsible for the company's time. It allows the employees to fill and sign their attendance using a USSD system (Skogstad, Einarsen, Torsheim, Aasland, and Hetland, 2007, p.85). The advantage of the system is that it helps the company to keep a daily database of employees turnout. The most significant weakness of the system is the lack of location sensitivity. The system allows workers to sign in and out of work whether they are within their working premises or not. Therefore, unscrupulous employees may sign in that they are in work while in a real sense, they are not at their workplace. Human resource is an essential component of the company's development and growth. The system creates a blindspot where workers do not utilise their time effectively in the workplace. The company incurred losses either through overstaffing or underutilization of the existing staff.

The analysis of the situation at Omantel company involves the use of the fishbone diagram to identify the cause and effects in the company. The method is used to investigate three main components of the company. The analysis examines the root cause of the financial constraints in the company. The problems and challenges within the company emanate from three distinct areas. These are the financial, time and production factors in the company. The fishbone analysis reveals that tracking and monitoring are critically important in the company. The monitoring aspect is published in two ways. First, it the lack of active managerial staff that can effectively monitor and track the bill discounts. The company must set a maximum limit to prevent workers from obtaining extra discount bills. The second and most prevalent monitoring and control issue is lies within the vehicles offered to the network engineers. The analysis shows that this has the most significant effect on the financial implication of the company. Inadequate monitoring of these vehicles causes immense losses due to additional expenditures as a result of repairs, fuel costs and depreciation of the cars.

Monitoring and controlling issue seem to be the biggest challenge resulting in a financial problems in the company. For instance, the remote attendance system, which leads to considerable economic losses in the company suffers from a lack of monitoring, tracking and control mechanism. The system is a sound system that can increase productivity in the company if it was used properly. The system would work best if it is designed to incorporate location-based analysis. Therefore, the study reveals that control, tracking and monitoring are the most essential and urgently needed changes in the company to overcome the financial challenges in the organization.

The Laissez-Faire leadership approach employed by the company has a significant effect on the development of the company. The method grants the employees freedom of management. The technique cuts across all the factors affecting the performance of the company (Skogstad, Einarsen, Torsheim, Aasland, and Hetland, 2007, p.85). Laissez-Faire has a significant effect on the financial, time and production factors. The style assumes that the workers are self-motivated and can work under minimal supervision. However, the case is not always valid. The method ignores some of the critical aspects of the company. First, the workers sign in and out on the USSD system. Employing Laissez-Faire leadership on such an employee can adversely affect the productive time of the workers. Secondly, network engineers are given vehicles for rapid response services. They are giving these drivers the freedom of leadership results in misuse of the companies resources. As a result, Laissez-Faire can affect the company negatively.

There are three main divisions in Omantel company. The company is made up of the sales and marketing team, the Human resource and managerial staff and the technical staff which comprises of the design architectures and the engineers. The three groups work together for the company's greater good. The operation and maintenance base of the company form approximately 25 per cent of the company's employees (Cunningham, Salomone, and Wielgus, 2015, p.97). The human resource in the company works to ensure the network engineers in the company are satisfied. The three divisions in the company play a significant role in the three factors affecting the company. The critical examination of the challenges in the company reveals that the human resource and managerial team is the most fluid department that can be manipulated and transformed to improve financial development in the company. The management has to reexamine the Lasseiz-Faire concept and gauge whether it is effective in meeting the company's longterm development goals and increasing profit margins.

The management and leadership hierarchy in the company makes it hard for human resource managers to monitor and control the network engineers. The company gives the network engineers specific privileges that make them feel they are the most privileged among the workers in the company. The company uses this technique hoping that the approach would deter the fleet managers from misusing the company's resources like the vehicles under their control. However, the strategy seems to be ineffective since the emergency vehicles have been misused in many instances for personal gain.