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Effective organizations thrive in their operations (Ma, 2000). Management level employees and other employees who work for such organizations’ perfectly understand their roles and perform based on organizational standards. Organizational managers usually prioritize on implementing policies and programs that are designed to enable the organizations to thrive in their operations (Ma, 2000). Management teams comprise of management-level employees who greatly influence the way their organizations compete (Martineau & Hannum, 2004). Skilled management leaders and highly skilled organizational employees help their organizations to perform better. Management-level personnel are responsible for facilitating management leadership in their respective organizations. It is therefore important for organizations to hire or develop managers with excellent leadership skills (Randall, 2003).
The hiring and training process for organizational employees varies widely. Some organizations prefer to hire experienced employees. Others prefer to hire inexperienced employees’ then subject them through training programs that will enable them to develop work-based skills that the organization needs. The United States military is an example of an organization that prefers to hire and train its personnel. After recruitment, army personnel are subjected through progressive training during their military career (Farrell, 2008). Specialist civilian personnel skilled in medicine, engineering, administrative roles and other areas are sometimes hired and trained by the military in order for them to gain experience required to work in a military environment (Noah, 2016). A typical General Schedule personnel training program in the military enables this category of military personnel to understand military operations, their roles and functions (Adam, 2016). After training, personnel performance tends to vary due to different reasons. Examples of reasons for varying performance include: varying levels of experience, job satisfaction and management leadership can either promote or impede personnel performance (Randall, 2003).
Organizational leaders are supposed to facilitate effective organizational leadership (Lussier & Achua, 2016). But the problem is that not all organizational leaders are effective at leading other employees. Ineffective leadership can impact negatively on organizational employees’ performance and job satisfaction (Shmailan, 2016). Work environments that are not conducive to employees impact negatively on their job satisfaction and overall performance (Randall, 2003). Growing concerns among active duty soldiers’ and their dependents regarding poor customer service provided by General Schedule personnel working at Civilian Personnel Advisory Centers (CPACs) motivated this study.
At CPACs, General Schedule personnel provide vital services for the military such as offering assistance to other military personnel who inquire about issues that concern to military missions (DAIG, 2014). At CPACs, customer service personnel perform the important function of advising other military personnel based on their inquiries (Swartzlander, 2004). Customer service agents have different levels of experience, preferences, attitudes, job satisfaction levels and other attributes. Due to the nature of their work, customer service agents at CPACs frequently interact with active duty soldiers, their spouses, and other parties that need informational support. The quality of customer service that CPAC personnel offer to other military stakeholders varies. The variation is a result of variation in the skillset of the individuals who work at the advisory centers. Their level of job satisfaction of CPAC personnel also varies. CPAC personnel who are more experienced and satisfied with their day to day role are most likely to offer better customer support compared to CPAC personnel who are less experienced and dissatisfied with their roles.