This study will be conducted in Marks and Spencer and B&Q Company in the United Kingdom aiming to explore the consequences of employing younger employees. Quantitative and Qualitative data will be collected through questionnaires as well as focus group interviews. Data analysis will be done through Descriptive statistics and content analysis. The target group will be selected through random sampling and accidental sampling.
The sample will consist of 850 employees of different cadres and ages and 50 recruiting agencies. Based on the reviewed literature it is expected that most employers as well as recruiting agencies will support the view that older employers are more productive. In this regard older employees will be considered from twenty eight years of age to forty eight.
Based on qualitative data most young employees (from the age of twenty to twenty seven) tend to underperform at work. Mostly the technical fields like engineering. The factors attributed to this are experience, maturity and commitments that make them have monetary requirements. Based on these assertions from literature it is hypothesized that employing younger employees would lower the productivity of the companies; conversely employing older employees increases productivity, reduces staff turnover, increases competence increases competence index and increases commitment in levels to the company. Some studies have recommended reinforcement of school curricula with compulsory internship.
1. Introduction
In general, Marks and Spencer and B&Q have been employing more young people relative to the older ones in the past thirty years. Being blue Chip companies in Europe they have been observed to have lower productivity relative to other smaller companies and have been found to have more redundancy. It has been noted that older employers are working harder and for many years in other firms relative to the younger ones.
1.2 Research Statement
Unfortunately the United Kingdom has more middle aged people and thus the young population is in very high demand leading to the constant change of jobs. Owing to the problems stated above that the study was developed. At the foundation stage, it is hoped that the study will provide indices of the relationship between age and workers’ productivity that will be used to determine the two company policy on hiring.
1.3 Rationale and research question
Marks and Spencer spends 620,000 USD on hiring whereas B&Q spend 906,000 USD on hiring. Both companies have a high staff turnover of an average of 39%. Different surveys have shown that many of the employees in these companies are dissatisfied and would leave the companies if an opportunity arises. For this reason it is important to establish whether the high turnover rate is linked to the recruitment policy that favors younger employees. The hypothesis of this study is that the employment of the young employees has affected the productivity of the companies as well as the satisfaction of employees. The findings of this study could inform the review of the companies’ recruitment policy. Therefore, the principal objective of this study will be to gain information on the correlation between the age of workers and their productivity. The paper will seek to address the following questions
Is there a significant difference between the productivity of younger and older employees?
Is there a significance difference between the attitudes of younger and older employee?
Is there a significant difference between the satisfaction levels of younger employees and older ones?
2.0 Literature Review
According to The entrepreneur journal which explores the advantages of hiring an older worker the U.S employers spend millions of man hours and Dollars placing advertisements for recruiting owing to the high turnover of the young employees. The journal claims that the only way to maintain a reliable and dedicated workforce is to hire older workers for the following reasons. The older employees are dedicated, punctual honest, detail oriented, are good listeners, are more efficient, have better organizational skills, are more mature, they have less labor costs, they possess better communication skills and they take pride in a job well done.
According to Guy Hamilton Crook and Martin I. Heinstein in their book “the older worker in Industry” two out of three men believe that older men are more efficient at work. The study was carried out in San Francisco to gain information about older workers which might bear upon their optimal utilization in the industry. The findings confirmed that employers preferred to give the older employees routine work; they also confirmed that more than 50% of the old employees report improvement in the last five years. The older people were more likely to report a liking of their job relative to their young counterparts who expressed a lot of dissatisfaction. They attributed the findings to the ageing process which they argue is accompanied by many important changes in an individual’s perception of themselves and their Interpersonal relationship.
According to Casey Hawley in her book “Managing the older employee” which refers the old employee as “boomers” the communication of the older employees is more formal owing to the importance that was attached to it in the earlier carrier days. Therefore, she argues that it is essential for an organization to take advantage of this fact in order to improve in their formal language which is essential in good corporate conduct. She also describes the boomers as people who have expectations have an expectation of staying of staying in the same company until their retirement age, Whereas the young population which she refers to as ‘generation Y’ have mixed expectations upon beginning their careers and thus have a habit of changing jobs. Therefore, she recommends that to balance the staff turnover it’s advisable to balance the old and the young.
Casey further argues that the old employees have better tactics of dealing with work relative to their younger counterparts in the sense that they are known to take more time and are more analytical and better in organizational skills. The older employee I therefore considered nice and one who leads by example in demonstrating inclusiveness in issues like reviewing plans and project reports. She also demonstrates that the older employees are better in balancing work and family issues therefore, they are known to strike a good balance and thus, they do not let their personal issues affect their work relative to the young employees.
According to ‘Understanding Organizational change ‘a book by Patrick Dawson; in chapter six he explores the experience of supervisors and older employees under conditions of change. He gives facts against the myth that ‘the older you are the less likely you are to adapt to changes.’ He argues that from a study conducted the older employees and older employees are more resilient and are affected to a smaller magnitude by organizational changes relative to young and junior employees.
3.0 Method
Quantitative and Qualitative data will be collected through questionnaires as well as focus group interviews. Data analysis will be carried out through Descriptive statistics and content analysis. The target group will selected through random sampling and accidental sampling.
The study will be based majorly on sample survey of 850 employees of Marks and Spencer, B&Q and 50 employees of recruiting firms. They will be interviewed factories at their work stations and informal talks will be done to gather qualitative data. The employees will be interviewed on their job satisfaction and their individual value to the company. The immediate supervisors will then be interviewed on the performance and general behavior of the staff members they supervise. The supervisor will also be requested to rate the age of the employees according to what they think is the age bracket under which the employees fall.
Additional information and confirmation of information will be checked in the company records and the human resource personnel files. A sample of 50 employees from five recruiting firms will also interviewed to investigate their opinion on the number of employees they recruit i.e. a comparison of the number of young and older workers recruit in a specified period.
However, not all required information from the employees will be obtained owing to the following foreseen challenges: Time, resources and also employees may not be assured of the confidentiality. None the less, the data collected will be analyzed and a paper calling attention to the areas that require to be investigated further by giving an outline of the findings will then be drafted.
Characteristics of the Sample
The sample to be studied will be a representative of the employees of Marks and Spencer and B&Q in the following aspects: age, Commitment to work and productivity. The sample design will require an inclusion of employees from all cadres; skilled and unskilled and all ages. Owing to the fact that the investigation’s objective is to justify the old workers, sample will include 57% of the older workers.
The fact that the survey will be carried out during working hours this will really be costly in terms of man hours and thus it is really difficult to get the attention of the employees. This will present a challenge in the sense that the quality of data may be compromised because it is not certain the sample size and characteristic will be met. The sample at inception will be targeting two thousand one hundred employees which are 70% of the total number of employees of M&S and B&Q but considering the challenges, data for 850 people will be considered acceptable and representative i.e. the sample should be at least 40% of the target sample (Breckinridge, 1980).
Age and Sex
For purposes of the study the older employees will be defined as above the age of twenty eight. The sample shall include:
350 Male above the age of 30
210 Female above the age of 30
140 Male below the age of 28
150 female below the age of 28
Occupational Level
As earlier indicated the sample will comprise of employees from every cadre i.e. skilled, semi-skilled and un-skilled employees. The sample should resemble that of both M&S and B&Q employees and thus, conclusively the sample should not be biased in any way to affect the generalization of the sample findings.
Education and Marital status
The age analysis should not show any significant difference from the population of M&S and B&Q employees apart from a small variance expected to be noted in the statistics of married men above the age of thirty.
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