Introduction
Ballard Integrated Managed Services, Inc. (BIMS) is a service-providing corporation that serves Douglas Medical Center (DMC) where they provide food, as well as medical services. Over the years, the rate of employee turnover has exacerbated and quite unhealthy. With much transit from one employment to another, there creates a gap that takes a relatively long time to fill (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin & Cardy, 2008). The biggest challenge include time wasting while engaging in endless recruitments in filling-in the gaps left vacant by the departed employees.
Additionally, Gomez-Mejia et al. assert that extravagant expenses in recruitment process, employment of part time employees highly paid while waiting for completion of the recruitment and orientation process can be devastating. A close comparison of the rate of turn over within this industry shows that there is a relatively high turnover, as well as increasing intension to leave by many employees with data ranging between 55 and 60%. Nevertheless, BIMS’ turnover rate stands at 64% one that has caused an uproar in the top management. This has led to the formation of a taskforce led by Debbie Horner, the current Human Resource manager of BIMS.
It has been noted that this high rate of turnover has been taking a toll on the overall performance of the company because of; poor goal/ target achievement by individual employees. This report’s findings point to the fact that there is accentuated low employee morale because of unwelcoming workplace environment, and improper and clogged communication channels. All these are coupled with unfair perquisites as compared to the workload and schedules.
In the initial survey vehemently opposed by employees, there was an interview of all the 449 employees although senior management was not part of the interview. However, this survey was poorly organized, marred with a myriad of blunders resulting to a disturbing rate of response of only 17.3%. Therefore, having learnt from that mistake, it was possible to formulate and all inclusive and a novel survey strategy.
Approach Adopted
With the new survey strategy at hand, it became evident that an interview to the current workforce would increase their demoralization thus increase their intent to leave. This meant that a new strategy had to adopted. In this strategy instead of interviewing current employees, those leaving the organization were interviewed and given that they had nothing to hide or be afraid of, they made the best batch to interview. The Human Resource department was tasked to persuade those clearing from the corporation as they seek new ventures/ openings to take time to fill out this interview form. Therefore, it was the assumption of the Human Resource that upon collecting a substantial amount of information on employees’ dissatisfaction areas, it would be possible to formulate a better plan to counter this trend. This is, in addition to, being able to predict employees with intent to leave the organization and try to urge them to stay if possible.
Analysis
The questionnaire formulated had ten questions that had utilized the Likert Scale of 1 to 5 where the numerical ranged with 1 being strongly disagree through to 5 which depicted strongly agree (McClave, Benson & Sincich, 2011). Data analysis included categorizing the data into individual tables and completing the tables to find data for use in plotting graphical representations. The other three alphanumeric questions required respondents to fill in some details that would be used in the analysis. The graph below provides a cumulative data format collected following the survey.
Third, it is admissible that despite employees admitting that training from school or other job placements were adequate, it is imperative to note that the compensation perquisites were not up-to per with the expectations. Employees seem just contented with pay packages, and none seems to have a strong conviction that they were paid what they deserved based on the workload.
Fourth, as far as hours that were needed by the employees were concerned, there seems to be moderate to low agreement that they were quite enough with a higher number inclining to negate this assertion. When more time is spent / demanded from an employee by the company, there are increased chances of employee burnouts that resulted in the desire to vacate current positions for better ones that have relatively manageable time schedules.
Fifth, in as far as supervisors treating employees fairly is concerned, there is a strong agreement that this is a relatively serious problem. A closer look at the performance of supervisors based on this information shows that supervisors have a higher propensity to mistreat employees thus exacerbating the work environment.
Sixth, data shows that while supervisors treated their juniors unfairly, to some extent, there is a fair agreement that managers treated their divisions with satisfactory fairness. However, it is not quite clear whether this response is as a result of junior employees rarely interacting with their managers or in actual sense they were treating their employees fairly, the issue can be classified as debatable at this position.
Seven, in terms of communicating, it seems that there is a fair distribution of results. However, when this is coupled with the modalities employed earlier during the initial survey, there seems to be a lapse in communication. In accentuation, there was a meager 17.3% response rate in the initial survey a challenge that shows lack of confidence with what their response would have on the current situation. It also seems from the earlier survey that, the top management only delegated the duty to carry out the survey without putting in necessary checks and balances that would ensure that the survey accomplishes what the top management had in mind at inception. Without clearly defined goals for a survey, it is useless since it is like trying to hit the wind with a baseball bat.
Eight, in terms of job security, there seems to be extremities with a copious amount of individuals believing that they did not have job security while another batch believing that there was strong job security. This shows that to some, there was gross negligence by the management with possibilities of having been threatened with sacking thus n inclination towards extreme negation of the supposition (Lodico, 2011; Lodico, Spaulding & Voegtle, 2010).
Nine, it is disturbing enough to note that the largest majority of individuals did indeed detest working at the current location. A high possibility is that the general working environment was inhumane or marred by challenging issues that seemed never to be dealt.
Finally, in as far as getting to work is concerned, there seems to be a general consensus that it was moderately easy to get to work without much difficulty. This may be good consolation in a desolate working environment.
Determination of the average-cumulative median shows that the central tendency falls below the average means of 2.71 as compared to the anticipated value of 3. This shows that employees at DMC are dissatisfied with the current state of affairs. Further analysis also shows that 48% of the employees were dissatisfied with the current state of affairs on various fronts. For those who were somewhat satisfied with the current state of affairs made up 32% of the data set. Additionally, it has been noted that employees’ request for numerous changes to be implemented to edify the workplace have been ignored.
Recommendations
Prior to giving recommendations, it is necessary to connote that the recommendations are inclined away from what was quite requested. According to the desire of the company management, they would like to have a way of determining employees likely to vacate current placement. However, given that the management are evaluating modalities of edifying current work conditions, it is; therefore, imperative to focus on ideologies that do not negate this quest. Therefore, by focusing on employees likely to stay with the company, it is possible to evaluate those who have intentions of staying as well as identify those with higher proclivity to leave and use a novel platform to woo them to stay on (Gomez-Mejia et al., 2008; Richards, 2009; McClave, Benson & Sincich, 2011).
First, it is essential to create a flexible work schedule especially given the fact that there are 18 working hours per day. The hours can be distributed such that employees get some tangible free time, which employees can put into good use like enrolling into local colleges for furthering their careers (Gomez-Mejia et al., 2008). Additionally, incorporating on site work training from time to time is critical since employees are better equipped to carry out their work with more effectiveness from such equipping seminars (See Gomez-Mejia, Balkin & Cardy). Furthermore, for those employees enrolling in colleges to pursue further studies, the corporation has to chip in to aid in payment of tuition fee. In so doing, since individuals would like to be aided in covering their tuition fee, they are more likely to stay (see Gomez-Mejia, Balkin & Cardy).
Given failing leadership, it is essential to conduct leadership training/ seminars bound to enhance top-down and bottom-up open and transparent communication channels (Lodico, Spaulding & Voegtle, 2010). Finally, revision of the current salary perquisites is imperative as part of the motivation strategy. Additionally, the company can put in place other compensation strategies to reward employees on a quarterly basis for novel ideas thus motivating employees to share ideas with company management on ways to improve performance.
References
Gomez-Mejia, Luis R.; David B. Balkin and Robert L. Cardy (2008), Management: People, Performance, Change, 3rd edition. New York, New York USA: McGraw-Hill
Lodico, M. G., Spaulding, D. T., & Voegtle, H. K. (2010), Methods in Educational Research: From Theory to Practice. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons.
McClave, J., Benson, P., & Sincich, T. (2011). Statistics for Business and Economics (11th Ed.), Boston, MA: Pearson-Prentice Hall.
Richards, L. (2009). Handling Qualitative Data: A Practical Guide, Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications Ltd, p. 103.
