The researchers have selected their organization Gap Inc. based in Ottawa to conduct research on the prevalent HR issues pertaining to employee compensation system and performance management. It should be highlighted that the major HR problem across GAP is their flawed remuneration system that result in poor rewards for employees despite their dedication and inclination for job. It should be emphasized that poor reward system adversely impacts employee financial targets and job fulfillment, which in turn leads to lack of job motivation, low confidence and trust relationship with employers, reduced desire for growth in existing organization, greater absenteeism and lack of productivity. As a result, the reward and recognition problem at GAP could adversely affect organizational performance due to increase in business costs, decline in sales, low employee engagement in organizational development and high employee job turnover.
Research Objectives
The first objective is to determine the major flaws in existing reward, recognition and performance system that negatively impact employee net compensation on annual basis.
The second objective is to demonstrate any discriminatory compensation and reward policies that favor any specific employee group or management level across GAP.
The third objective is to determine which rewards and recognition incentives GAP should use in order to produce the positive employee behaviors, greater employee motivation, job fulfillment and growth desired by the organization.
The fourth objective is to develop an effective and technically acceptable employee reward, compensation, recognition, and performance incentive plan for GAP by providing rationale for organizational improvement and employee satisfaction.
3. Research Plan & Methodology
3.1 Secondary Research
The researcher will start with secondary literature review of HR models, frameworks and theoretical developments pertaining to the topics of motivation, absenteeism, compensation, reward management, performance management, incentive mechanisms, job satisfaction, need fulfillment, job turnover, employee morale, psychological contract, job identity and others etc. Nonetheless, the aforementioned areas are linked with the broad subject of employee compensation, recognition and financial objectives that significantly affect employee job decisions and individual performance. The researcher will prepare literature analysis by using information from HRM books, scholarly journals and contemporary magazine articles that identify latest research trends and statistics. The theoretical insights from secondary research will facilitate in primary analysis, development of alternate reward system and recommendations for GAP’s human resource strategic partners for personnel management and retention.
3.2 Primary Data Collection & Rationale
For this research proposal, the researcher will focus on two primary data collection methods namely Employee Survey and Employee Group Think. Although there are various sampling techniques; however, the researchers will prefer Judgmental Approach for employee survey because the group has experience in making selecting participants based on judgments about appropriate characteristics that GAP employees should possess to become eligible for this research project. This technique is very effective in this research because the objective is to highlight weaknesses in existing reward and recognition system by extracting relevant and unbiased information from mentally mature and composed employees who seek improvements in the work environment instead of job switch. The sampling method will also be effective in avoiding random selection error. The characteristics required are 6-month job experience at GAP Ottawa and at least 2-year overall job experience followed by undergraduate academic qualification and middle-management job role. It should be noted that the target population for our research is GAP Ottawa employees in the age bracket of 22 – 40 years that currently serve at company’s regional offices and stores. The researchers will select 30 – 40 employees from 3 different GAP stores in Ottawa for survey questionnaire, which comprises of 20 questions on employee perspective and expectations pertaining to rewards, incentives and compensation. The sample size is adequate for reward system evaluation and inferences as it is a company research project that could generate valuable insights with a small group of employees (Patton, 1990).
The researchers will use Snowball Approach for Group Think data collection because the purpose is to select 5 participants from middle management to generate initial responses on reward mechanisms, dilemmas, reason for conflict, weaknesses and benefits of existing compensation system. The researcher will then induct 2 – 3 new participants based on the information provided by initial respondents. Hence, the total number of participants for Group Think method will be 7 – 8 and the rationale for this decision is to garner initiate responses and subsequently authenticate the data collection process by questioning new candidates for empirical analysis and managerial recommendations. The researchers will execute Group Think method by developing a semi-structured questionnaire because the participant’s interest and information sharing will facilitate in making certain unstructured questions on the research topic (Patton, 1990).
References
Patton, M. Q. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods. SAGE Publications. Newbury Park: London
