This memo contains the details of assignment you instructed me to undertake concerning the discriminatory lay off and hiring of employees at QFC. I wish to start by stating that QFC has retrenched and rehired 50 employees within a span of 98 weeks. This translates to about 2 employees per week. Of all the employees that were retrenched and rehired during this period 72% had served the company for less than ten years. Fourteen percent of them were in managerial positions while 86% worked as operational staff. Coming to marital status, majority 76% of the affected employees were married while 25% were not yet married. Again, employees with less education, high school graduate were the most affected by QFC human resource practices. They accounted for 76% of the employees sacked or rehired.
The main task of this assignment was to determine if QFC was unfair to old employees when it comes to the issue of retrenchment and rehiring. Here, I wish to begin by stating that QFC sacked and rehired both young and old employees. The youngest employee sacked or rehired by the company was 20 years while the oldest one was 62 years. The mean and the median age of affected QFC employees were determined to be 35 year and 33 years respectively. For purposes of statistical analysis employees of age 35 years or below were considered young while those with age above 35 were considered old. The employees of 35 years or below were 31 while those above 35 were 19. Meaning, 62% of the affected employees were young. .
The determination of whether QFF targeted old employees when sacking or rehiring was done through a chi square hypothesis testing method. There were two categories of employees affected by HR practices. Therefore, chi-squared test for categories data was selected. This test is appropriate when categorical data is to be compared against some expected value. In this case, it was expected that both old and young employees would be equally represented in the sacking and rehiring data. Consequently, differences were viewed to be caused by discriminatory practices. This led to a formulation of null hypothesis which stated there was equal number of old and young employees sacked or rehired by QFC. The alternative hypothesis was there were more old employees sacked and rehired than young employees.
An error level was determined before analysis was conducted. This error level is called level of significance in statistics. In this case it was fixed at 0.05. Meaning, that allowed probability that the variation was due to chance or error was 5%. Otherwise, the probability that the difference in the number of old and young employees was due to other factors other than chance was fixed at 95%. The observed number of 62 and 38 which represent the percentage of young and old employees and the expected value of 50 was used to determine the chi square statistic. This was found to be 5.76. Then the critical value at level of significance 0.05 was found to be 3.841. Hence, the null hypothesis was rejected because the chi square statistic exceeded the critical value. This lead to a conclusion that the difference in the number of old and young employees sacked could have been occasioned by discriminatory. Consequently, I conclude that affected QFC workers who are your client have a valid case with regard to discrimination.
Appendix
Statistical Analysis
There were two categories of employees whose distribution was under investigation. The first category was the young employees age 35 years or below. The second category was old employees aged above 35 years. For this reason, chi square goodness of fit was preferred because of the data was categorical in nature.
The retrenchment and rehiring exercises at the QFC was expected to be non discriminatory. Meaning both the young and old employees was to be equally represented in the sackings and rehiring. This expectation formed the basis for hypothesis formulation
Hypothesis
Null Hypothesis Ho: There was equal number of old and young employees sacked or rehired by QFC.
Alternative Hypothesis Ha: There were more old employees sacked and rehired by QFC than young employees.
Calculation of chi square statistic
The chi square statistic was found by summing (O-E) 2/E. The value was 5.76
This was found by subtracting 1 from the number of categories. This was found to be 1 because there were only two categories
Critical value
This was found from chi square distribution table by using the degree of freedom and the level of significance. The value was 3.842
Decision
The null hypothesis was rejected because the chi square statistic exceeded the probability value. Null hypothesis is rejected when the calculated chi square value is more than critical value (David & Sutton, 2004).
Interpretation
The difference in the number of old and young employees sacked or rehired by QFC could have been due to discrimination. In other words, the analysis shows at 95% confidence level that the variation was due to other factors other than chance.
References
David, M., & Sutton, C. D. (2004). Social research: The basics. London: SAGE Publications.
