Management Capstone MGMT659 Unit 3 IP

Table of Contents Problem Identification, Impacts, Design of Research, and Literature Research (Week 1) 3 Identify the Problem 3 Prepare a statement of the issue to be resolved 3 Impacts if issues are not resolved 4 Identifying the Consequences if the problem is not resolved. 5 Research 6 Problem Impact and Findings from Research (Week 2) 9 Data Collection and Research Analysis Methods (Week 3) 10 Discussion and Conclusion on Approach (Week 4) 11 Compilation of Finding, Conclusions, and Recommendations (Week 5) 12 References 13

The Culture of High Employee Turnover and Strategic Development

The problem of high employee turnover is with the call center for a University that I have worked for in the past. Historically research has shown voluntary employee turnover has been related to job satisfaction and perceived job alternatives. The employee turnover has impacted the level of service to the customers, morale, culture, team work, communications, and career advancement. The turnover rate for a group of 400 advisors in one year was 250 employees. Over half of the advisors left, quit, or were fired for any number of reasons. The numbers are astonishing and this problem is drastically affecting performance at all levels of the company.

The issue to be addressed is the high turnover and the effects of culture on the employees that contribute to the lack of performance and strategic advantage in the workplace. The true issue to be addressed is the lack of quality leadership’s and their ability to adjust and respond to the changing global economy which drastically affects the culture of a company. Leadership with short term goals and lack of vision has little or no strategic advantage and are at risk of a take-over by a competitor. This culture encourages career minded employees to flee and compounds turnover within the company and ultimately decreases profits in the short and long term. A quantitative example to prove the point is a University who showed a 25% profit margin last year, yet the stock continues to go down.

The root issue to be resolved is the lack of leadership within this for profit University. This paper will not solve the lack of leadership issue. This paper will address the issue and title of this paper: The Culture of High Employee Turnover and Strategic Development. When leadership and stakeholders make a visionary commitment to the culture of the workforce the high employee turnover will stabilize and that is when strategic development of the company will have a chance to grow and prosper.

To restate the issue to be resolved, is to say that when the leadership corrects the corporate culture problems affecting high employee turnover the company will see employee morale, productivity, communication, efficiencies, customer service increase and quantitatively profit margins and strategic advantages will increase for the long term.

Identifying some of the impacts of corporate culture and high employee turnover will be to continue to see new and seasoned employees leave the company for other opportunities and job alternative as previously stated. The lack of career opportunity will continue to attract less than desirable employees. Career minded employees will look for more congruent companies with a more desirable and positive culture. For example companies like Google, Zappos, Southwest Airlines, Twitter, Nike, and Facebook to name a few who are using newer types of positive cultures from Holacracy, Power, Task, Hierarchy, to Adhocracy cultures.

The impact of bad culture isn’t going to stay with the admissions and advisor roles within the company. The impact will spread like a virus throughout the University, to all aspects of the company including the teachers and students/customers which is one of the biggest reasons to change the culture immediately. Other issues will include a lower standard of working conditions and workplace pressure and stress.

According to the National Education Association, 50 percent of new teachers quit in the first five years. Why? Because after grading papers, answering to assessment tests, developing lesson plans, taking continuing education classes, and coordinating parent conferences, a "calling" just isn't enough to fuel the tank . A calling isn't a replacement for culture (Spiegelman, 2012). Having the bad culture getting into the customers, will eventually cause a riptide and severely damage the ability for the University to grow and may cause bigger issues with regulatory agencies .

Negative corporate culture will eventually lead to poor ethical behavior and a variety of problems. One example of the obvious in this corporate setting was the lack of discussion. For starters when an employee would get fired or leave there would almost never be any talk of why or even mention the person was gone. Astonishing it was like the person never existed! This is analogous of having a family member die and nobody says anything to anyone about it. It’s that ridiculous! It is the cliché example of the elephant in the room that nobody dared talks about, but everyone has to look around to talk and see each other. Team members dare not talk about it in fear of retribution or consequences from leadership. The intimidation and bully factor was intense.

Some of the consequences of not resolving the culture issue are already taking affect and have been worsening over the past three years and the removal of commissions from the advisor compensation. When the incentives were removed the lack of positive culture was exposed and negative culture has been slowly increasing. The negative culture had degraded the quality of work by employees and increasing the employee turnover rates. Consequently the enrollments have fallen. The quality of services and employees has fallen. The employee satisfaction has fallen while fear has increased. The ethics, leadership, values and vision of the company have also fallen and are increasingly miss-aligned.

Coincidentally one of the Presidents of the company, who has also turned over and is no longer with the company came up with a strategic plan to move quickly to market with some of the technology and marketing efforts (not typically seen in education sector) and profits for the University have increased. Unfortunately the high turnover rate is not limited to the advisors. The consequences of this virus have also plagued the leadership and faculty as previously mentioned, by continually steering away savvy career minded individuals to seek employment in other venues.

Interestingly the overall stock of the company continues to fall and remain in penny stock value while the profits margins from the recent year were in the 25% range. When I say penny stock I am referring to the value of a share below $10 and the stock having no equity value to have a brokerage or finance company typically loan out money against the stock. Not a good investment when offering employees stock options as incentives to stay with the company. This is another consequence of bad culture and ultimately poor leadership.

One serious consequence with bad culture is the negative affects it has on employees personally and emotionally. To some extent, corporations are beginning to realize that employees' emotions affect their productivity (Ferro, 2016). A positive culture in a company will help employee deal with difficult issues and can increase efforts and focus on work tasks and overall life quality and emotional intelligence in workers. The lack of good culture and emotional intelligence could lead to potentially risky environments if workers become distraught and lash out uncontrollably either verbally or physically.

Research on high employee turnover as related to culture and profits are how I intend to conduct qualitative research using ProQuest to support the project solutions. I will use research and methods from existing sources to show that the potential locations or root of the problems in culture is the lack of vision from stakeholders and leadership. The impact of the research will clearly show how long term profits and customer satisfaction suffer. Also due to the lack of succession and promotions to internally grow talent in a timely manner hurts the culture and growth of the company and ultimately profits.

Focusing on the issues and impacts involving current trends in systematic analysis of causes and potential solutions for employee turnover in organizations will prove viable options to avoid the inevitable. Research between customer service quality and employee turnover will also be included to show how culture is a necessity when planning corporate strategy and vision to assure long term success with employee/customer satisfaction. Other research on the impacts of leadership practices on employee turnover and influences of culture on employee turnover will offer insight to the root cause of the dilemma.

Using Psychological research showing the increased stress and “workplace telepressure” to perform and negative health consequences with negative cultures. Recent polls show 10% of workers feel overwhelmed 100% of the time while at work. And almost half (48%) overall, feel overwhelmed at work.

In conclusion, leadership with the ability to adjust, change and respond to employee needs with a positive culture in the fast changing global economy will dramatically decrease employee turnover, and increase the strategic advantage. Leadership must continue to focus on the long term vision and culture of the company to remain strategically advantageous from the competition. A positive culture will continue to feed itself and grow just as a negative culture will fester and grow in a negative way. Which would you rather have? It is up to the stakeholder s to purposefully direct leadership in a positive culture for continued measurable results for the company.

Ferro, S. (2016, January 10). Emotions Impact Your Work -- So Why Don't Companies Take Mental Health Seriously? Retrieved January 12, 2016, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mental-health-at-work_566ad6aee4b009377b24992a?utm_hp_ref=business

Spiegelman, P. (2012, January 18). Bad Culture Impacts All Organizations. Retrieved January 12, 2016, from http://www.inc.com/paul-spiegelman/bad-culture-impacts-all-organizations.html

Disregard below, template settings. I will discard on final submission. I use them as notes and formatting.

Encyclopedia, S. E. (1993). Article. In The new encyclopedia Britannica (vol. 38, pp. 745-758). Chicago: Publisher.

Lastname, F. (2003). Book title: Subtitle. Sterling, VA: Publisher Name.

Newspaper article without an author. (1993, July 15). The Washington Post, p. A12.

Wittkopf, B., & Shaw, M. E. (2003, fall). Article title from the journal. Journal Name, 43(2), 18-22. doi: 10:109.0932.9385.09

Heading Level 1, Centered, Boldface

Heading Level 2, Flush left, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase

Heading level 3, indented, boldface, lowercase ends with period.

Heading Level 4, indented, boldface, lowercase, italicized, ends with period.

Heading level 5, italicized, lowercase, ends with a period

Note: Depending on the length and complexity of your paper you will use different levels of headings.